Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 207002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1035(@200wpm)___ 828(@250wpm)___ 690(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 207002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1035(@200wpm)___ 828(@250wpm)___ 690(@300wpm)
“That heart of yours better keep beating forever, Aslan, because you’re not going anywhere.” She held up her hand, wriggling her wave-crashing diamond ring. “I have your promise right here. Inscribed with Latin and very firmly, very willingly worn until my dying day.”
Her tone remained flirty and coy.
But my desire to play mutated into something black and desperate. Seeing my ring on her finger, remembering how it’d felt to kiss her and leap out of her window, never knowing if I’d see her again. How heartsick I’d been, tripping through the neighbourhood, running because she told me to, not because I wanted to.
It all roared back with a vengeance.
My back snapped with unresolved panic.
I shook my head as the terror of losing her made me turn as primal as the lion she joked about. My hand clamped around her neck, my thumb on her fluttering pulse, my palm against the delicate lines of her larynx. My arm siphoned around her like a snake, not caring I squeezed too hard, unable to stop myself from lashing her to me until she squirmed with discomfort.
“Aslan...?” Her whisper lost all echo of games as true worry gilded her words. “Are you...are you okay?”
“Give me a minute,” I grunted into her hair, doing my best to remind myself that she was here, with me, in bed. My body was inside hers; her heart was tucked safely with mine, and nothing could tear us apart. So why did everything inside me scream and howl at the very thought of losing her?
At the very real terror that one day I would lose her, and I wouldn’t fucking survive it.
Yesterday’s brief taste of separation was only going to get worse.
The police had my name.
They had suspicions.
They’ll come back.
Despair dropped over my mind. Fury made me rough. And I barely clung to humanity as I hissed into her ear, “Hold on, hayatım. Use the safeword. Say seahorse if you need me to stop.”
“Aslan?”
“I can’t. I-I’m drowning, Neri. Running from you yesterday, when every bone in my body was snarling not to...it’s...it’s twisted me up inside and—”
“I know. Me too.” Her ass shoved back, drawing me even deeper inside her. “I feel it too. That panic at being apart. The terror of losing you. The horror of never seeing you again. It’s all I can think about. I can’t stop fearing that one day you won’t be there, that you won’t be inside me, that you’ll be gone and—”
“Fuck.” I buried my face into her hair and let go.
My hips rocked with a primitive beat, pumping and taking, relentless and cruel.
She gasped in my hold as I pulled her head back and turned her chin. “Kiss me.” Dragging my hand up her throat to capture her jaw, I held her prone, forcing her to obey.
Our eyes locked as my mouth crashed down on hers.
An awkward, vicious kiss with our tongues duelling and our bodies twisted and locked in such prehistoric fashion.
We were nothing more than animals, writhing to an ancient song. A ritual that bound her to me in this life and the next, drawn in blood, summoned by sex, signed with every grunt and gasp as we punished each other.
I bit her bottom lip as I pistoned harder, faster inside her.
She moaned as her breasts bounced and my blankets fell away, revealing swathes of her glorious skin.
I well and truly lost myself.
Lost myself to her, in her, for her.
I snarled into the kiss and took every part of her that I could. I thrust as deep as I could get. I bruised her. Marked her. Didn’t stop drilling inside her until she stiffened in my violent hold then shattered around my pounding cock.
My tongue silenced her cries. Our lips locked. Our breath shared as I rode her through her orgasm, sending her higher, wringing her dry, committing to memory just how incredible she looked, spread on my cock, trapped in my hold, giving me everything all while it would never be enough.
I would never get enough.
Never stop needing her, craving her.
Missing her.
She bit my bottom lip as the last wave of her release made her twitch and moan. Her vicious teeth caught the cut that Jack had delivered and I entered another realm of mania.
Lightning bolts replaced my bones.
Thunder rumbled in my blood.
I was light and dark, good and evil, human and monster, and as the metallic splash of my blood tainted our kiss, I fucked her so goddamn hard.
I punished her for making me need her this way.
I hated her for asking me to run.
I loved her for choosing me.
And I sacrificed myself with every pumping, pounding, thrusting madness as I made sure she’d feel my punishment forever.
I came on a grunt, unable to catch a breath as my spine broke apart, cord by cord, vertebrae by vertebrae. Pure, crucifying energy tore from my body in a pulsing, spurting storm, splashing into Neri, coating her with every monstrous surge.