Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Selena
Then he was behind me. Close. Too close.
His palms settled on my bare shoulders, warm and sure, and every muscle in my body tensed and melted at the same time. His thumbs feathered over the base of my neck, slow and deliberate, and I stopped breathing.
“You’re beautiful.” His voice was low, rough-edged, his breath ghosting against the curve of my ear.
He nuzzled my neck—right where the bite mark still throbbed—and something between a sigh and a whimper climbed up my throat. I pressed my lips together to trap it. My hands gripped the edge of the closet door, knuckles white, because if I let go I was going to turn around and do something reckless.
“Rocco, I don’t think we should be doing this.”
The words came out breathless. Unconvincing. Even I didn’t believe them.
His lips brushed the shell of my ear. “You heard Rose. It’ll take two hours until the spell is ready.”
Two hours. Alone. In this bedroom. With his hands on my skin and his blood still humming through my veins.
And Rose and Valentin just on the other side of the door—but right now, I couldn’t bring myself to care.
This was either going to be the best or worst decision I ever made.
“Rocco.” I was going to ask him to stop, but it sounded more like a plea, a plea for him to keep going.
His lips traced a slow, burning path down the side of my throat, each kiss lingering long enough to make my pulse stutter.
My eyes fluttered shut. My head tipped back against his shoulder without my permission, giving him access I shouldn’t have been offering. His mouth found the hollow at the base of my neck and I bit down on my bottom lip to keep from making a sound I couldn’t take back.
He was waking something up inside me. Something I’d spent two years burying—smothering under anger and distance and the constant, exhausting work of pretending I didn’t need him.
Something tender and reckless and terrifyingly hopeful that lived in the same place the bond did, right behind my ribs where it hurt the most.
Something that could get destroyed if I let it out and he shut me down again.
I opened my eyes. Stared at the wall in front of me. Made myself ask the question even though I was afraid of the answer.
“Am I just a distraction until the spell is done?”
His mouth stilled against my skin. His hands tightened on my shoulders—not painfully, but like my words had hit something he wasn’t prepared for.
The silence lasted three heartbeats. I counted every one of them.
“No.” The word was rough, almost raw, like it had been scraped from somewhere deep inside him.
His hands slid from my shoulders, gripping me gently and turning me around to face him.
I looked up and his eyes caught mine—dark, burning, stripped of every wall he’d ever built between us.
There was no mask. No prince. No careful distance.
Just Rocco, staring at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
His thumb slid along my jaw, tilting my face up toward his.
“I’ve tasted you once.” His voice dropped low, the words vibrating between us like a confession dragged out against his will. “I want to taste all of you.”
My breath left me. My knees nearly buckled. The air between us turned molten—thick and charged and heavy with two years of denied longing.
This wasn’t a distraction. The way he looked at me—like he was starving and I was the only thing that could save him—that wasn’t a man killing time.
That was a man who’d finally stopped running.
And I knew, as he slowly skimmed his fingertips across my skin, leaving a trail of fire, I was going to let him catch me.
Cool air kissed my bare skin, but I didn’t feel cold. Not with the way his eyes moved over me—slow, reverent, like he was seeing something sacred and couldn’t quite believe it was real.
He swept me up into his arms as if I weighed nothing. I looped my hands around his neck, my fingers brushing the warm skin at his nape, and felt his pulse hammering beneath my touch. Fast. Hard. He wasn’t as steady as he was pretending to be.
He laid me on the bed, the blue comforter soft beneath my back, and braced himself over me. His dark hair fell forward, framing his face, and for a moment he just looked at me. Really looked at me. Like he was memorizing every detail in case this turned out to be a dream he’d wake up from.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” His voice was strained, barely controlled, the words costing him everything. “Once we consummate the bond—“
He was giving me a way out. Even now—with his body trembling over mine and two years of denial crumbling around him—he was giving me the choice he’d taken away before.
I reached up and pulled him down to me.
“You’re mine,” he growled against my mouth.
The sound rumbled through my chest and lit every nerve in my body on fire. Two years. Two years of being told I wasn’t enough. Two years of carrying this bond alone. And now his voice, raw and fierce and certain, claiming me like he should have from the beginning.
I pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. “Then prove it.”
Rocco pulled his shirt over his head in one rough motion, tossing it to the floor. Then he stretched out on top of me, and the weight of him—solid, warm, real—pressed me into the mattress and drove every rational thought from my mind.
He kissed me. Not softly this time. This kiss was hungry, demanding, two years of starvation poured into the press of his lips and the sweep of his tongue. I arched into him, my hands sliding up the hard planes of his chest, feeling the muscles tense and flex beneath my palms.
This was real. He was real. After two years of imagining what it would feel like to caress him like this—to finally have my hands on him with nothing between us—the reality was so much more than the fantasy that it nearly broke me.
His hands moved over me—rough, calloused, unhurried.
They mapped every curve, every dip, every inch of bare skin like he was claiming territory he’d been too afraid to explore.
His palm skimmed down my ribs, across the flat of my stomach, and I shivered beneath him.
Not from cold. From the way his fingertips dragged slow and deliberate, like he wanted to memorize the feel of me.
I was doing the same thing—my fingers tracing the ridges of his shoulders, the scar along his ribs, the dip of muscles at his hip. Learning him. Memorizing him. Terrified that if I stopped touching him, he’d disappear again.
I gasped against his mouth when his hand found my hip, his grip tightening, pulling me closer. There was nothing between us now—no masks, no walls, no careful distance. Just skin against skin and the bond between us burning so bright I could feel it in my blood.
He moved down my neck, his lips leaving a trail of heat against my skin, pausing at the hollow of my throat where my pulse hammered wildly.
Each kiss lingered longer than the last until he found my nipple, taut with anticipation.
His tongue circled it slowly before he drew it into the wet warmth of his mouth.
I arched against him, fingers tangled in his hair, still unable to believe this was Rocco—the man I’d wanted for so long— finally claiming what had always simmered between us.
His fingers slipped beneath the delicate lace edge of my panties. I sucked in my breath as the rough pads of his fingertips sent electric shivers racing through me, tracing lazy circles over my sensitive skin, stroking and teasing until my hips instinctively arched toward his hands.
Heat coiled low in my belly, tight and spiraling. My thighs trembled. A moan slipped past my lips before I could catch it as his mouth curved against my throat—satisfaction, hunger, something possessive that should have scared me but only made the ache worse.
“I want you, Selena.” His razor-sharp fangs scraped over the sensitive peak of my breast, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “I want to discover what pleases you. I want to hear you scream.”
The words undid me. Every last wall I’d built, every promise I’d made to protect myself—gone. My back arched off the bed and my fingers twisted in his hair, pulling him closer instead of pushing him away.
Rocco slid down my body with predatory grace, his silken midnight hair brushing against my feverish skin like a whisper of darkness. The sound of tearing lace shattered the silence and I gasped. My crimson panties lay in tatters around my thighs.
He spread my thighs apart with firm hands, his dark eyes gleaming with hunger as he lowered his head. I clutched the blue comforter with my fists as he slowly devoured me, his skilled tongue exploring every hidden crevice with devastating precision.
Barriers crumbled like ancient walls as I surrendered to the hot, insistent pulse between my quaking thighs.
His tongue created deliberate patterns across my most sensitive flesh, each flick and swirl drawing gasps from my parted lips.
The rough pads of his fingers dug into my hips, anchoring me as pleasure coiled tighter in my core.
I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth, acutely aware of Rose and Valentin just beyond that thin door. But when his tongue found exactly the right spot, I bit down on my knuckle and stopped caring who heard.
Lightning sparked behind my eyelids. I was close—so close—every muscle in my body coiling tighter and tighter until I couldn’t tell where the pleasure ended and the desperation began.
Two years of longing had led to this exquisite unraveling.
I needed him deeper, needed to feel him claim every inch of me.
I’d waited so long for this. Longer than he knew.
All those mornings waking up with the phantom ache of him still pressed against my chest like a bruise that wouldn’t heal. All those moments I’d imagined his hands on me, his mouth on me, his body covering mine—and then hated myself for wanting someone who’d thrown me away.
I needed more than he knew. More than this kiss. More than his hands on my skin. I needed him to want me the way I’d wanted him—desperately, recklessly, with everything he had. I needed to know that this wasn’t guilt or blood bond or the heat of the moment. I needed it to be real.
More than anything, I wanted him to echo the words that I was his.