Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 53212 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 266(@200wpm)___ 213(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53212 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 266(@200wpm)___ 213(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
“And if we don’t?” she asks earnestly.
“We’d feel this anyway.” I reach out to run my fingers through the silky locks of her pretty hair. “Every day. Every second. The pull would just get stronger. And we’d just be fighting against it until the day we die.”
“I already feel bound to you,” she whispers. “Like I’ll die if you leave this room.”
Fuck. Me too.
“Option number one sounds like a whole lot more fun,” she adds softly.
A dark laugh rumbles out of me. “Yeah,” I agree. “Fucking tell me about it.”
“Rook…” She holds my gaze with her own and puts a palm to my cheek until the whole room around us feels like it melts away. “I need you. I want you. Take me.”
“Say it again,” I demand because, fuck, I feel like I’ve been waiting ten lifetimes for this.
“Make love to me, Rook.”
At her words, I know I’ve never felt anything lock into place like this.
Never felt anything that has ever compared.
I don’t step away. I don’t pause. I react. I give in to my throbbing need for her.
I walk her backward until the backs of her knees hit the mattress, and she falls back into the sheets with a gasp escaping her lungs. Her brown hair fans across the pillow, and her gaze holds mine with laser focus.
I follow her down, bracing my weight so I don’t crush her, even though every instinct inside me wants to take and claim and devour.
And the entire time, her blue eyes are locked on mine.
“Still time to run,” I murmur.
She lifts her chin, shaking her head as she reaches out her hands to grasp my shoulders. “Not happening.”
That’s all I need.
My mouth finds hers, but no matter how gentle I’m trying to be, I know it’s not gentle at all. It’s not patient or tentative. It’s intense, it’s deep, it’s claiming.
She makes needy sounds that feed my desires even more, and I move my lips to her neck, smelling the heady scent of the blood racing through her veins and pressing my lips against the frantic rhythm there. Her heartbeat stutters against my tongue when I lick at the pulsing skin.
Fuck me. Her blood. It’s my fucking drug. It’s my own personal siren’s call, and every cell inside my body wants to sink my teeth into the delicate skin of her neck.
But I don’t. I won’t. Not unless she wants me to. Her safety, her comfort, her well-being trump any desires I have.
She’s not just mine to claim. She’s mine to keep. To protect.
Mine, mine, mine. All mine.
In this moment, there’s no internal noise over Holland Thorne or the gofers and their plans, or the elites and their claim over Kylie and the other two of the three bloodlines. All of that is outside, with Kane and Cal as they trail and recon.
There’s no world outside this room.
Only this. Only her.
And I can see the beauty in it now—this twisted, powerful thing I’ve been fighting since turning twenty-eight—and the significance in the perfection of it all.
To be fated—destined—is a feeling like no other in this universe. A gift.
Not a curse like I previously thought at all.
“You’re so beautiful,” I tell her, meaning it in ways language can’t contain. “There will never be a more beautiful thing to me. Nothing in this world will ever compare to you.”
Her lips part, and my mouth moves to the thrum in her neck again. But this time, I just rest it there, memorizing the beat and the rhythm of the life that flows inside her.
And begging the universe to keep it that way until the world is no more.
I draw a path of kisses from her neck to her chin, and I don’t stop until I fuse our lips together again. Light and aura dance through the darkness behind my eyes, and waves of indescribable warmth roll through my chest.
I drag my mouth from her throat to her chin and back to her lips, and when I kiss her this time, it isn’t exploratory. It’s raw and primal. She pulls at my shirt like she’s trying to climb inside my skin, and when her fingers can’t move fast enough, frustration flashes across her face.
With swift motions, I tear through the fabric of her robe and her panties.
She gasps, but it’s not in protest. It’s in hunger.
“Rook,” she breathes, and the desperate, downright needy way she says my name makes something feral break open inside me.
I strip myself bare without breaking eye contact. The entire time, her gaze rakes over my body—my shoulders, my arms, my stomach, my cock.
And then, she opens her legs. For me.
Her gaze deliberately locked with mine the whole time.
Kylie’s bare, pink, perfect pussy is right there, spread wide for my eyes—for my cock—and I can smell her arousal. I can hear the throb of her sensitive flesh.