Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 146722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 734(@200wpm)___ 587(@250wpm)___ 489(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 734(@200wpm)___ 587(@250wpm)___ 489(@300wpm)
Diel lifted his hands and placed them on the wall on either side of Noa’s head. The world didn’t exist right then. The folly faded away to nothing. This was their small piece of paradise, and Diel never wanted to leave it.
She pushed down the leather, taking her panties with it. Her boots came off next, and she stood back up and faced him. The minute her pussy was bared to his eyes, a long growl tore out of his throat. He had wanted this so badly. Ever since the monster had seen Noa in the tunnels, he had wanted to own her, possess her, fuck her. The monster had recognized the determination and grit that existed inside her when the man had been blinded by fear and self-preservation.
Noa pushed her pants to the floor, kicking them away. She held her head high, naked in more than flesh before him, her ruined skin a roadmap of survivor beauty.
It was the most beautiful sight Diel had ever been privileged to see.
Noa’s chest rose and fell as she waited for him to act, to respond to her revealing all of herself. He lowered his arms from the wall and wrapped them around her waist. Noa’s breath caught in her throat at the skin-on-skin contact, and Diel had to pause. He splayed his hands on her back, his fingers roving over her body.
His head ticked to the side, the habit too ingrained to shake. Noa lifted her hands, and with the softest of movements, she pressed them onto his chest. His muscles jerked under her warm palms. His eyes rolled closed and he took in several deep breaths. She was touching him. Noa was touching him. He never thought he could have this. He never believed he could want this.
But … Noa.
Noa had come along, and his wrecked and split soul had allowed her to tear him apart and rebuild him into something stronger. Someone stronger. Who he must have been before Purgatory. No memories before that hellhole had resurfaced, of his childhood before Holy Innocents. But this … this whole and entire being was who he must have been before that. Before they tore him in two in the name of a God Diel was sure would despise them.
Noa’s hands journeyed down his torso, taking him out of his head, until they landed on the waist of his jeans. Diel opened his eyes. Noa was watching him. She leaned forward and rested her forehead against his. He breathed in her lavender-and-sweet-musk scent, letting it seep into his bones. An elixir. A tonic for any nerves that threatened to rise.
Then she unfastened the buttons of his jeans, one by one. He wore no underwear. Noa pressed a soft, fleeting kiss against his lips. As she broke away, she eased the jeans down his thighs, letting go only when they pooled at his feet.
The air between their bodies rose in temperature, as if they had entered the hearth that blazed with soaring, climbing flames across the room. His boots were removed next, discarded in the pile along with her clothes.
Noa ran her hands across Diel’s tapered waist and around to his back, then down to the cheeks of his ass. He groaned as she moved her touch to his hips, then finally to his hard cock, which was already leaking against his stomach. He noted the slight shake of her hands as they ghosted past his lower abdomen. When she took his length in her hand, he slapped his hands against the wall again, just to keep himself standing.
“Noa …” he growled, thrusting into her tight fist.
“Diel,” she said, for once using his name. It sailed into his ears, piercing his brain and driving him fucking insane. Noa placed her mouth at his ear and whispered one more time, “Take me.”
His body tensed. He drew his hands back from the wall and studied her face. Nothing in the fucking world had ever made him feel the way she did right then. No fucking sunset or sunrise could ever match Noa’s beauty. She lifted one of her bare legs to his waist, her thigh brushing against his as it passed. The friction was like a live wire being dragged across his skin.
Using his wide chest, he pushed Noa back against the wall. His dick twitched when she moaned at the contact. He lifted her other leg to wrap around his waist, pulling back his ass enough to place his cock at her entrance. He ran his fingers down her pussy, groaning at the warmth that greeted him, the wetness, her readiness for him. Noa’s hands threaded behind his head, her fingers locking together like a clasp.
She didn’t want to let him go.
Diel met her eyes; she was already waiting for him. The moment hung suspended between them. It was like the pause before he made a kill. The tension that built between him and his victim, before Diel’s pleasure would be met by the sacrifice of their soul. By their spilled blood. By his stealing their life with his knives and bare hands.