into my bedroom, can bring nothing else. “But only one of us in that room was still a virgin, Cassian. And I can accept that, even if I do not understand all of it—”
“And I don’t want you to.” His voice, deepening with new solemnity, sends vibrations of emotion through me. And confusion.
“But—”
“Ssshhh.”
“ Cassian. We have been open with each other since the start—” When we had to negotiate the terms of the contract that brought me here. Forty million of his dollars. Six months of my life. And the possibility of having exactly this. A connection my spirit has never felt with anyone…
“And I’m being open with you now.” He turns me back to face him, stroking tendrils of hair from my face as the wind kicks up—and pointedly clearing his throat as our lower bodies fit against each other again. “As a matter of fact,”—his brows jump and his nostrils flare—“if I’m any more open about things…”
Against my better instinct, my lips tip up. Against the same intuition, let him see the shudder claiming me as we mesh, soft to hard, woman to man… perfection . “I…I do not want you to think I am prying. It is not my place. In just four months—”
He does not allow me to finish. Correction: commands me not to, in the form of a kiss bordering on punishing. His mouth is so incessant, half the air punches from my lungs. The other half funnels strength into my arms, seizing him by both biceps as our lips crush and meld and ravish each other.
A cacophony of heat and heartbeats later, he draws back, gaze thick with sage smoke. “I’ve imposed few rules about this whole thing, favori ,” he utters. “But right now, I’m invoking a new one.” His hand moves in, spreading across the back of my head. “No more countdowns.” His fingertips curl in, pulling at my hair. “I need to have this.” Tightens even harder. “Just this. Just…you. Okay?”
He yanks a third time. I let my head tilt, succumbing to the bite of pain. Slide my eyes closed for an instant. “Okay.”
His grip eases a little. “So we’re good?”
“Good.” I manage to volume into it. “Yes. Of—of course. We are good.” Just do not stop holding me like this. “We are completely…squalid.”
He chuffs. “You mean solid ?”
“Oh. Hmm. That makes sense.”
He brushes his lips down over mine again. Raises back up enough to murmur, “You sure about that?”
“About what?”
“Me. Making sense.” He dips both hands back down—pulling me harder against him, making my legs widen for him. “Maybe I need to show you solid, instead of just telling you.”
“ Ahhh .” It spurts out on a gasp as my limbs shudder, my skin tingles, and my sex pulses. My head falls back again, whirling in a new vortex of color and feeling, letting Cassian completely take over again. I am lost in his ruthless strength, as he lifts me to the balcony’s thick brick ledge. Engulfed in blood red, in the sunset that bathes his taut, sharp face. A delighted quarry of joy, without sorrow or penance. If we are in hell, I gladly relinquish my rights to heaven.
Obscenities blur, steaming from Cassian as he clamps lips to my neck and suckles his way down, down, down… “God damn ,” he echoes, twisting free the buttons at the front of my dress then nosing aside my bra…to find my erect tip awaiting his attention.
As his mouth closes in, a strangled choke bursts up my throat. We are not officially “in church” but might as well be, with hundreds of spirits, saints, and martyrs immortalized in art below us. My cries of arousal cannot be any more welcome here than in a real house of worship—though that is exactly how I feel right now, as Cassian licks me, laves me, and adores me, his attention not skipping a single inch of my breasts, now jutted up at him in twin spikes of need.
“Cassian.” It is a whisper of desperate, burning need. I shove a hand beneath his shirt, seeking his nipples too…repeating his name as