That was it.
His aura gasoline.
My confession a match.
We struck.
Our mouths and bodies collided in a frenzy of greed.
Hands ripping and touching and raking. Impassioned kisses of warring teeth and lips and tongues.
We bit and licked and stroked in a desperate play to consume.
The rhythm of our hearts an erratic thunder that rumbled in the air and rippled across our skin. We spun and spun as we fought to get closer, me fumbling to get the shirt over his head, my palms pressing flat over the hot planes of his magnificent body.
His cut abs shook and flexed beneath my touch, his hands diving under the fabric of my sweatshirt, dragging it up as he trailed his hands up my back. The man’s fingers reached all the way around to run up my sides as he pulled the sweatshirt over my head.
My chest heaved, chills streaking as my bare flesh was hit with the cool air that pumped through the vents. My nipples puckered, and my small breasts ached for his touch, this unending need gushing through my body, wringing me in a fist of lust.
His touch chased away the chill, his mouth following suit, crazed as his lips ran the line of my shoulder, caressing down across my collarbone as he cupped my breasts in his hands. “Shit . . . fuck . . . Emily. You are perfect. You are perfect.”
We were spinning, frantic. The two of us banged into the dresser as we moved deeper into my room, lost to this delirious dance.
I peppered a million kisses across his chest, across the tattoo that shattered a piece of my heart.
Love is the heart’s greatest deceit.
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” I murmured across the inked flesh. Like I could heal whatever wound had written it there. I prayed he’d understand that piece that broke off belonged to him. That I was giving it to him. An offering to make him whole if he would let me.
And if those words were true, then I wanted to be his only lie.
He groaned, twisting a hand up in my hair, palming my bottom and tucking me against the rock-hard length begging from his pants as he kissed me mad.
Dizziness swept through my mind, desire so fierce it was blinding. My eyes only accustomed to him.
That face and this body and his mesmerizing soul. He backed me toward the bed. His fingers found the elastic band of my shorts, and he shoved them down as we went. I twisted them off my ankles, whimpering with need when he tossed me onto the bed.
Totally naked.
Bare.
Exposed in a way that I’d never been.
I pushed up onto my hands, heart screaming at my chest, as if it were trying to break out and find a way to get back closer to him.
“Look at you,” he murmured, so rough, I felt it scrape across my flesh.
Chills spiraled down my spine, getting lost with the need shimmering on my skin.
“First time I saw you, you knocked the breath out of me, Emily Ramsey. Prettiest thing I’d ever seen. But it was this I felt.”
He climbed onto the bed, splaying one of those big hands over the thunder banging in my chest.
Everything heaved, my breath and my soul.
“I felt you, too.”
Something staked through his expression, grief and guilt, more of that shadowy darkness that howled with his harsh, raw beauty. I wanted to traipse into the savagery of it.
I pressed his hand closer, refusing to let him go. “Something has always been missing inside of me, Royce. Something I didn’t understand. It was you. It was you.”
A space carved out in the middle of me that hummed like a song. A plea that whispered to be filled.
“I didn’t think I’d ever feel again. Wasn’t supposed to. You changed everything.” His words were coarse. Gravel. As rugged as his muscles that flexed and bowed, the man so big where he hovered over me.
“That’s what fallin’ does, Royce. It changes everything. Because when you fall, you don’t know where you’re going to land. This . . . this was where I wanted to be. To fall and land in the safety of your arms.”
A growl reverberated up his throat, and he was raining a frenzy of kisses down my throat.
A downpour of devotion.
“I won’t let anyone hurt you. Not ever again.”
He kept exploring my body with his mouth, kissing over the swell of my breast before he was pulling a nipple into his mouth. He lapped at the sensitive flesh with his tongue.
Flames shot through the middle of me, lighting up every cell. My hips bucked, seeking friction. “Please. Royce. I need you.”
I was starting to beg, little pleas filling my childhood room as he traveled down my quivering belly.
I lost my breath as he kissed over the scar on my hip, the mark Cory had left when he tried to violate me. I’d worn it like shame. But I knew better now. Knew I had to stand, that holding my tongue and burying my pain wasn’t going to help anyone.