Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
She was completely naked.
I expected to feel nothing.
The expectation was so strong that I was devastated before the last inch of silk hit the ground.
It didn’t happen. The sadness. The mocking. The vision of using her as a means to an end.
All I saw in her eyes was terrified vulnerability.
And all I felt in mine looking back at her, was unsurmountable holiness at what she’d just done.
A woman raped.
A woman used.
A woman now naked in front of me, offering control when it had always been hers to take.
She shed her dress.
She did that for a monster.
The least I could do was show her the man.
I took off my right glove first, tossing it on the floor, and moved to my left as it fell by her nightdress.
My shirt was next.
Her eyes drank me in.
With shaking hands, I started unbuttoning my jeans. She moved forward before I could finish, on her knees, in front of me. Where I didn’t want her to be, it was too wrong, for someone like her.
She batted my hands away.
I swayed on my feet, drunk off the moment, off her.
It felt like my soul was floating above my body as I watched her slowly unbutton my jeans, and free me.
My dick strained toward her in a way that bordered on indecent.
Her eyes met mine as she leaned forward and swirled her tongue across the tip before slowly standing in front of me and wrapping her arms around my neck. “Bed.”
I smiled against her mouth. “Are you making demands now?”
“I figured we’d still be standing here if I didn’t.”
I burst out laughing and smacked her slightly on the ass as I backed her toward the mattress, I rubbed where I’d hit and then I bit down on her neck and licked my way up to her lips. “You taste like salvation.”
“You taste like damnation. Heaven and Hell,” she whispered, interlocking our fingers together as she fell back against the bed, me hovering over her, like I was waiting to strike when really all I wanted to do was memorize each feeling, even the way my tongue felt between her lips each time I dragged another kiss from her.
Alice’s chest rose and fell as she lifted her hand and pressed it against the A carved out of my chest over my heart. “Where’s your knife?”
I stared her down. “There’s one under the pillow, why?”
She reached behind her and came back with the knife my father had given me, the one that I kept on me at all times.
It was impure that knife.
It represented our family.
Him.
Us.
Darkness.
Her skin glistened as she took the tip and pressed it against her chest, right across her heart. “I don’t want to be like the Italians, Andrei.”
My eyes stung as they filled with unshed tears. I never cried. I didn’t think myself actually capable of it… until that moment, when she offered me both pain and pleasure, sacrifice, body and soul.
My voice shook. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, you cut my hand, I want you to carve yourself into my heart.”
I was losing control.
Fast.
My body roared to life in a way that felt violent as I sucked in breath after breath. “You’re saying…”
She dug the knife into her skin, a whimper escaped her lips. “Make it fast.”
“But you’re perfect.”
“So are you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “You don’t understand… You’re pure… I’m not.”
“Maybe I’ll just be your sacrifice, the one you’ve always needed, the blood that’s always needed to be spilled,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I’m yours, Andrei Petrov. Take me.”
With a growl, I took the knife and carved a small A over her chest. As her blood flowed from the fresh cut, I threw the knife against the wall.
Blood trickled down her chest, her blood, my name.
And then I was kissing her, out of control, an animal as I rocked my body against hers, shrugged my jeans down and kissed her, drank her, pressed my hand against her bloody chest and felt her heart, her soul between my fingertips.
Mine.
She was mine.
Every inch of skin I touched was on fire as her hips lifted, our bodies slid against each other, a mixture of sweat and blood.
Our foreheads touched, our breaths short as I positioned myself at her entrance, my fingers danced along her thighs, feeling her life, feeling every part of her pulse in a rhythmic cadence for me and only me.
“Andrei,” she whimpered.
“You will always be mine,” I promised.
“Always,” she agreed.
I drove into her, knowing it would hurt, knowing she would curse me later, both hating and loving the feeling of her body convulse around me. I sunk into her heat.
And I knew.
There would never be any going back from this.
She had undone me.
Maybe I had undone myself.
This was what I had been waiting for my whole life.
For someone to accept the ugly and call it pure.