Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72543 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72543 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
With gentle fingers, I caress her hair from her eyes. “Alana,” I murmur softly.
Her lashes flutter and lift. “Damion?”
Her voice is a delicate breeze washing away the heat of a day that all but burned me straight to hell. “Yes,” I say, a curve to my lips. “I hope you weren’t expecting someone else.”
She laughs and sits up, the pink silk of her gown tugging low, exposing the lush swell of her breasts, her nipples puckered beneath the thin material. She catches herself on the arm of the chair, and she groans. “I’m not very steady.”
I glance at the bottle with the amber line that’s decidedly lower than when I left and arch a brow at her. “Had a little to drink?”
“Yes,” she admits, pressing her hand to her face a moment before she lays it on my arm. Her touch is gentle, but there is nothing gentle about how badly I want her right now. “But,” she adds, “in my defense, it was the only way I could keep from calling you over and over again when that’s exactly what I wanted to do. And I know good and well if I would have been calling you, freaking out and worried, it would have driven home your need to act against your father. You were not in the headspace to do that tonight.”
She’s right on all points, and she is the only person in my life who has ever really understood me, and we’ve been apart for damn near a decade. Love for this woman swells inside me. “There’s a reason I said no one else could wear that ring and be believable. Because there was never anyone else who knew me like you, and never anyone else I’d give a ring to.” Before she can react and tell me to stop talking about such things, I push to my feet and take her with me, but not for long. I sit and pull her on top of me, her legs straddling my hips and her hands pressing to my chest. “Now, where were we?” I ease the silk of her robe aside, and kiss the delicate skin of her shoulder before glancing up at her. “Do you remember?”
“Tell me what happened tonight first.”
“More of the same, and that’s an absolute promise.”
She presses her hands to my face and she tilts my gaze to hers, searching my eyes, seeking the truth, and she’s the only person I believe could find it just this easily. “You should have stayed with me.” Her hands fall away and resettle on my shoulders.
“I do always seem to decide the answer is to leave you, don’t I?”
“Yes, and it scares me, Damion. I can’t get this invested and have you do that to me again.”
“I ran to try and fix things. I didn’t run away.” I slide my hand up her back, fingers splaying between her shoulder blades as I mold her close. “I’m done with that. You’re stuck with me now.” I caress her robe down her arms and tangle her hands in the silk. “You’re mine now, to do with what I please.”
“I’m your willing sex slave, Damion West,” she says, her voice and stare unwavering. “You don’t have to hold me prisoner.”
It’s a bold and playful statement in a way most wouldn’t expect of good-girl Alana, but we have a long history in which we’d said just about anything to each other. And this isn’t as playful as it seems, anyway. It’s about the many ways the past is a blade that cut us both and left us to bleed out, an ocean between us, and yet we’ve come together here, now, this night, the rest of this lifetime, more whole than either of us have been in a very long time.
My blood runs hot, my cock thick against the press of her sex to my zipper, and I tug her forward, her warm, soft curves settling against me. “Careful what you ask for, baby.”
“I thought we were done with careful,” she counters.
“Let’s find out how ready you really are,” I say, cupping her head and claiming her mouth, hunger in the way I kiss her, possession. She’s mine. She needs to know it, and so does everyone else.
Chapter forty-four
Alana
Let’s see how ready you really are.
Damion’s barely spoken those words when he leans in close, nuzzling my neck, and I swear he inhales my scent, as if he’s savoring it, the very act lifting goosebumps on my skin. “Do you know how many fantasies I have of you,” he declares, his teeth scraping my shoulder, and I suck in a breath at the erotic bite, trying to process his words.
He fantasizes about me.
I fantasize about him. So many times. So many ways.
His free hand flattens on my back, his touch searing, heat radiating against my skin and through my gown. He stands and takes me with him, and immediately begins to unbutton his shirt, but when I’m anxious, eager to touch him and help him, when I would free my hands, he catches them behind me and drags me to him. “Leave it,” he orders softly, his hand sliding over my breasts, and tugging down my gown, his fingers tugging roughly at the stiff peak of my nipple, pinching it to the point that I squeeze my eyes shut and gasp. And just when I think I can take no more, “Damion,” I pant out, his lips and tongue are around the offended nipple, licking and soothing it.