Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 188966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 945(@200wpm)___ 756(@250wpm)___ 630(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 188966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 945(@200wpm)___ 756(@250wpm)___ 630(@300wpm)
My hips drove exquisitely hard.
Punishing her.
Imprinting my cock deep, deep inside her.
Never again would her body know anyone else.
I would make damn sure of that.
I would mark her, brand her, own her in all the ways she owned me, so she always belonged, always came home, always remembered me, wanted me, needed me.
A whisper in my head tried to steal the moment.
The godawful terror of what would happen if I was ever caught.
If I was gone, I didn’t want her to be alone.
I would want someone else to protect her, love her—
Who the fuck am I kidding?
The thought of her with anyone else? Even if I was alive or dead?
It made me rage.
It made me roar.
It made me pound and pound and pound into her, fisting her hair, rutting into her like a savage, ensuring she burned like I burned and craved like I craved.
“This is what you get,” I panted into her ear as tingles and painful sparks of an impending release ricocheted down my spine. “This is what you leashed, Neri, the day you found me.”
Her fingernails shredded my back as I lost any resemblance of being a man.
She turned as wild as me. As out of control and manic.
She grunted as I fucked her.
Over and over, her cries turning louder, the harder and faster I took her.
Her cries turned to mewls as she stiffened beneath me. Her toes curled. Her head arched. And when she screamed, I silenced her with the deepest kiss, the most controlling tongue.
I gagged her all while a barbaric snarl escaped me as her body rippled around mine with an electrifying release.
She fisted me.
Milked me.
And I didn’t stand a fucking chance.
I went with her.
I chased her.
I mounted and rutted and spilled every piece of my body and soul inside her.
My sensitive skin quaked. My heightened awareness shattered.
She was my first and my fucking only.
The sharpest release of my life tore down my spine, spurted up my cock, and made me jerk and shudder within her.
I suffocated my groans with another kiss, forcing her to lick up my desire.
Impulses to keep driving into her ensured I fed her every drop.
Instinct to keep marking her as mine made our ending almost as violent as our beginning.
I didn’t want to stop.
I couldn’t stop.
I’d let myself go, and it took a monumental effort to gather the parts of me that needed to be caged and swallow them back down where they belonged.
It took a while.
An eternity before my hips finally settled, sated and content in the knowledge that she was well and truly mastered.
She was mine in every way that mattered.
That knowledge was enough to control my raging heartbeat and soften my violent nature.
We clung to each other.
We breathed in each other.
And as the dregs of my humanity returned, horror rippled down my spine for what I’d done. “Shit...Nerida.” Pushing up to my elbows, I untangled my fingers from her sun-drying hair. I went to withdraw. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t you dare apologise.” She smiled with swollen lips, and grabbed my ass, preventing me from disengaging. With a groan, she stretched beneath me like a well petted cat, our bodies slicking and sticking to each other. My cock pulsed deep inside her, reacting to the way she preened, already thirsty for another taste.
I stiffened as her spine popped and her face flared with discomfort, but nothing could hide the gleam of satisfaction or the smug satedness in her eyes. “So...that’s what happens when I steal the heart of a guy like you, huh?”
Part of me was ashamed.
I never wanted to be so hard with her, so desperate or cruel.
But the way she choked on a smile and her gaze glowed with love helped ease the shame rapidly crawling up my throat. “You did want to get to know me better...” I smirked, my cock twitching inside her. “Now, you do.”
She licked her lips. “Unfortunately for you, it’s made me want to know everything. Every part you’ve hidden from me. Every piece of you that you pretend doesn’t exist. I know you loved your father. The one who gave you a love for numbers and sweetness, but...you’re not just that son. You’re another’s too. An heir to someone powerful and cutthroat and frankly, a man who sounds like a monster—”
“That’s why I will never embrace that side of myself.”
“But don’t you see? You’re not just him. You’re better than him. You’re more than him. You will never be him because you’re already your own person. I’m not afraid of you, Aslan. I will never be afraid of you because that side of you protects me, even while ravaging me—”
“Ravaging you?” I snorted, letting words I didn’t want to acknowledge linger between us. “Is that what I did?”
“Pretty sure you went all lion on me.”
I laughed under my breath. “I’m well aware of the books you read on your e-reader, Neri. You’re not so innocent in all of this.”