Total pages in book: 54
Estimated words: 51825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Because it’s not his war, it’s ours, but Kane will try to save me again.
He will try to make this his battle, not ours.
Angry now, with only one way to express myself, I tug my shirt over my head and toss it away. By the time it hits the bed, Kane’s shirt is over his head as well. The rest of our clothes follow. We undress but don’t speak. I don’t even hesitate to devour his hard body with my eyes. He’s mine. I’m his. If he thinks anything that happened this night has changed that, he’s wrong.
This man has buried bodies for me. I’ll bury them for him.
I might have resisted that in the past, but never again.
I step toward him, wanting him so damn much it hurts, and it’s all it takes to unleash him.
He catches me to him, his fingers there, moving me toward him, and while they tangle in my hair, his tongue licks into my mouth. There was a time when I let him taste my hate for him, but this is not the same. I taste us, and I realize in this moment, it’s always been us. My fingers tangle in his hair now and I say, “Whatever it is—”
“Damn it, not now, Lilah,” he growls, his teeth catching the delicate skin of my lips, the pain jolting me into the moment and out of the next, which was his plan.
A moment later, my back hits the mattress with the heavy, delicious weight of his body on top of mine, a dark push and pull of past and present consumes us. “Lilah,” he murmurs, in that richly accented way he says my name when he wants to turn me on, but I’m already there. He presses inside me, long and hard. His fingers are back in my hair, and just like that first night we came back together after those years apart, he forces my gaze to his.
My mind flashes back to that night…
“I would have killed him for you with no guilt. I would have made him suffer. Isn’t that what you want to hear? And my willingness to do it doesn’t make me a monster any more than you wanting me to do it or doing it yourself makes you one.”
“You’re justifying your actions and mine. That’s dangerous.”
“You like dangerous, Lilah. That’s the real problem, isn’t it? You don’t think you should. You don’t think you should want me and us like you do.”
“I shouldn’t. I can’t.”
“And yet, here we are.”
But this isn’t the past, and there is no hate in me for Kane. “I’m not him.”
I know instantly that this is about his father. Something about killing Miguel fucked with his head, and now he thinks he’s the cartel and another version of his father. “I know that. Why don’t you know that?”
“Whoever I have to kill for you, Lilah, I will. No matter who that is.”
I catch his hair and twine it roughly in my fingers, intending to remind him that I’m pretty good at getting the job done myself, but he’s already kissing me, rolling me, and pulling me on top of him. I stare down at him, the lust and possession in his eyes, and I realize what he needs. He needs to feel like I’m his, really his, and nothing is going to change that.
He needs me wild and all in.
Again, I’m back to that first night we were back together. He’d pulled me on top of him then, too, and I remember exactly what I’d read that message as: this was my choice. I want this. I want him. I’d called him a bastard then. The fact that he can even question this now makes me say it again. “Bastard,” I hiss, pressing my hands on his shoulders. “What is wrong with you?” I lean in and press my lips to his.
He molds me close, and catches my hips, thrusting into me even as he pulls me down against him. And that’s when we erupt. Our lips collide, our bodies sway. And he touches me like he may never touch me again, which only makes me angrier, only makes me ride him harder, grab his hair rougher. Because I want him to get the message. Nothing has changed.
I blamed him for what I thought I was becoming.
I know now he’s all that keeps me on the right path.
Too soon, it seems, our bodies quake and I collapse on top of him, trying to catch my breath, but I am anything but done. I drag myself up and dig my fingers into his shoulders. “What is going on?”
He rolls me over, and now he’s on top of me again, searching my face before he rolls over onto the mattress next to me and hands me a tissue. I don’t want the damn tissue, but I take it because he’s literally standing up and pulling on his pants.