I paused at the hem of her shorts. My heart thundered, slipping into a primal rhythm that matched the roughness of my voice. The air swirled with uncaged desires so potent they threatened to consume us both.
Stella had stopped sketching altogether. Her pencil lay slack in her loosened grip, and she was still, so still, save for the frantic music of her pulse.
I heard it over the hot rush of blood in my veins. It was a siren’s song beckoning me to my doom, and it was so beautiful I might’ve succumbed even knowing it would lead me to hell.
“Christian…”
Every muscle tightened at the whisper of my name. It sounded so sweet coming from her mouth, like it was the sound of salvation instead of ruin.
She was the only person who’d ever said my name like that.
My hand curled around her thigh. Roughness dug into soft flesh before I released her and straightened, hating myself more with every second.
“Go to your room, Stella.” My harsh command shattered the raw intimacy of the moment. “And lock your door.”
A beat of hesitation. A ragged exhale.
Then a rustle of papers and a loss of warmth as she fled the room.
I waited until I heard her door close before I released my own leashed breath.
My steps pounded in rhythm with my heart as I walked to my bathroom, stripped off my clothes, and turned the shower as cold as it would go.
The icy blasts of water pummeled my skin but did nothing to quell the desire raging inside me and incinerating everything in its path until only visions of jade eyes and lush dark curls remained. The phantom scent of green florals swirled in the shower, as invisible yet tangible as the sensation of hot silk beneath my touch.
Stella had seared so deep into my consciousness that she was all I could smell. All I could feel. And, even when I closed my eyes, all I could see.
The need in my groin pulsed harder.
Goddammit.
I bit out a low curse before I caved and fisted my cock. It was hard and swollen and already dripping pre-cum, and my movements were rough, almost angry as I worked myself toward a much-needed release.
I could’ve kissed her. I could’ve fisted her hair and branded her with my mouth until I proved there was nothing fake about the dark fire that burned between us.
The only thing that’d held me back was a fine thread of self-control, woven from cold logic and the faintest shreds of my long-destroyed conscience.
I was well aware of the fact that, should either of us cave, I would be condemning not only myself but her to hell.
I would be touching her with bloodied hands and kissing her with a deceiver’s mouth. She would be climbing into bed with a monster, and she didn’t even know it.
Part of me wanted her so much I didn’t care; the other part was protective enough that I’d have her sent away to a place where even I couldn’t find her.
It was a paradox, as were all things in my life that related to her.
But if that thread had snapped…
I closed my eyes, my grip tight and my breath harshening.
She could be beneath me now, her nails clawing my back and my name a moan in her mouth…
My orgasm coiled at the base of my spine, slowly at first, then faster until it exploded in one blinding, deafening moment.
“Fuck!”
The force of my release drowned out my curse, but when I came down from my high, all that was left was cold water and the bright, mocking glare of the overhead light.
I rested my forehead against the icy tile and counted my deep inhales.
One. Two. Three.
Stella’s room was down the hall from mine. Despite what I’d told her, a locked door wouldn’t be much protection.
Four. Five. Six.
I kept counting until my heartbeat slowed to a normal pace and clarity chased away the scotch in my blood and the fog in my brain.
It wasn’t the right night to make a move.
I’d waited this long. I could wait a while longer.
Because when I claimed Stella as mine, I would do it so fucking thoroughly there wouldn’t be a shred of doubt in either of our minds as to who she belonged to…or who I belonged to in return.