Total pages in book: 295
Estimated words: 282090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1410(@200wpm)___ 1128(@250wpm)___ 940(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 282090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1410(@200wpm)___ 1128(@250wpm)___ 940(@300wpm)
He’s hard for me, the length of him straining against his waistband as I squeeze.
“Fuck,” he growls, ripping his mouth from mine, his breaths as ragged as mine as I stroke him through the fabric. “If you keep doing that…” He slams his eyes shut and lets his head fall back.
“I’ll actually get you?” My core clenches.
His gaze snaps to mine, and the conflict I see in those dark depths makes me pause.
“Don’t make me fight for this. Not again.” I retreat from the warmth of his arms, and every nerve in my body screams in protest. “I can’t always be the one fighting for this while you invent new ways to hesitate or tell me no, Xaden. You either want me or you don’t.”
“You just had your hand wrapped around my cock, Violet. I’m pretty sure you felt how fucking badly I want you.” He rips his hand through his wet hair. “Gods, I am the one fighting for this!” he argues, gesturing between us. “I told you, I’m not using sex as a weapon to get you back.”
“You’ll just weaponize it with your little rule to make me say the three words I’m not ready to give you.” And that edge of maddening need he has me riding is just sharp enough that I might cave, I crave him that fucking much.
“Weaponize it against you?” He shakes his head. “You told me that you can’t separate emotion from sex. Remember?”
I open, then shut my mouth. He’s right. I did say that. Shit. “Maybe I’m learning how.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to.” He takes a step forward and cups the back of my neck. “I want you exactly how you are, emotions and all. I want the woman I fell for. It kills me every time I have to keep my hands off you, every night I lie awake next to you, both blessed and damned with the memory of how hot, how wet, how fucking perfect you feel when I’m losing myself in you.”
My lips part and heat flushes my skin as if his words are an actual caress.
“When I do sleep, I dream of the sounds you make right before you come and the way the blue in your eyes outshines the amber right after, all sated and hazy. I wake up starving for you—only you—even on the mornings you’re halfway across the kingdom. This isn’t me denying you or manipulating you. This is me fighting for you.” He palms my hip, and his thumb strokes the bare strip of skin between my pants and my armor.
“You want to fight for me?” I reach up into my hair and pull the pins loose one by one, letting them fall to the stone floor. “Then take a chance without knowing how I feel. You want my heart back? Risk yours first this time.”
“If I tell you how I feel right now, you’d never trust that I’m not just desperate for your body.” His brow furrows.
“Exactly my point.” The last pin falls from my hair. “Choose, Xaden. You can let me walk out that door, or you can be the one who takes what I’m willing to give this time.” I shake my hair loose and run my fingers through the wet mass to unravel the braid.
“Are you trying to bring me to my knees? Or win the argument?” His hand flexes at my hip as his heated gaze sweeps over me.
“Yes,” I answer, reaching for the ties at the small of my back that secure my armor. “I just spent eight hours terrified of what condition I’d find you in, and I’m telling you that I don’t just want you. I need you. There are your three words.” I tug the wet string, and it gives. “That’s all you get. Take me or leave me.”
The fight within him is palpable, the tension between us sharp enough to pierce dragon scale. And for a second, I think he might just be stubborn enough to walk away and keep us at this impasse.
But then—thank gods—he breaks, fusing his mouth to mine, and the fire that had banked during our argument flares back to life even hotter than before. He kisses me like I’m the answer to every question. Like everything we’ve been and will be hinges on this moment. And maybe it does.
His hands work the laces at my back while I undo the buttons of his pants. I win the race, sliding my hand beneath the fabric to stroke him from root to tip.
The guttural groan he gives me feels like a reward and hits straight between my thighs, the ache intensifying to a throb.
“Let go so I can get you naked.” He punctuates that last word with a nip of my lower lip.
Yes, please. I free him, and he pulls my armor loose enough to tug it over my head. It smacks the ground, and a second later the sensitive peak of my breast is surrounded by his mouth, flicked by his tongue. I moan, my fingers tunneling through his hair to hold him right there. “That feels so damned good.”