Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 188966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 945(@200wpm)___ 756(@250wpm)___ 630(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 188966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 945(@200wpm)___ 756(@250wpm)___ 630(@300wpm)
Clinging to my last threads of self-control, I grunted, “You have to stop, hayatım.”
“And you have to trust that I’m okay. I’m more than okay. I want you, Aslan. I want the real you. The sensitive you. The violent you.”
My eyes flared wide, locking with hers. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I do.”
Pressing my nose against hers, I growled, “If I gave you the real me, you’d jump off this boat and never stop swimming.”
“Watching you beat Ethan last night was one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen. Not the violence. Not the blood. But you. You protecting me. You honouring me—”
“I wouldn’t be protecting you today, Nerida. You put yourself in harm’s way. Harm that I couldn’t save you from. You’re the one I’m angry with, no one else.”
“Then show me how mad you are, husband. And perhaps, I’ll apologise.”
“You’re literally going to be the death of me.” My bones cracked as she sent another white-hot wave of lust through me. I tried, one last time. My last-ditch effort to keep her safe...from me. “I’m not touching you, wife. Not while I’m seconds away from spanking you instead of loving you.”
She tipped her head back and moaned. Loudly. “Do it. I made you worry for me today. I made you watch me do something dangerous. Punish me.”
My vision went black. “Another one of your fetishes, canım?”
“A fantasy.”
“A nightmare.” I shook my head, planting my hands on her shoulders to push her away.
Only...
My fingers dug into her.
I held her tight and trapped.
“A nightmare that I can’t seem to wake up from,” I breathed, unable to look away from her mouth. Her pretty fucking mouth that’d sucked me off on this very boat. Her mouth that I’d kissed a thousand times and would always want a thousand more.
Another bolt of energy burned through us.
My hands turned to shackles on her shoulders.
Marching her back to the table, I wedged her against the edge and yanked at the bows of her bikini on her hips. “If I get too strong, you stop me. If I take too much, you scream. If I fuck you too hard, you—”
“Seahorse,” she whispered. “I’ll say the word seahorse and—”
I didn’t let her finish.
I grabbed her chin, held her prone, and kissed her brutally hard.
She moaned and linked her fingers in my hair, her tongue waging war against mine. She didn’t submit. She didn’t apologise. She fought me.
And I snapped.
Knocking her feet out from under her with a swipe of my leg, I caught her and lowered her to the deck. Tourists were close, but they wouldn’t see. Not if we stayed down. She gasped as I splayed her, wet and dripping, on the very same deck where I’d given her CPR. In a similar position with her on her back and our lips fused together in life and death.
That memory tried to blend with this.
The terror I’d felt at her blue lips. The horror I’d felt at her limpness.
I’d been so full of panic, so full of illicit love, of fear and loss and need.
She’d never apologised for that incident either.
In fact, she’d never said sorry for all the shit she’d made me feel. For all the ways she’d made me fall. All the inevitable, unfightable ways she’d made me hers.
She owed me her life.
On multiple fucking occasions.
My kiss turned harder, bruising both of us.
I sucked on her tongue and fisted her breast with bruising fingers.
She’d been born to torment me.
That much was blaringly true.
Her one purpose was to make me love her more than I could bear, waiting to see just how much despair I could survive at the thought of losing her. I’d spent the past five years pledging my every waking moment to keeping her safe.
But now that we were together—married by stars and auroras—the fear of her being ripped from me, by death or other disasters made my fury blaze.
I could spend my entire lifetime fighting to keep her safe.
From everything.
But in the end, the one thing I could never keep her safe from...
Is me.
Feral ferocity roared through me. I fell into a red haze. A haze of passion, punishment, and pain. Biting, kissing, branding my way down her neck, my hand slinked under her back and tore at her bikini bow. She cried out as I ripped the triangles away and threw them behind me.
She shivered as I froze at her bareness. At how hard her nipples were. At how golden her skin gleamed from the sun. With sunshine glowing all around us, she looked exactly like what she’d been on the seafloor. A siren. A nymph. A creature skilled at dooming men and enslaving their mortal souls for all eternity.
Another burst of lusty anger billowed like wildfire in my veins. Ocean droplets fell from my hair as I bent over her and latched my mouth around her left nipple.