Total pages in book: 205
Estimated words: 204377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1022(@200wpm)___ 818(@250wpm)___ 681(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 204377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1022(@200wpm)___ 818(@250wpm)___ 681(@300wpm)
Despite the layers of fur and goose down between us, he’s a furnace against me. A blazing hot wall of fire and fury.
“Open your fucking mouth and tell me you understand. Or I’ll make you.” Hand in my hair, he drags my head back to his shoulder, twisting my neck, hunting for my eyes.
I don’t give him those, either.
He spins me to face him, holding me against the boulder with his chest, his hips, and that goddamn cock.
Literally between a rock and a hard place, I try to wriggle free, but that only pushes my nose deeper against his throat. Lord have mercy, I can’t escape his scent. Firewood and vodka. Winter berries and fresh snow. I draw in a greedy breath. Fertile soil. Fertile man.
Why does he have to be so potent?
Tendons pull taut in his strong neck, supporting the squarest jawline I’ve ever seen. A jaw carved from stone and shadowed in stubble. I lift my gaze higher, tracing the fullest lips, the thickest eyelashes, and the deepest brown eyes swallowed by fathomless pupils.
His dark, shaggy hair drips with snow and ice. Would it feel heavy and coarse like the coat of a black bear? If only I were brave enough to touch it. But he has that predatory look on his face, the one that both arouses me and scares me shitless.
I hope he can’t feel how fast my heart is beating.
At age twenty-five, he’s four years younger than me. But no one would call him young. The years haven’t softened and smoothed his bulk. They’ve hacked and shredded him into ruthless ridges, hard-packed muscle, and bone-deep scars.
With the bow and quiver on his back, countless knives draped beneath his furs, frost clinging to his whiskers, and a dangerous scowl on his handsome face—he invokes images of an undefeated Siberian conqueror leading his army into battle.
The man is a warlord of strength, agility, and brutality, and every sinew is plastered against me, reminding me how small and breakable I’ve become.
He grips my chin with a gloveless, uninjured hand, his fingers and thumb digging into the hinges of my jaw, forcing it open.
It doesn’t hurt, but my pulse thunders all the same.
“Use your words.” He bends closer, putting his hot mouth against mine. Not to kiss, but to growl against my lips. “Talk.”
He wants me to talk? Fine. I’ll talk until he wishes I never opened my mouth.
“Denver fucks me from behind.” I clutch his fur collar and meet his glare. “Always my ass. Rutting and rutting and rutting. No premature ejaculation with that one. He can go forever, and he does. Just when I think it will never end, he pulls out and finishes in my other hole. A waste of seed, but you already know that.”
I expect him to explode, shove me away, or do something rash so I can make a break for it.
Instead, he remains sullenly silent and stony, his expression hard and his hips harder, pressing tight against mine, giving me a taste of how it would feel if he impaled me on that beast between his legs.
“You’re bigger than him.” I remove my glove and slide my hand to his ass, burying fingers in cold denim and rock-hard muscle. “I bet it will hurt. Are you going to fuck me from behind, too?”
“Shut your fucking mouth.”
“Which is it, Kody?” I drop my hand. “Talk or shut up? I can’t do both.”
“This game you’re playing, taunting me and trying to incite my rage, it won’t work. You got the wrong guy. I’m not Leo.”
“Too bad. The things Leo does with his tongue…I wonder where he learned his technique. Not from Denver. The devil doesn’t kiss. Not my mouth. Not anywhere. A small mercy.” I glance away as fiery pressure invades my sinuses. “But he fucked my throat the first night. I must be terrible at it, because he hasn’t done it again. I guess I should consider myself lucky.”
Kody’s silence wraps around me, constricting in the night air. When I look up, I find the shivering hills of Hoss in his eyes.
It slays me.
“He can’t bear to see your hatred staring back at him.” A tic feathers across his jaw, his voice hollowed out. “That’s why he fucks from behind and avoids kissing. It helps him pretend the act is consensual.”
He speaks from experience, from the brutal memories of a child. I deliberately coaxed that to the surface, needing to hear it, to remind myself why I bargained with the devil. Kody’s trauma will remain in the past, never to be repeated, no matter how hard he tries to change my mind.
“It’s going to hurt.” His hand lowers to my throat.
“What?” Blood rushes to my belly like lava.
“Your punishment.” The winter in his eyes thaws into smoldering white heat.
Before I can object, he lifts me, sidesteps around the outcrop, and lowers onto a flat rock, taking me with him.