The moment she released him, he grasped her hips, and sank his teeth into his bottom lip.
Play with me,hiseyes said, surely in a game she was bound to lose.
The choice hung in the air between them,herchoice: to pull away from him, or finally indulge her desires. Because this was wrong somehow, but her lust-drunk mind couldn’t remember why.
He guided her down until she straddled his lap, her knees on either side of him on the leather chaise. Her blood roared like a match cast into lamp oil. Heat pooled in her belly and she craved to melt into him, to become liquid, for him to drink her in.
His fingers sank into her flesh and she rocked her hips, grinding his thick arousal against that aching spot between her legs. Both of their breaths hitched. Her eyes fluttered closed and she sank into pure sensation as her body moved on its own accord. Desperate to tether herself to something, to not float away in this swelling, pounding pleasure, she braced her hand on his chest. His thorns sliced into her, but she barely felt it against his touch and the glowing, raging fire inside her.
Dez clasped her wrist and brought it to his face to survey the damage. He tsked under his breath as warm blood ran down her palm.
“Careful, angel,” he hummed. He held her gaze as he dragged his tongue up the side of her hand, lapping up her blood as she had with his.
Lightning pleasure spiked her veins, and she whimpered, his mouth so soft and warm and perfect. He moaned against her aching flesh.
Then his lips were at her ear. “If your blood is that unfathomably sweet, how does the rest of you taste?” A lazy, drunken smirk tugged at his mouth. “Look at you. You have this entire room falling to their knees, and yet, it’smylap you’re in.”Where you belong,hung in the air unsaid.
This time when he gripped her hips and she rolled against him, a desperate whimper slipped from between his lips. She wanted to memorize that sound. Wanted to paint it on her skin and carve it into her bones. Never had she seen him so unravelled. It tightened a coil inside her, a spring ready to snap, because seeing him so undone by her was cathartic.
“I—I want…” she started, but sensation and desire muddled her mind, and she couldn’t translate what her body screamed into words.
His hand cupped the back of her neck and pulled her to him, her brow braced against his. Her vestige swelled for him.
“Tell me what you want, Emmery.” Her name was both a prayer and a confession on his lips. He breathed her in, savoured her, as if he thought she would pull away and he bided his time, stole every second, and collected them while he could.
She inhaled the scent of cool mint, her blood, and a hint of vanilla from the trumpet on his breath. Held it inside herself. Wanted to taste it.
Wanted it everywhere.
Her sledgehammer heart shattered all her walls, and instead of telling him, she showed him.
With a sharp tug, the remaining buttons on his shirt popped open. She swallowed hard as her fingers found the smooth skin over his waistband and she traced her fingers along it. She followed his thin trail of hair until her fingertip dipped beneath, as his had in the bathing room mere hours ago.
A small, wicked smile claimed her mouth as Dez gasped like she stole his air, as if he was truly dying, and she was his merciful demise.
“What are you doing to me?” he whispered. His nose tenderly skimmed hers, as if she was precious, beautiful even. “Don’t you know how long I’ve been bleeding out for you? But I handed you the blade, didn’t I? Guided your hand to that weak gap between my ribs.”
The sliver of space between their lips became agony—a prison wall separating hands, an ocean dividing land, a canyon severing voices, real, audible, and tangible, yet always too far away.
Always beyond their reach.
She needed more. She needed him to stop torturing her and give her what they’d danced around for months. What had strained and bent, until it inevitably snapped.
Everything around them faded to a dull hum, the lights, the music, the people, until only they existed. He took her face in hishands, and his fingertips skimmed her birthmark, tracing it like a work of art.
“I’ll never ask again,” he murmured. The fraction of space narrowed as she sank into him, bowing like a sail caught in the wind and he was her horizon. “But please, Emmery, put me out of this misery.” His thumb caressed her bottom lip in a request. A question. A plea.
Because Destonne wasbeggingfor her.
Something he claimed he would never do.
And as she leaned in, drawn to him like gravity to earth, oxygen to flame, a force so inevitable, and dangerous, and so damn explosive they both should have been afraid, he eagerly met her halfway.
His lips brushed hers in a whisper of a kiss, pillowy soft like in her dreams. Perfect. Emmery trembled beneath his hands, and answered with a breathy sound as every cell in her body vibrated, crying out for more.
He pulled back, fear woven through his gaze. Dez gave her time to retreat, and forget this ever happened. To forget he ever placed his desires in her hands to see if she would hold them. But hadn’t she placed hers in his, too?
When she didn’t pull away, he plucked each pin he’d carefully secured into her hair and tossed them aside.Plink,plink,plink—they hit the floor, until her locks tumbled down her back. He wove his fingers through it and tilted her face up to his, his other cupping her cheek.