Another hitch of my breath as his finger sweeps across my wet flesh, the tender tease zapping me with a ravenous bolt of pleasure.
“Cut me if you want me to stop,” he rasps, his thumb sliding across my cheekbone. “I’ll gladly bleed beneath you, so don’t be shy.”
“Touch me,” I groan, my voice shrill with a neediness I don’t recognize.
Not in myself.
His fingers skim my stretched expanse, feathering around my flushed, swollen slit.
My mind muddies—empties—another deep, heady groan pouring up my throat.
He makes a gravelly sound as he traces a path around me, slow, steady circles that wind me up and unravel me in the same luscious motion. His other hand drops from my face and weaves beneath my stolen shirt, palming my aching breast, tweaking my nipple, sending zings of electric pleasure through all my fine ligaments.
Fuck.
I let my head tip back, bottom lip tucked between my teeth.
Surrender to his ministrations.
“More,” I groan, and he pinches the sensitive peak. I gasp, my attention tuned to my breasts, then struck with a bolt of shock when he sinks two fingers into me.
I moan to the slashing sky as he pumps them deep, then stills.
Holds them there.
Another flick of my nipple, another zing of pleasure that pours into my throbbing core. “Take what you want, Moonbeam.”
The words till something inside me, my mind drifting somewhere bright and breezy.
A dream, maybe.
Somewhere that smells like salt, spices, and sweet, succulent flowers. A place where the only thing that matters is … this.
Us.
I snap from the luminous tendril of thought woven up from beneath my icy lake.
Desperate to scrub that beautiful, impossible feeling of rightness from my chest, I chase the pulse of rapture between my spread thighs. A heady, primal distraction that I can make sense of.
“I need you,” I groan, tossing the scale aside, hearing it clatter across the ground. “Now.”
“You fucking have me.”
“No, I need you,” I growl, trying to tip us sideways.
Seeming to catch on, he makes this throaty sound, and in one swift, powerful motion, he flips us, making my breath catch.
He shoves my pants down and tosses them aside, my legs now splayed beneath him. Flushed core bared, aching and ready to take his thick, hard length now resting against the inside of my naked thigh.
I’m just about to reach down and grab him—to guide him toward my throbbing entrance—when I catch him looking at me with the intensity of a chapped wasteland desperate for even a drop of rain. The sort of look that consumes. That clutches heartstrings and braids them together for eternity … forever bonded.
Can’t he see that my heartstrings are stubby and frayed?
He grips my leg with one of his calloused hands, right up by my knee. Widening me. The other comes up and cups the side of my face with captivating tenderness, his thumb dragging back and forth across my parted lips.
My pulse slows …
Stills.
He’s so beautiful, poured over me like molten lava. So, so fucking beautiful that it’s tempting to let him fall into the illusion I think he’s woven over me.
Over us.
To take him into my body and give him a little bit of what he’s so obviously seeking in my eyes.
“Are you sure you want this, Moonbeam?”
The deep, gravelly words are coarse and sharp … yet somehow not. Somehow, they’re the softest words I’ve ever heard.
Cut me if you want me to stop …
Take what you want …
Are you sure you want this, Moonbeam?
Creators.
He’s definitely not the monster I thought he was.
“Certain,” I rasp, tilting my hips to offer him better access. “I want you in me, Kaan Vaegor.”
He groans, lids lowering as he looks at me with another tender crush of intensity that overrides that ache between my legs. Makes the one in my chest flare with renewed vigor, and I’m suddenly sure a hand just plunged down my throat, punched through the side of my esophagus, and gripped my stony heart.
He fists himself, lining up with me as I say, “But first you have to stop looking at me like it means something.”
He flinches, as if struck with the metal tip of a barbed whip. “You want a meaningless release?”
I nod, jerking my hips.
“Right.” Another flash of lightning, and I see his eyes have shuttered black. “Well … you won’t find that here, Prisoner Seventy-Three.”
His voice is monotone.
Detached.
Severed from … whatever this is.
He eases back onto his knees, dropping my leg, leaving me open and exposed—his thick manhood standing strong and proud and ready, webbed in veins, a pearly bead of precum leaking from the tip.
He pushes his hair back from his face, lips pinched into a tight line while confusion wrestles beneath my ribs.
Is he … joking?
He’s ready, wanting. I’m here, asking for it. Why not just get it out of our systems so we can move on?
I blink, gaze lifting to his eyes, mine wide. “What are you—”
“Get up and go back to your sleep space. Get some rest. We have a long, nonstop ride when the storm clears.”
There’s such a chill in his tone that for a moment, I don’t breathe. Don’t move.
I open my mouth—
“Get. The. Fuck. Up.”
His words rumble through the room with such violence I’m certain I’m going to be crushed beneath them if I don’t move.
Fast.
I scramble off the seater and snatch my discarded pants, clutching them close to my chest as I edge back toward the stairs, maintaining our eye contact while my cheeks flame with a shame I don’t understand.
Don’t want to understand.
With a shake of my head, I spin and sprint up the staircase to the drum of the thunderous storm.
Islam the door behind myself and lean against it, lungs heaving, heart galloping. Still flushed and wanting between my trembling legs.
What the flying fuck was that?
I toss my hair back off my face, groaning at the smell of him now staining my fingertips. Like he seeped through my pores and melded with me, creating an aroma that’s so carnally us.
And it smells good. So damn good that part of me wants to dash back down those stairs right now and apologize. Let him fuck me like it means something. Let him beneath my skin.
The stupid part.
A flash of lightning ignites the room, and my stare narrows on the illuminated window being lashed at by the storm, head tipping to the side as a roll of thunder rattles the pane …
I’m small enough to fit through that.
Just.
Actually … this side of the dwelling supports a trellis perfectly convenient for me to use as a ladder!
Thank you, little crooked home.
I smile and shove off the door, crossing the room as I step into my short pants and cinch them at the waist, tucking my shirt in so there’s less of me to catch a snag. I may not be able to bring myself to kill Kaan Vaegor, but I still need to get away.
Far, far away, before any more damage is done.
I climb onto the raised pallet, then onto the side table. Reaching the window, I glance over my shoulder at the door before I pry open the latch and push the pane wide. The storm is drumming the roof like a thousand flat hands—a booming diversion for what little sound manages to squeeze from the window’s hinges.
Threading my arm through the hole, I grip the trellis and haul myself out into the deluge, feet tingling with a flush of paranoia. I don’t have time to dwell on the strange sensation of heavy raindrops pelting my skin as I wiggle free of the sleep space.
Get out—get out—get out—
I grip the knobbly trellis, trying to avoid the lush, fruit-laden foliage as I clamber down, drenched by the time I drop onto the sodden soil that squelches between my toes. A small zap of victory pulses through my veins, and I sprint for the jungle path, my heart pounding in rhythm with the angry storm.
I’m out. I’m free.
Now to put some distance between us.