Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 33333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 167(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 167(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
Either way, I’m done pretending.
I reach her. She lifts her chin like she always does when she’s about to smart off. My hand is on her before she can speak—fingers wrapping around the back of her neck, thumb sliding against her pulse. Christ. She’s warm. Too warm. I’ve been cold for five straight years and she walks in here and sets me on fire like it’s easy.
Her lips part. I feel her breath. Vanilla. Sugar. Temptation.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” I rasp.
“Pretty sure I do,” she whispers back.
“No,” I growl. “You’re poking something with teeth.”
Her fingers curl into my shirt. “Bite, then.”
Fuck.
She has no idea what she just asked for.
“You really want to keep playing with me?” I ask, my voice low, dangerous. “Because I won’t stop this time. You start something tonight—you better be damn sure you want to finish it.”
Her eyes flick over my face, searching. Testing. Then she nods—slow. Deliberate. Brave.
And that’s it.
I snap.
I crush my mouth to hers.
Not gentle. Not sweet. Not polite.
A collision.
Her gasp opens her up to me and my tongue slides against hers—hungry, claiming. She tastes like candy and chaos and the first real thing I’ve felt in years. She moans into my mouth, and I swear I feel it in my bones.
My hand fists in her hair, tilting her head back so I can go deeper. She moves with me—wild, greedy, kissing me back like she’s been starving too. Her nails rake down my chest through my shirt and I growl into her mouth, pushing her back until her spine hits the log wall.
“Thorne—” she breathes.
I’m already there, pinning her with my body, rocking her hips against mine just enough to feel the sweet little sound she makes when she realizes exactly how wrecked I am over her.
“Feel that?” I grind harder. “That’s what you did.”
Her lips are swollen, breath uneven. “Good.”
My forehead drops to hers. “You drive me insane.”
“Get in line.”
I laugh—dark, breathless. I haven’t laughed during a kiss in a long time, maybe ever. She ruins me and I don’t care.
“You sure you want this?” I ask, forcing myself to pause, needing—needing—to give her a way out before there’s no going back.
She grabs my jaw. “Do I look unsure?”
Then she bites my bottom lip. Hard.
Jesus.
I slam my hand against the wall beside her head and kiss her again, deeper, filthier, my tongue coaxing hers into another hungry tangle. She rolls her body against mine, soft curves rubbing against my hard edges. I’m breathing like I just hauled a deer up a mountain.
I drag my mouth along her neck, stubble rasping over her skin as she shivers.
“Tell me to stop,” I grit against her pulse.
“Stop,” she whispers—
My body freezes.
She smirks. “See? I don’t always get what I want.”
I grab her hips and haul her up against me. “You think this is a game?”
“With you?” she breathes. “Everything is a game.”
My lips brush hers again. “Not this.”
Her eyes go soft. The exact second she lets me see it—her guard slipping, her walls cracking—I lose whatever patience I had left. I kiss her again and again, rough and adoring and starved.
Her hands slip under my shirt and when her palms drag over my skin, I break.
She owns me. Completely.
I grind against her heat through layers of clothing and she whimpers—a soft, sweet sound that punches straight through my ribs. My cock is heavy and throbbing, painfully ready, and every instinct I have wants to shove the skirt of her dress over her hips and bury myself in her until morning.
But not like this. Not rushed. Not sloppy. Not when this woman turned my entire world upside down and made me want again—want more.
I tear my mouth from hers and force my breathing under control because fuck—this is too close to losing it.
Her pupils are blown wide. Lips wet. Breasts rising and falling above the leather corset fast. She looks kissed stupid and I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.
“We stop now,” I manage, voice wrecked.
She blinks. “What?”
“We stop here. This doesn’t happen halfway. When I finally get inside you, there won’t be a goddamn doubt in your mind what it means.”
She swallows. “And what does it mean?”
I hold her jaw, thumb brushing her red-stained mouth.
“It means you’re mine.”
Her breath shivers out—and she nods once.
Then again.
Fierce. Certain.
I kiss her one last time, slow and deep, before I set her back on her feet.
“Go to bed,” I tell her.
Her glare is lethal. “I hate you.”
“You don’t,” I murmur.
She turns away, breathless. “I do.”
I steal one more glance before the lantern light takes her up to the loft like a dream.
Every nerve in my body screams at me to follow her.
But I don’t. For now.
Chapter 11
Aspen
The storm picks up again, hammering Devil’s Peak like it wants inside—wind slashing, snow screaming against the windows—but it’s nothing compared to the storm building between us.