Sterling (Carolina Reapers 6)

But it didn’t come.

I felt it, like a phantom sensation, just skating beneath the surface of the new strength I’d mastered, but it wasn’t enough to crush me.

The knowledge alone filled me with an almost intoxicating sensation. Or that could be the way Jansen was looking at me, all fire in his eyes mixing with pride. “There should be a concealed scroll that will lead us to the next clue. We just have to find it.”

I nodded, dropping his hands and crossing the room. On my own two feet. Without my island. I made it to the other side of the room where a crate with four different clay jars sat. “A scroll could be in here,” I said, and Jansen’s eyes practically shined as he nodded and came to stand next to me.

“Definitely,” he said. We each grabbed a jar and started searching.

Thirty minutes and four clues later, we were stuck, and a cold sweat had crept onto the back of my neck. Nothing debilitating, but enough to make breathing more of a struggle.

“How are you doing?” he asked, smoothing his hand over my back as we took a break from searching for the makeshift key that would open the sarcophagus.

“I’m okay,” I said, blowing out a slow breath.

“We can go,” he said. “If you need to. The door is just a magnet. All we have to do is push the button, and we’re out.” He pointed toward the door, and I’m not going to lie, I thought about it. For just a split second.

But looking at him, the compassion in his eyes, the understanding…I knew without a shred of doubt that I didn’t want that out.

Not here.

Not with him.

Not ever.

“No,” I said, a rush of adrenaline spiking through my blood. His eyes widened as I smiled up at him, now breathless for an entirely different reason.

God, how had I ever hesitated to give this man my entire heart? To tell him the truth about how I felt about him?

I spanned the small distance between us, reaching up to gently clutch his neck. “I don’t want the out, Jansen,” I said, and he grinned down at me.

“Okay,” he said, his eyes curious.

“I don’t want the out…ever.”

He cocked a brow at me. “I’m having a hard time following, babe.”

I reached up, planting a soft, sensuous kiss on his lips. I drew back, shaking my head at my own absurdity. “If I have to be trapped in an elevator, a room, anywhere…I want it to be with you.”

He smoothed his knuckles over my cheek.

“I love you, Jansen.” The words rushed from me. Before, when he’d said it, I’d been terrified by what I felt for this man. I’d been swept up in a storm of emotion and hadn’t been able to say the words back. And there was something to be said about saying them on my own. Without it being an expected obligation.

His eyes guttered as he stilled before me. His gaze fell to my mouth, and he grazed his thumb over my bottom lip. “Say that again,” he said, his voice pure gravel.

A warm shudder made my body tremble. “I love you,” I said, barely getting the words out before he crushed his mouth on mine. “I love you,” I repeated, sighing the words against his kiss.

Heat pooled between my thighs, the hunger I had for him intensifying to almost painful levels. He jerked his head back, sucking in a breath. “You want to finish this?”

“I can finish this,” I said with absolute confidence.

He smirked, his eyes churning with primal need. “Do you want to?”

I shook my head. “I want you.”

He glanced behind us, toward the door, as if he were seriously contemplating fucking me on the first available surface—which was a fake sarcophagus.

I laughed, smacking his perfect ass. “Take me home, caveman.”

He growled, showing just the primal male I’d accused him of being.

We were in his home within twenty minutes.

And we didn’t make it two steps in the house before I damn near climbed him like a tree.

We left a trail of clothes in our wake, our mouths crashing together as if those three little words had unleashed something starved within us.

“Fuck, you’re already drenched for me,” Jansen groaned as he stroked his fingers through my slit. I rocked against his hand, digging my nails into the muscles of his shoulders. He hissed, moving his hands to my hips and hauling me up until I locked my ankles around his back.

He took me to the wall, the first available space, and made no preambles of the torture he normally liked to dole out.

No, he plunged inside me with one, sharp stroke that had me throwing my head back. Again and again, he thrust inside me, hitting every deep, aching spot with delicious precision. I clung to him, being able to do nothing but hold on to him as he fucked me against the wall. My mind reeled as my body tangled into a million burning, aching knots.