Note to self: Do not fail.
I awoke with my heart racing and covered in sweat. If I hadn’t been pinned under a sweltering half-demon, I would have bolted straight up, but my body did jerk, and my eyes jolted open. It felt like an inferno in Chase’s room. Probably didn’t help that he was tangled around me and his temperature ran like a thousand degrees hotter than mine. It was like being swaddled by the sun.
“You okay?” he mumbled in a voice heavy with sleep. It was sexy and gruff.
I immediately turned into him, and he was ready for me with an arm already open. Wrapped around each other, I took a few long breaths, calmed by the scent of him. “It was nothing. Just another nightmare.” It was getting to the point where I was having a hard time discerning between the living and the dreaming nightmares. They both sucked serious poo.
“Was it him?”
Lying wasn’t an option, and even if it were, I still would have told him the truth. “Yeah.”
A heartbeat passed. “Let me help get your mind off it,” he murmured, slipping a hand under my oversized shirt.
Finally, he had an idea we both could agree on.
As his lips pressed to mine, a soft, warm sigh escaped my mouth. I needed this, needed him. My eyes fluttered closed, and a shudder rolled through me, stealing my air. The touch of his lips moving over mine, rearranged my insides. His fingers curled at the small of my back, gripping a fistful of cotton material.
He made me forgot more than just my bad dream. Those lips of his caressed mine, tantalizing, taking me to both Heaven and Hell. A place where there was no room for anything else except him and me. I could gladly stay here for the rest of time and forget about all the crapola that waited for me in the real world.
Just barely pulling away, my chest rose and fell rapidly as I looked down into his dark and dangerously sexy face. His lids were half closed, framed by the longest lashes known to man. Eyes aglow peeked at me. A single strand of hair fell over his face, and my chest swelled with desperate emotion and longing. I slid my hand over the sharp plane of his cheek. “I love you,” I vowed, our lips brushing as I spoke.
“I know.” He gave me a lopsided grin and placed a hand over my heart. “I can feel it shouting from you.”
Before I spat off some famous smartass comeback, he was kissing me again. I felt it all the way to the depth of my soul—our soul.
With speed that had my senses spinning, I was flat on my back and my I’d rather be gaming oversized shirt…was gone. If I hadn’t been so caught up in the feelings he enticed, I might have been awestruck, but I’d never admit it. His hands traced up my arms in feather-light touches as he kept his gleaming gaze centered on mine. Sparks were shooting off my skin. When he reached my open palms, he interlocked our fingers.
This time when he kissed me, it was fierce, long, and hard, imprinting me with his signature, not that I could be any more his. It didn’t stop me from putting everything I had, everything I felt, everything I wanted into this kiss. I wanted him to feel, to know indubitably how deep my love ran for him.
My body arched up into his, wiggling impatiently. He groaned into my mouth, swallowed by our kiss. Dragging his lips from mine, his eyes flashed, a blending of both Chase and his demon. It made my blood simmer. I drew in a ragged breath of air tasting of Chase. He stared down at my face, looking at me in wonder and awe.
I didn’t need to see his expression to know what was going through his head. His emotions were inside me. When we were connected like this, all barriers collapsed and our feelings merged together. Especially when they mirrored one another as they did now.
“Don’t think of mentioning my eyes,” I warned in a raspy voice, filtering my hands into his hair. I knew that my eyes must be lustrous like blue flames. They seemed to feed off strong emotions, and for me it didn’t get much stronger than being intimate with Chase, being lavished by his touch.
With half grin, he said. “They’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.”
Tingles danced down my spine and radiated at my hip. Then his head dipped and we were no longer two beings, just one. Joined by love, passion, and a supernatural bond. He took my body on a rollercoaster of feelings, higher, soaring to the Heavens before tumbling me over the edge.
I fell asleep bone-tired, sedated, and in an idyllic harmony with the lug beside me. Our hearts beat together. The deep, even breaths of sleep were in rhythmic time. Never had two beings been so in tune to each other as Chase and I were.
Chapter 26