Holy shit. Are you doing this? For real?
Then he’s pushing the fabric higher. Slowly. Inch by inch. Cool air hits my stomach, my ribs, the small of my back?—
Alec goes completely still.
The change is instant. One second, he’s all heat and barely-restrained hunger. The next, he’s turned to stone behind me.
His fingers move again, but differently now. Gentle. So impossibly gentle it makes my throat tight. They trace over my skin in featherlight strokes, mapping something I’d forgotten was there.
The bruises from that night.
“Who did this to you?”
His voice is quiet. Controlled. And somehow, that’s more terrifying than if he’d shouted. There’s something in those words that promises violence. Retribution. Blood.
My eyes sting. Stupid self-consciousness hits me, even though I know it has no reason to. It’s Theodore’s fault, not mine.
“You know who,” I whisper.
Alec’s fingers continue their gentle path across the fading marks. Each touch feels like a vow. Like he’s memorizing them. Cataloging them. Adding them to a list of sins that Theodore will pay for.
“That night,” I add, my voice barely audible. “When I ran.”
The silence stretches. I can feel his rage like a physical thing, radiating off him in waves. But his hands stay gentle. Reverent, almost.
“I willnever…” He slides his hand up my back until it lands at the base of my head. His fingers curl into my hair, squeezing gently. His lips brush my ear. “…let him touch you again.”
He’s said as much a few times now. But the way he says it now has me really believing him. There’s something in Alec’s tone that brooks no room for argument or insecurity.
Hewillprotect me.
And for the first time since I met him, I allow myself to want and accept that. I allow myself to crave everything he’s promising with his words and his body.
Pulling my head back so that it drapes over his shoulder, Alec leans down and kisses me. My entire body rings like it’s been struck by lightning, and my hands come up to his face, pulling him closer.
This is fucking wild. But goddamn, do I want it.
Whatever tension was there, waiting to break, it snaps, and in a flurry of activity, Alec spins me around and kisses the hell out of me before tracing his lips down my throat to my chest.
“Tell me to stop,” he mumbles against my skin, his fingers digging into my hips. “Tell me to get lost.”
The claim in his touch is at war with his words, and then he’s sinking lower, dropping to his knees on the floor as he works his kisses down my stomach to my hip bone.
“I…” A whine escapes me as Alec teases me with his touch, one hand lifting my leg to the side as the other pushes me back against the counter. “I… don’t want to.”
“Dammit, Claire. I…” He sounds so strained, like he’s fighting a losing battle with himself. His hands come to the button of my jeans, popping it free. “Ineedto taste you. Need to know what’s mine.”
Mine.
The word shoots through me like electricity.
My eyes are squeezed closed as I nod, my breathing rocketing in and out of me. The zipper of my pants is yanked down, and then the jeans are sliding down my legs.
Alec pulls one foot out and then the next. I’m standing in my kitchen in my panties with a six-foot stud poised between my thighs.
Is this real?
“You know I’ll protect you, right, Claire?” I can barely think straight, still nodding. “Say it. I need to hear you say it.”
