Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
He began to kiss along my jaw, rumbling as he licked across the sensitive flesh. “Every. Fucking. Inch.”
Arousal rushed, pulsing through my body and trembling my thighs.
“So needy,” he said as he continued down the column of my neck, his lips raving across my collarbone and down to the exposed skin on my chest. “Can scent you, Emery. I know that you’re soaked. Dripping for me.”
I squirmed as he let his mouth wander along the neckline of my tee then lower over my shirt.
I gasped when he pulled my nipple between his teeth, and my shoulders arched from the bed.
There was far too much fabric separating us, but maybe it was exactly what he intended, because there wasn’t an ounce of pain in the bare sting. It was only enough to send a bolt of desire streaking to my center.
My hands fisted in his hair. “Kane. Don’t play with me. I need—”
“Going to give it to you. All of it.” He lifted his head, and my belly tumbled at what was engraved in his features.
His own vulnerability seeping through.
“All of me,” he murmured in that scratchy, rough voice.
I should reject it, but I couldn’t.
Not anymore.
That was probably what should have scared me the most, but instead, I was stretching out a shaky hand, touching the defined angles of his unforgettable face as I whispered, “All of me.”
Emerald eyes flashed, and he edged back and lifted onto his knees.
He looked so imposing there.
Glorious and awestriking as he reached for the hem of his tee and slowly peeled it over his head.
My mouth went dry, throat squeezing at the sight.
All that golden, inked flesh on display, the dueling demons on either pec twitching over the packed, hard muscle that bowed and flexed.
Chest wide and abdomen trim, his hip bones jutting out over the waistline of his jeans.
I gulped, and the words I released were shallow and thin. “You’re so beautiful, Kane. This terrifying beauty that captured me the first time I saw you. There was something that first time…something inside me that the sight of you unlocked.”
“Was never a believer in fate or any of that bullshit. Not until I met you,” he mumbled.
Maybe it’d been the same for both of us.
That instant when our spirits had met.
Because what I’d felt for him had been impossible.
And now I was sure it was unescapable.
“You brought me back to life.” Once the confessions had started, I couldn’t stop them from tumbling free. “I was dead inside. Numb. And then there was you, and suddenly everything I’d been terrified to feel was there. Alive and real and so powerful there was no chance I could ignore it.”
It didn’t matter if it was wrong. Didn’t matter if I was wracked with guilt by admitting it.
It was true, and I wanted him to know.
Old grief crawled through his expression. “Lost my heart the day I lost my mother. I believed it gone forever. That I’d live my life for the only things I could. The temporary. The superficial. That I’d give to my crew what I could, but it wouldn’t count all that much because I didn’t have the capacity to really feel it.”
There was a mystery woven within his confession. Something right there. All these threads sticking out around him. Like the only thing I had to do was pull the end of one to unravel and expose what was patched underneath.
Reverence filled his voice. “She taught me to love, Emery. To love and to cherish that love with everything I had. But I thought it died with her.”
I could almost see the dead, wilting rose tattooed on the back of his hand coming back to life.
“Then there was you,” he whispered.
My heart flailed. An erratic bid to meet with his. To accept what he was saying. To hold it and cherish it, too.
I wanted to say it.
And maybe he knew it.
Maybe he knew he would taste it on my tongue because he dipped down and took my mouth with his.
This time, he kissed me slowly and deliberately.
Fully and completely.
He kissed me and kissed me until my pulse was racing wild and my spirit was screaming with desperation and my body was writhing with need.
My hands wandered, eager to touch him everywhere. Gliding down his sides and over his shoulders and across the muscled expanse of his undulating back.
All while his seared and gripped and caressed.
Over my breasts. My hips. My waist. My belly.
“You,” he murmured at my mouth.
I swore he poured that single word directly into my soul.
Find me in the darkness, bring me to the light.
Is that what he was doing? Did he have the power to end this pain?
He edged back onto his knees, this time pulling me up to sitting so he could peel my shirt up and over my head. Cool air brushed my overheated skin, and I trembled with it.