Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
I stop her with a kiss.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whisper, forehead to hers. “We don’t have to rush. I want every piece of you. But I want you to feel safe even more.”
She blinks. Her eyes shine.
“I feel safest with you.”
I lay her back, curling beside her on the couch, our bare chests pressed together. Her thigh slides between mine, her hand on my jaw, pulling me in for another kiss.
It’s not sex. Not yet.
It’s something deeper. More molten.
It’s two people clinging to each other at the edge of chaos, choosing to burn together rather than let go.
We kiss until our bodies ache and our breathing slows, until we’re wrapped around each other in silence, her hand in my hair and my heart in her pocket.
And for once, I’m not thinking about Regent. About Tasha. About the war we’re fighting.
I’m just here.
With her.
TWENTY-SEVEN
RIVER
We don’t move for a while—just kiss like the world can’t find us on this couch.
Gage tastes like the peppermint tea we forgot to finish and the kind of relief that makes my knees weak. His mouth is warm, sure, patient when I slow, greedy when I pull him closer. I thread my fingers into his hair and he sighs into my mouth, that wrecked sound I’ve already become addicted to.
“I’m here,” he murmurs, lips brushing mine. “Say stop if you want to.”
“I don’t,” I breathe.
His palm skims my side, under my shirt, fingers spreading like he’s learning the topography of me by touch alone. Heat pools low. I press closer and the world tilts, and fall off the couch, landing sideways, half-tangled in the throw blanket, my leg over his hip, his hand curving around the back of my thigh to keep me where he wants me.
“River,” he says like a promise.
“Say it again,” I whisper, because the way my name sounds in his mouth turns everything else down to static.
“River.”
I kiss him harder. The knot of fear that’s been living in my body for weeks loosens under his hands. He kisses like he’s thanking me for breathing. I slide my palms up his chest, over warm skin, the steady drum of his heart. He’s solid. He’s real. He’s mine—if only for tonight—and the thought makes my throat go tight.
“Can I?” he asks, thumb just beneath the edge of my shirt.
“Yes.” It comes out too fast, too needy. I don’t care.
He peels it off in one smooth motion, eyes never leaving my face. He looks like I’m a sunrise he doesn’t deserve. I want to tease him for it, but instead I let him look. It feels… good, being seen by someone who doesn’t want to break me.
“You’re beautiful,” he says simply.
My laugh wobbles. “Hypothesis confirmed: you’re trouble.”
“Absolutely.” He dips to kiss my shoulder, slow, reverent. “And yours.”
The words burn through me like good whiskey. I hook my fingers in the collar of his shirt. “Off.”
He grins into my mouth and obeys, the cotton dragging over muscle and heat and then there’s nothing between us but skin and the kind of electricity that redlines every nerve I own. I wrap both arms around him and he groans, low in his chest, like he’s been starving and just remembered how to eat.
We find a rhythm—mouth, breath, a slow grind that makes the room blur. His stubble scrapes my jaw in a way that will leave tomorrow written on my skin. He maps my collarbone with his lips, and I arch without thinking and his hand tightens on my hip, anchoring me to the couch and to him.
“Tell me what you need,” he says against my throat.
“You,” I say, shameless. “Just—don’t go slow to be polite.”
He laughs lightly. “You’re a bit bossy, you know that?”
“I learned from the best,” I say, and when I roll my hips he curses softly, like a prayer. I swallow the sound with another kiss.
He’s careful even when he’s desperate. He checks in without making it a speech. Like his fingertips pausing to ask, the tilt of his mouth waiting for mine to answer. When I nod, he moves. When I shiver, he learns. Every time I clutch at him, he gives me more.
I drag him closer, thigh hitching higher over his waist. The blanket slides off. The air feels cool on my back, because his body is a furnace everywhere else. He braces one forearm beside my head and the other hand splays at my waist, possessive and gentle and exactly what I didn’t know I craved.
“I’ve wanted this for so long,” he admits, voice rough. “Wanted you. Not just the idea of you—you.”
“Same,” I confess before I can be brave about it. “I kept pretending I wanted a ghost. Turns out I want the man.”
His mouth curves against my pulse. “Good. I’m tired of being a ghost.”
I tip his face up and kiss him like an answer. We move back to the couch. The whisper of our breathing fills the room. I taste salt where I bit his lower lip, and he hums like he likes it and the sound goes straight through me.