She made my heart revoke me, forsake me, and bow to its new owner.
The air crackled with more than just flame-chewed firewood. It positively blazed with whatever magic had sprung between us, and I couldn’t stand there any longer as separate people.
I had to touch her.
To thank her.
To hide just how much she’d undone me.
Stepping into her, I cupped her cheeks with both palms. “You’re safe.”
She froze with a quick inhale.
Our eyes locked.
Our pulse raced.
“I promise.” I dropped my head and captured her mouth with mine.
She gasped as I kissed her softly.
She trembled in my hands as I groaned at her taste.
I kissed her softer still, turning my head, running my thumbs over her cheekbones, licking at the seam of her lips. “Let me make this right.”
For an awful moment, she kept her mouth pursed, denying me.
“Please...” I kissed her sweetly, feathering affection that made my entire body buckle for more, reining myself in from being cruel. “I need to do this. I need to show you how much you mean to me.”
She moaned and opened for me.
The dark parts of me rejoiced. I deepened the kiss, swift and savage.
Her spine arched as I clutched her close. She didn’t push me away, but she didn’t melt into me either. Her lack of participation and the fact that she hadn’t actively refused me made me worry she’d only agreed out of fear. That even now, even after what’d happened between us, she still expected me to lose myself and leave her at the mercy of my nightmares.
“You’re safe,” I breathed, pulling away, forcing myself to stop.
She blinked, belief and disbelief equal in her stare.
“I’m at your command, Gem.” It took all my willpower to stay slow and gentle. “You only have to tell me, and I’ll stop.” I bowed my head and kissed her again, light and tantalizing. “This time is different. I feel different. I’m different because of you. Thanks to you.” I sucked on her bottom lip. “I want to show you what it could be like between us when there’s no shit, no struggle. I want to know what we could be like. Just us.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
I’D LIVED THROUGH MANY things, yet this...this was the hardest.
I’d always been independent and not afraid of tackling things that scared other people, but right now? Having Kas treat me as if he would gladly plunge a knife into his heart if he so much as said a harsh word terrified me.
It terrified because I wanted so, so much to believe we’d turned a corner. That this was him acknowledging that we couldn’t keep going the way we had. The hating, the arguing, the explosions that always ended up with me hurt and him struggling to understand what he’d done wrong.
He was like a wolf cub, stumbling and growling, alone without a role model to show him the right path. He could be forgiven for his mistakes while slowly coming alive again. It was understandable for someone who’d turned his back on his own kind to fumble.
But what I couldn’t accept was how much this version of him made me feel.
Tonight had been one of the scariest of my life. I’d been taken by force, and ordinarily, any woman who’d lived through that was completely in her right to murder the perpetrator and run straight to the police.
But I couldn’t.
Not just because I was trapped by a chain, but because I’d been infected by insidious feelings that webbed like starlight between us. And it wasn’t just a web. It was deeper than that; it’d slipped beneath our skin and threaded around our hearts.
Our insides matched—I was sure of it.
Both riddled with star-strings, pulsing and glowing, tying us together with no way to get free.
Dammit.
All my life, I’d wanted to feel a tiny fraction of what I did for this messed-up man, and the fact that I could—even after what he’d done—scrambled me up until we were both as fucked up as the other.
“Gem.” He kissed me deeper, his tongue hunting mine. In that delicate moment, he wasn’t a stranger in a forgotten valley, and he wasn’t the beast who’d stolen everything from me. He was just a man—a man I was finding harder and harder to pretend wasn’t made for me.
Every instinct wanted to submit to him. To melt and kiss him back.
But if I did and he switched? If I allowed my guard to drop, only for it all to unravel because of his past, I didn’t think I could survive that.
I’d gotten this far by convincing myself that he didn’t mean anything to me. That I would still run when I had the chance. Yet now...
God, now?
I sucked in a breath as his kiss switched from demanding to soft again, giving me the choice to pull away.
Now, I no longer knew anything, and I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know him. I wanted to know every shadow and scar. I wanted him to talk to me, to purge, to share.