Chapter 10
LEIF DIDN’T deserve being the chosen one. He took it anyway. He’d make himself worthy after.
He kissed the corner of Mariah’s mouth, then her cheekbone, then the hollow below her ear where her pulse hammered.
He tasted the silk of her skin, the faint ghost of his soap, and something sweet that belonged only to her.
Her fingers curled in his hair and he let her tug, let her guide him the inch she wanted.
He still didn’t take her mouth. He made her wait.
It was half cruelty and half the knowledge that when he finally kissed her, he wouldn’t stop, not for hours.
He moved down, slow, to the open collar of his shirt and the vulnerable skin revealed there.
He pressed his mouth to that place and a shiver raced through her, his own abdomen tightening with answering hunger.
He teased at the buttons, undoing none and still finding his way inside, slipping his fingers beneath to trace the ridges of her ribs, the heat of her waist, the bare edge of her hip.
She trembled in his hands, and he smiled against her throat like a man learning victory.
“Are you going to kiss me?” she asked, breathless.
“No.” He let the word drag, velvet and cruel.
She made a small sound he felt everywhere. “Then what are you doing?”
“Remembering what I own.” Her nails thrust through his hair again. “And deciding if I’m patient.”
“You’re not,” she said, and the soft laugh in her voice went to his head like smoke and fire.
“Tonight I am.” He sat back, the separation a considered denial, and watched the hunger in her eyes go molten. “Say out loud why you went to your knees.”
Color rose high in her cheeks. She held his stare like a challenge. “Because I wanted you.”
He believed her. So did the Brand. But he wanted more, always more. “Say you like the taste of me.”
Her lips parted, tongue darting against her lower lip before the smallest smile curved. “I like the taste of you.”
His control slipped another inch. “Say you want more.”
“I want more.”
He exhaled, long and rough. “That works for me.”
Silence stretched until it became a second skin.
Outside, a siren wound up and faded. The city kept moving, indifferent to the fact that the axis of his life had shifted in a two a.m. living room with a woman wearing his shirt and nothing else.
He realized with the cold clarity that came in battle that nothing about tomorrow would be the same as yesterday. He wouldn’t allow it to be.
“Tell me about the bomb,” he said. “Every detail.”
She blinked at the pivot but followed him.
She told him what she knew: that the arrangement had arrived late, logged by a guard who’d frowned at the delivery, that the hesitation in the hallway had saved them precious time.
She never saw the flowers herself—she’d already been upstairs in his office.
He listened, asked questions, filed answers away with precision.
He made her repeat the times twice, satisfied when she did.
While they talked, he didn’t stop touching her.
Couldn’t. He drew circles on her knee with his thumb.
He smoothed his hand up her thigh when she lost her place, just to watch her fight for it.
He traced the line of her wrist, the delicate bones under skin, the place where her pulse leaped when he looked at her like he meant to devour her.
He did. He would. Not yet.
“Back to your brother,” he said. “If he sees you in public, will he come to you or will he watch?”
“Watch,” she said. “He likes to calculate angles.”
“Then I’ll make the room a circle. No angles.” He wasn’t joking. He saw the way her mouth almost smiled at that and wanted to taste it until she couldn’t hide her hunger.
He rose without warning and she caught her breath.
He took her hand, pulled her to her feet, then simply lifted her, settling her astride him.
His shirt fell to frame her thighs like a curtain, a tease and a promise.
The move stole the oxygen from the room.
Her hands gripped his shoulders and her eyes went wide and dark.
Heat spilled through both of them, molten and binding.
“This isn’t patient,” she whispered.
“This is strategic.” He slid a palm up her spine, each vertebra like beads on a rosary. “I want you right here where I can see your face.”
“Leif.”
His name on her mouth was a sin he’d beg her to commit again and again.
He held them there until he had her measure again, until the sharpest need flattened into something he could ride without losing control. “Say it again,” he murmured, reminding her of the words she’d already given him. “Tell me what you wanted—what you told me before.”
“I wanted you,” she breathed.
“And now?”
Her thighs tightened around his hips. “I want you more.”
He smiled with teeth and then tested the edge of her control the way she had tested his.
He took her wrist and brought her fingers to his mouth, sucking the two middle ones in to the first knuckle, slow and obscene, watching her pupils blow wide while he did it.
The sound she made went straight to his cock.
He drew her fingers out and lifted her hand to his Brand, palm to palm.
“Touch me there,” he said.
She did. The contact stroked every nerve ending. He’d never believed in anything he couldn’t buy, break, or bleed. He believed in this.
She dragged her fingers down his palm and he groaned. “You’re unfair,” he said.
“I’m yours,” she corrected softly, and then she kissed the corner of his mouth in a quick, reckless brush that tasted like surrender and promise.
He would’ve taken her then if she hadn’t been the one to break away first. Instead, he caught her wrist, pulled her back, and let his restraint snap.
In a swift, possessive move, he eased her onto the couch, laying her back against the cushions, his shirt falling open around her curves.
The sight of her stretched out beneath him unraveled him further.
He pushed the hem higher, baring her thighs, baring the heat he craved.
He kissed down her body—her throat, her collarbone, the swell of her breasts, the soft quiver of her stomach—until he was between her legs. He parted her with steady hands, the scent of her flooding him, making his head spin with hunger.
He bent and pressed his mouth to her, gradual at first, tasting, savoring, then deeper, relentless, worshipping every shudder that broke from her lips.
He held her thighs wide, pinned her when she tried to twist, forcing her to take all of it.
He licked and sucked until her hands clawed at his hair and the Brand burned like fire in his palm against her skin.
Her cries filled the room, each one sweeter than any victory.
She broke apart for him, trembling and gasping, and he drank her down, prolonging every ripple until she sagged, limp and wrecked beneath him.
Only then did he climb back up her body, mouth wet with her, and kiss her like sin, making her taste herself on his tongue.
He would’ve taken her then if she hadn’t pushed at his shoulders with a look that said she knew exactly what she was doing to him. She slid out from under him, slower this time, like a queen granting mercy. He cursed and shifted so he lay beneath her.
“Look at me,” she said.
He did. She had his cock in her hand and reverence in her eyes, and he had the thought, irrational and absolute, that if any god wanted prayers from him, the only altar he recognized was her mouth.
She licked the tip in a lazy circle that made his vision go hot and grainy.
Then she took him, inch by inch, no hurry, until he was seated on a heat so perfect he had to close his eyes.
He lasted longer this time only because he forced himself.
He set his hand on the back of her head and slid the silk of her hair under his fingers.
He told her what he liked in a voice that didn’t sound like his own.
He asked her to take him deeper and she did.
He asked her to swallow and she did that too, moaning low and sinful around him until he forgot the names of the men he intended to kill tomorrow.
He warned her when he was close because it seemed like the thing he should do.
She ignored the warning because she was his and she’d already decided what to take from him.
He broke open again, less brutal and more endless, and when he came back to himself she was watching him with a satisfaction that made pride curl in his chest.
“You’re trying to ruin me,” he said, voice wrecked.
She tipped her head. “Am I succeeding?”
“Yes.” The word came out broken, almost savage with need. He reached for her, pulled her up into his lap, and this time he didn’t stop at her forehead. He surrendered.
He kissed her mouth like it was the only thing that had ever mattered, deep and consuming, finally letting go of every ounce of control he’d hoarded.
Her lips parted for him and the taste of her poured through him like heat and light.
He angled her head, took more, gave more, tongues tangling, her small sounds rising into his throat until he couldn’t tell which belonged to him and which belonged to her.
The kiss stretched, changed—soft at first, then hungrier, wet and lush, a claiming and a surrender wound together.
He nipped at her lower lip, soothed it with his tongue, kissed her again until she clutched at his shoulders as if the world might tilt without him there holding her.
He kissed her until his lungs burned, until the city disappeared, until only the press of her body and the heat of her Brand against his mattered.
When he finally tore his mouth free, it was only to breathe against her swollen lips. “You undo me,” he whispered.
She answered with another kiss, slower, tender, devastating. He sank into it, letting himself drown, and when he finally drew back his mouth curved against hers. “And I’m going to let you.”