Total pages in book: 34
Estimated words: 34243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 171(@200wpm)___ 137(@250wpm)___ 114(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 171(@200wpm)___ 137(@250wpm)___ 114(@300wpm)
A whimper escapes me, and the sound is mortifying. It makes me want to crawl under the floorboards if I could, but with Arkane holding me up, one arm around my waist, the other hand cradling the back of my head, there’s just no way to escape him, and I don’t even know how we get from the wall to the bed. I don’t know anything about the in-between. All I know is that one moment he’s at the wall with me, and the next moment I’m on my back on the mattress, and he’s above me, and my clothes are slowly fading away.
This is the part where you should push him away, Ti.
So push him away!
Push! Him! Away!
But it’s like I can’t even hear my own thoughts. Or maybe it’s more like my body has completely disconnected with my mind, and it’s my heart in charge now, and I can’t even make myself feel embarrassed.
All I know is that the way Arkane is looking at me now, the way I’m completely exposed to his gaze, the way he can see all of me—
I can’t even make my hands move to cover myself.
It’s as if I feel that I’ve always been his, that I was meant to be his, and so when his mouth finds me again—
Everything in me simply surrenders as his lips brush against my collarbone before slowly moving lower.
And lower.
And lower.
Until his lips gently close over the tips of my breasts, and the pleasure is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, nothing like I can ever imagine—
"Arkane."
I don’t even know why I’m crying his name out. All I know is that his name has become synonymous to a plea. A claim. And when he responds with a growl, the sound rough and masterful in a way that makes my entire body shiver—
His hands have also started moving at the same time, settling over me, covering me fully, the ache in my body sharpens into something I have no word for, and my body arches up off the mattress to meet him before I can stop it.
“Arkane.”
Whatever his mouth had just started, his hand is now finishing, and the two of them are working in a way I could not have imagined a man’s hands and mouth could work, and I have no thoughts left. None. Zero. My brain’s shut down, and all I have is sensation, and somewhere in the back of what used to be my mind I realize I’m making sounds I would be absolutely embarrassed to remember later.
His free hand slides up under what’s left of my nightshirt, along the bare skin of my stomach, and even that, even the simple warmth of his hand on my skin feels like too much.
Everything he does, everything he makes me feel—it’s all too, too much, and all I can do is arch into him, chasing him, wanting more of something I can’t name.
"Arkane—"
I say his name again, and this time it breaks.
"Please—”
I don’t even know what I’m asking for. I don’t know what I’m begging him for. I just know that this ache inside me has grown and grown, and something has to happen, something has to give, or I’m going to come apart—
Aaaah.
He does something, his mouth and hands still working in tandem, something that makes him feel more like a conqueror and a patient lover all at once—
It just makes the ache in me build and build and build—
“Tiara.”
And the hoarseness of his voice, I’ve never heard him speak so hoarsely—
“Look at me.”
I don’t want to. I can’t. I’m too close, too exposed, too—
“Look at me, Tiara.”
And because he says my name like that, I do.
His eyes are dark on mine, and they’re asking me something, and I don’t know what he’s asking, but I give it to him anyway, because I don’t know how not to.
Whatever it was, he sees it.
And that’s when he takes me over.
His hand doesn’t stop, his mouth doesn’t stop, his eyes don’t leave mine, and I can feel him watching me come apart, and something in me breaks open, and I hear myself make a sound that is nothing like me and everything like me at the same time.
I shatter.
That’s the only word for it. I shatter under him, with him, and as the wave washes through me I feel tears on my face, actual tears, and I don’t know where they came from or why they’re here, and I can’t stop them.
Oh no.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
If only he had just taken my virginity.
If only.
Because that I could have survived.
But instead it’s so much worse.
He hasn’t taken my virginity.
He’s taken my heart.
And when he says my name—
“Tiara.”
He says it in a way no one’s ever said my name before, and maybe no one ever will, and the sound of it...