But I don’t want space from her ever again.
I snatch her by the throat like she’s a comet I’m tearing from the sky. My entire hand covers her slim neck like a collar. She looks at me not with fear, but with a simmering wrath.
I could fall to my knees and fuckingweepfrom the sight of that raging inferno.
“Brontë,” she warns, flashing her teeth. “I’m not playing cat-and-mouse with you anymore. Let go before I make you left-handed.”
Finger by finger, muscle by muscle, I release her throat. Hurt flashes behind the steel wall she thinks I can’t see behind. Then I slide my palm over her smooth, soft sternum. Her flesh is hot, borderline feverish with her fury rushing through her veins. Her eyes shackle to mine as I slip my hand beneath her jacket to rest it over her heart. It slams against my touch, fretful as a caged beast desperate to escape its prison.
A beast that looks and feels so much like my own.
“After,” I murmur, gently palming her hips and walking her backward. “I got the tattoosafterfinding myself in Salem.”
Then I fist her waistband, lift her onto the sarcophagus of a dead legend, and dive straight for her lips.
DAMNATION
Brontë
Poppy Morgenstern will be my damnation.
My mouth crashes into hers. She instantly retaliates, biting my bottom lip. I hiss from the prick of pain, tasting rust. She gives it a healing lick and delves for my tongue. I groan like a beast starved for lifetimes, and she arches into me, fisting my jacket and lapping at the roof of my mouth.
I don’t know how it’s possible, but she tastes even better than she smells: a heady rainbow of flavors from her last vape hit. I palm her jaw, biting her teeth when she tries to take control.
Both of us fight for dominion with every last scrap of our souls. Neither of us yield.
Her knees dig into my thighs, her closed legs sealing me off. I growl in protest. She relents, spreading her thighs and sighing through the long, languid kiss I gift her as I sink between them and meld my body to hers. Her fingers thread through my hair, kneading like a feline in heat. My hands roam the curves of her silhouette and squeeze her ass as I grind against her.
Poppy lets out a breathy moan. Her legs wrap my waist like ivy on stone, imprisoning me in paradise. A purr vibrates from my chest to hers. She echoes the primal sound with a throaty groan. I swallow it whole.
Not enough.
I don’t just want to kiss her or fuck her. I want toconsumeher. I want to ruin her for anyone else, brand her with my body, and mark her asmine.
“Brontë,” Poppy breathes through an open-mouthed kiss that has me seeing entire constellations. “Stop.”
Stop, stop, stop,the command clatters through my muscles and bones like an order from the other end of a leash.
It takes every ounce of my willpower to tear myself away. To rip my lips from hers, still my hips, and flatten my palms on the sarcophagus. My breath mingles with hers as her heavy-lidded eyes lift to mine. She doesn’t know it, but she has all the power in the world right now to cut me open and bleed me dry.
Then she says, “If anything happens to you because I’m too selfish to stay away, I…”
I loathe the fear in her voice. Fright doesn’t belong anywhere near the most powerful woman in the world. “You should be afraid forthem,Poppy. Not me.”
“You’re only human, Brontë.”
“As are they.” I plant a soft kiss to the bridge of her nose. “No more woes tonight. That pretty fringe can only cover so many age lines.”
Poppy closes her eyes and controls her breaths as I idly twist a strand of her hair between my fingers. The pastel pink lock wraps the runes on my knuckles like praying hands over a holy writ.
“What are your wishes,ma reine?”
“That depends.” Her eyelids lift, unveiling those diamond eyes. “What does that mean?”
I kiss a slow path over the vicious arc of her cheekbone before breathing in her ear, “My queen.”
Her shudder summons my devilish smile, and I drag it down her thrumming pulse.