She doesn’t blink. Simply stares straight through me like she can see the frigid iron welded into my bones.
Again, she brushes my hair back from my forehead.
“Don’t.” I knock her hand away with mine. “Never look at me like that again.”
As expected, she flinches. Though I don’t understand why her eyes soften, or why her muscles relax against my body.
She should want to run. Instead, she settles, reading me more accurately than I thought possible.
I can’t let that stand. Her gazing at me like I’m fragile and worth mending is a detriment. I’ve never been that.
Rather than shrink, she grows bolder. “You don’t have to?—”
I crush my mouth against hers, swallowing whatever mercy she thinks she should offer. This isn’t the first time, and it’s not an accident. No loss of control here.
This is a deliberate a lesson.
I will take anything I want from her. Her empathy is wasted on me.
I expect her to freeze. To push back. To fight the claim.
Fight or flight are her only options, but somehow, Jordan chooses neither.
She groans and presses closer. The hand that brushed my hair now tangles in the strands.
And that, somehow, is the worst of all.
I don’t expect her body to melt against mine, tension pooling to nothing and slipping away like water from cupped hands.
I don’t anticipate my own reaction either. A jagged, hungry need that implodes inside me. An urge to eat Jordan alive, to consume every last bit of her.
My palms, which just a breath ago pinned her face in place to demand she learn her lesson, drop to her waist, her hips.
A desire to control her, to dominate, to show her I’m not weak… That would be reasonable.
What’s unreasonable is my need to mark her. To stake my raw and reckless claim on the only person who’s ever tried to thaw the ice inside me.
My fingers skim up her sides, the fabric of her clothes bunching under my fingers. I have to—needto—touch skin. I shove the shirt up, chasing heat, anchoring myself in the reality of her. My thumbs glide along the angles of her ribs.
She’s already gained a little weight from the decent meals I’ve given her the past few days, just enough to round out her cheeks and smooth the sharpness of her bones.
She’s fucking gorgeous.
My hands climb higher, cupping the soft weight of her breasts. I brush the pads of my thumbs over her nipples.
She moans into my mouth, the vibration punching between us like a live wire.
I want to swallow the noise down, drink her up, then draw it out again.
Her head falls back, baring her throat. She shouldn’t offer, but I can’t refuse.
I haul her up, force her feet off the ground, and slam her against the wall. My body pins hers, chest to chest, our hips grinding fast and rough in my primitive, wordless claim.
Mine.
The word comes unbidden. I should run as far from the thought as I can.
Instead, the idea pours gasoline on the fire in my veins.
