20 #4
Clearing my throat, I gently rub up and down her back, trying to soothe her in that way Scotty always does so well.
“You do not need to be like him.”
My hand stills. “Do you not like it when it’s me?” The words are out before I can reel them back in.
Propping her chin on the hands she overlaps on my chest, Ezla bores all that searing attention of hers into my face. “You are rather self-conscious,” she muses. “You remind me of my shy boy.” Alby. “Yet you are so different.”
I snort. “I’m just the more brash, asshole version of him?”
She hums, lips tipping up into a smirk, and my pulse trips over itself. Then it leaps when she says, “It is a shame I do not wish to harm you anymore. I would be so interested to see if your innards look the same, too.”
“Jesus Christ, Ezla.” I can’t tell if I’m more amused or horrified, and I let out an incredulous breathy laugh. “Are these the kinds of things me and the guys will be hearing throughout the rest of our lives together?”
I realise how stupid a thing that was to say when she turns to stone in my arms.
“Shit, I—”
“Do you think I will let you go now that I have you?” she cuts brutally through my internal spiralling, and it’s my turn to become a statue.
Her brown and inky-crimson eyes drill into me with a familiar sharpness that I’m only grateful for after the absence there earlier which was only interrupted by a single-minded predatory intent.
“I have claimed you. You are mine. I would like to see you try to get away—”
“Vengeance.” I gently grip the back of her neck.
“In no way was I suggesting I’d ever try to leave you.
Quite the opposite.” Then my lips fight against me, and she watches me with eyes that slit further each time a corner of my lips manages to tick up.
“But your possessiveness and need for me is ridiculously fucking good to hear.”
“I hate you,” she states.
The grin fully takes over. “Too late to say that now, Vengeance. You—”
Her hand slams over my mouth. “Shut. Up.”
But I’m too elated to not do something. I’m on cloud fucking nine, and clearly that’s upped the death-wishing tendencies I seem to have when I’m around her as I playfully bite her palm.
Hissing, her eyes flare, and she snatches her hand back. “You—”
“I love you, Vengeance,” I blurt.
Mouth frozen open, she blinks once.
Okay, that was not planned out at all. Maybe I should stay surly if being all bubbly and shit makes me reveal all my secrets so carelessly.
I don’t take my words back, though. They were evidently dying to come out, and I needed her to know, especially after all the bullshit since the Halfway Ball. I only wait for her, watching her carefully, until she says evenly, “It took you long enough to tell me.”
Huffing, my grip tightens on her, and she shockingly allows me to pull her further up my body. “That’s what every man wants to hear after they’ve just told the love of their life their feelings, Vengeance.”
She snickers, and I forget about any minor humiliation or irritation I might’ve just felt. “You are adorable. It is delightful to see you so unbalanced this way.”
My teeth capture my lower lip as I attempt to smother another grin. “Did you just call me adorable, HC?”
She blinks as if she didn’t realise she did, then scowls. “You will not speak of this to anyone.” Her hiss is threatening, and she digs her nails into my skin harshly. It’s as if she thinks she’s just committed some sort of crime.
And I can’t help it.
I burst out laughing.
Growling, she comes at me, fangs out and all.
Except I flip her over before she can chomp my damn nose off like she was seemingly aiming to, and the moment my still-hard cock brushes against her cum-drenched entrance, those attempts fly right out the window .
. . or through the taalk walls, or whatever.
Ezla’s pupils blow out, swallowing the irises whole, and those claws of hers dig into my back as she pulls me closer.
“Again, Vengeance?” I say roughly.
“Again,” she agrees impatiently, and I don’t hesitate to sink myself inside of her once more.
And as a fresh layer of sweat builds on our skin and she lets out fucking breathtaking moans for me that bounce off the walls this time, my groans that almost sound anguished mix in with the rhythmic slapping of our skin.
They’re probably not able to be completely snuffed out by the indestructible walls surrounding us, and the bed’s too luxurious and robust to shift, but if it weren’t, from the force of my thrusts, I’m sure the headboard would be smacking into the wall right about now to add to that indiscreet chorus.
Not that I care as I bury myself inside of her over and over and over again, my hands on her thighs, her calves, her waist, her breasts, her arms . . .
Something’s shifted here, something so precious, and I didn’t know it could feel any better than it already did, but the pleasure is so bloody great, so all-consuming, I can’t form a single coherent thought.
I simply feel Ezla’s presence, her essence, us twining together so inexorably, and something like . . . freedom.