I already knew Kage was intense, but I’m unprepared for the violence of his need when he gets me down onto the bed.
Whatever he’s been holding back up to now is unleashed.
With a vengeance.
Kneeling on the mattress over me, he rips open the bodice of my dress. The sound of tearing fabric is almost as loud as the sound of my ragged breathing. Then he drags his shirt off over his head, falls on top of me with a snarl, shoves my bra up under my chin, and latches onto one of my rigid nipples.
He greedily sucks it into his mouth.
When I cry out, he pauses his voracious sucking long enough to growl, “Gentle next time. This time, I’m gonna give you my marks.”
He sinks his teeth into the tender flesh below my nipple.
I groan, writhing underneath him. It hurts, but it also feels incredible. Shock waves of pleasure surge through my body from his stinging bite.
He does the same to my other breast, biting it like he wants to devour me whole.
Then he rears back, rolls me onto my belly, unhooks my bra with a practiced flick of his fingers, and yanks my dress down my hips and off my legs. My panties get the same rough treatment.
He tosses everything to the floor. When I look up over my shoulder at him, he’s staring down at my naked body with wild eyes and flared nostrils, tattooed chest heaving, his jaw and big fists clenched.
A thrill runs through me.
It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt. Part terror, part desire, and part pure adrenaline, it raises goose bumps on my arms and legs and makes my wild heartbeat go arrhythmic.
The way he wants me makes me feel superhuman. Like I’m capable of anything. Like all my atoms are vibrating at a dangerously high speed, threatening to crack me wide open.
Like I could levitate right off this bed and set the whole house on fire.
Looking up into his blazing dark eyes, I realize this is the first time in my life I haven’t been afraid to be myself. The first time I haven’t been scared of being judged. The first time I don’t care about doing the safe thing, the smart thing, the thing I “should” do.
The first time I’ve felt truly free.
I whisper, “Do it, then. Do it all. Give me all of you. And don’t you dare hold back.”
In his split second of hesitation, he moistens his lips. His lids drift lower.
Then he grabs me by the ankles, drags me to the edge of the bed, leans down, and takes a big, greedy mouthful of my ass.
He sinks his teeth into it with an animal’s snarl.
It’s a primitive sound of victory. Like a lion gloating over a fresh kill.
Then in place of his teeth, I get his hand. His open palm meets the spot his mouth just was with a stinging crack that makes me jump and yelp in shock.
He starts to speak to me in Russian.
Harsh, guttural Russian, the words spoken through clenched teeth.
It’s so hot, I can barely stand it.
He flips me onto my back, pulls my bra off, flings it away, and kisses me deeply, biting my lips. He’s breathing hard, and his hands are shaking. I know he’s teetering out on a thin ledge of self-control, just barely holding himself back because he’s worried that if he lets go completely like I demanded, he’ll hurt me.
That this huge, dangerous man can also be so sweet and tender almost brings tears to my eyes.
I wrap my legs around his waist and kiss him back even harder, pulling at his hair.
He bites my earlobe. My neck. My shoulder. I laugh breathlessly, feeling crazed.
He kisses and nips his way down my body. I’d say fondling, too, but his hands are rougher than that. Greedier. He takes big handfuls of my flesh wherever he can, grasping my breasts and hips, his mouth following the trail his fingers blaze.
When he bites my inner thigh, I moan.
He freezes. Rasps, “Too much?”
“God, no. Don’t stop.”
He turns his face to my other thigh and sinks his teeth into the tender flesh there, too. I arch my back, wanting his demanding hot mouth in other places.
Like—there.
He gives me exactly what I’m arching up for, latching onto my clitoris and pulling at it with his lips. I make a sound I’m sure I’ve never made before, one of total delirium.
Then he flattens his hand over my belly to hold me down and eats me to within an inch of my life as I lie there with my legs spread, moaning and writhing, wantonly rocking my hips against his face.
When he slides two fingers inside me and scrapes his teeth against my clit, I come.
My orgasm is sudden and violent. An explosion of pleasure. I crack wide open for him, shuddering and screaming his name.
He rips open the fly of his jeans, fumbling at it, his mouth still devouring me. He surges up onto one hand on the bed. The other is at his crotch. I catch a glimpse of his erection, jutting from his fist, before he shoves it deep inside me.
We groan at the same time. Stretched open around his huge, hard cock, I claw my fingernails into his back.
His voice comes low and ragged. “Yes, baby. You give me your marks, too.”
Then he fucks me, deep and hard, thrusting wildly into me like his life depends on it.
I hook my ankles behind his back and hold on.
My breasts bounce. My lungs ache. My skin breaks out in a sweat. He drives into me over and over, balancing on one hand over me, the other gripping my ass and pulling me closer with every hard thrust of his hips.
Against the soundtrack of my own helpless cries and his chest-deep grunts of pleasure, I climax again.
My entire body tenses. My head tips back. I bow against the bed, jerking, impaled on his cock, convulsing around the invading girth of it.
He slows the motion of his hips. Drops to his elbows. Puts his mouth near my ear.
“Mine now,” he whispers hotly, his voice triumphant. “You come on my cock, you’re mine.”
I sob, feeling like the last cord that tethered me to earth has unraveled and sent me pinwheeling into the vast blackness of outer space.
Somewhere deep down inside, I know that this is what I was afraid of. This moment, right here.
The moment when I finally give myself to him, heart and soul, body and mind, surrendering completely.
There’s no turning back now. No changing my mind.
What surprises me is that I don’t want there to be.
No matter who or what he is, I don’t care.
I’m all in.
I pull his head down and kiss him hard, knowing as I do that the girl I was before this moment no longer exists. When we rise from this bed, it will be as one person, not two.
I guess he and I are alike in that way: there’s no halfway for either of us.
We’re both all in or nothing.
He commands, “Give me your eyes.”
I open them and stare up at him through a blissful haze. He looks beautiful, otherworldly, his gaze burning hot, his brow furrowed with intensity.
He picks up the pace of his thrusting, and I get that he wants me to watch him climax. When he comes inside me, he wants us both to have our eyes wide open so we can see everything plainly, all there is between us as we share our bodies and breath.
He said it, but he wants me to know it: I belong to him now.
Just as he belongs to me.
I reach up and touch his face. I murmur, “All those years I spent waiting…I don’t think it was for him anymore. I think it was for you.”
He shudders, moans, drops his hot forehead to my neck. Then he empties himself inside me with a series of short, jerking thrusts, gripping my hair and whispering brokenly in Russian.
I wrap my arms around his back and my legs around his waist and close my eyes, feeling like I’m flying.
Feeling like I’m finally, finally home.
We doze.
After a while, Kage rouses from my arms and gets undressed, standing at the side of the bed and quickly peeling off his jeans, briefs, and boots, impatient to return to me. He crawls back into my arms and nuzzles my breasts, pulling me against his big, warm body. Tangling his strong legs between mine.
“Why are you laughing?”
I open my eyes and look at him. Even sweaty and disheveled, his messy dark hair falling into his eyes, he’s so handsome, it takes my breath away.
“Because you left your shoes on.”
He crinkles his nose. It’s adorable. “I was in a hurry.”
“You don’t say?”
He quirks his lips and examines me from under lowered lashes. “Is my woman trying to tell me I left her unsatisfied?”
“My woman.” A little thrill runs through me, hearing those words.
This relationship is probably going to be a total disaster, but right now, I’m so happy, I could burst.
Smiling, I stretch against him, pressing my breasts to the hard expanse of his chest. I love how hard he is.
Hard everywhere except for his eyes, which are achingly, adoringly soft.
“Nope. Just making an observation.”
He pulls me closer. We’re lying on our sides. I’m tucked into him, perfectly safe and warm, his scent in my nose and the slow, steady thump of his heart next to my ear. I could stay in this exact spot forever.
Into my hair, he whispers, “I have an observation, too.”
“Which is?”
“I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than you when you come.”
My face flushes. I can’t tell if that feeling in my chest is pride or embarrassment, but I kind of like it.
“Ditto.”
He pauses. “Ditto? That’s my postcoital compliment?”
“Postcoital? We’re breaking out all the big words, I see.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m just a pretty face.”
He’s teasing. I love it when he teases me. It happens so infrequently. I say lightly, “Oh, no, I don’t. You have all kinds of impressive qualities besides your ravishing beauty.”
Another pause, this one longer.
I say, “You’re thinking the term ‘ravishing beauty’ doesn’t gel with your blistering machismo, am I right?”
“I mean, I guess it’s flattering.”
He sounds disturbed. I stifle a laugh, trying to play serious. “Except?”
“Except it makes me sound like a debutante in a Regency romance novel.”
It’s my turn to be disturbed. “How the hell do you know what a Regency romance novel is?”
“I have eclectic taste in literature.”
Incredulous, I rear up onto an elbow and stare at him. He’s smiling at me lazily, looking smug.
I say flatly, “You read romance.”
He pretends innocence, widening his eyes. “Why? Is that not something a ‘real’ man should do?”
I smack him on his brick wall of a pectoral muscle. “You’re pulling my leg.”
He goes from teasing to smoldering in the blink of an eye, growling, “I’d rather be pulling your hair as I fuck that delicious cunt of yours again.”
My god, the way he talks. The man is the Shakespeare of smut.
“You just did that.”
“Eons ago.”
“It was like twenty minutes.”
“Like I said. Eons.”
He grabs me and growls into my neck, making me squeal. Then he rolls on top of me, giving me all his substantial weight. I exhale with an audible oof.
“You weigh a ton!”
“You love it.”
I think for a moment, feeling him all over me. He’s a huge, all-man blanket, surrounding me and keeping me safe. Smashing me, but also keeping me safe.
He’s right. I do love it.
His chuckle shakes his chest. “Told you.”
“Quit being smug, you big—”
He captures my mouth before I can sass him more and kisses me deeply. I sink into the mattress, luxuriating in his taste and the heat he’s generating, until my lungs are about to collapse.
Slapping weakly at his back, I bleat, “Help. Suffocating. Death is imminent.”
“Drama queen.” He rolls over to his back, taking me with him.
I stiffen in surprise, then relax. Splayed on top of him, I grin down at his face. “Ah-ha! Now I’ve got you exactly where I want you.”
“This is where you want me? Flat on my back?”
I kiss him softly on the lips. “Yes. Flat on your back and helpless against me.”
Exhaling, his eyes thoughtful, he drags his hands through my hair. He murmurs, “My beautiful girl. I’ve been helpless against you from the first day we met.”
My heart skips a beat. There’s something far away in his gaze.
Something sad.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Not bad. Just complicated.”
Examining his expression, I say, “I take it you’re not going to explain that.”
“Believe me when I say you don’t want me to.”
A little alarm bell goes off in the back of my mind when I realize he’s avoiding my eyes.
But this is what it is. What we are. What I’ve agreed to.
Secrets.
Not lies, but secrets—a lot of them—and distance, all in the name of keeping me safe.
Screw it.
If that’s the price for being with him, I’ll pay it. I spent too long walking through my days as a zombie to pass up this electric new life, even if it does have its dark sides.
All fairy tales do.
