His breath catches. Fangs extend, white against charcoal.
“You don't understand what you're asking.”
I understand everything I'm asking. His father could kill me for this. The investigation could collapse if we're compromised. Every reason I've built my life around says this is the worst possible choice at the worst possible time.
I don't care.
I've been practical all of my life. Being the one who held things together while everyone else had the privilege of shattering. I've earned this one selfish thing.
I want him. This scarred, guarded, terrifying male who feeds strays in secret and held me through my nightmares and looked at me like I was worth protecting. If his father destroys me for this, at least I'll choose it myself.
“Then show me.” A taunt. A dare. A plea.
“You want to see what I am?” He backs me against the console until the edge bites into my spine. His hands plant on either side of me, caging me in, and his face drops until his breath ghosts across my mouth. “Do you want to see what my father made me?”
My voice comes out steadier than my pulse. “You think I don't know what you've done? What you're capable of?”
“You've seen what I've allowed you to see.” A growl threads through the words. “You haven't seen what happens when I stop holding back.”
I should be afraid. He wants me to be afraid. But I've spent too many years reading bodies under pressure, cataloguing the distance between what people say and what their flesh confesses. His words snarl threat while his pupils blow wide, while his chest rises too fast, while his hands flex like he's stopping himself from reaching for me.
I go liquid. My thighs press together against the sudden ache. “Then stop holding back.”
His jaw flexes. “You'll run.”
“I don’t run.” I grab his collar and drag his face closer, until our lips almost touch. “Kepler IV. Men dying screaming while I held them together. My brother’s debt to a syndicate. You don’t scare me.”
“I should.”
“But you don't.” I hold his gaze, refusing to flinch from the hunger blazing there. “So either kiss me or admit you're the one who's afraid.”
The last thread of his restraint snaps. He hauls me against him and takes my mouth like a male who's done fighting himself. This kiss is neither controlled nor restrained. This is consumption. Claiming. His tongue strokes against mine, his fangs grazing my lower lip, and the copper-sweet taste of my blood blooms where his tooth nicks the tender flesh.
The pain should alarm me. Instead, fire floods through my veins, my body arching into his for more. I fist my fingers in his shirt and pull him closer because I want more. I want everything.
He growls against my mouth, the sound vibrating through my chest where we're pressed together. His hands slide from my face to my waist, spanning the curve, fingers splaying across my lower back before gripping my hips and hauling me against him. The ridge of his hard cock presses into my belly.
He pulls back, breathing ragged, his forehead pressed against mine. “Tell me to stop.” The words scrape out of him. “And I'll walk out that door and we'll pretend this never happened.”
I kiss him again. Hard.
He groans against my mouth, his hands tightening on my hips, and when I pull back we're both gasping.
“I don't want to stop.” The confession tears loose before I can dress it up in something safer. “Or pretend. I know this is stupid and reckless and your father will kill me, and I don't care.” My fingers curl into his shirt, holding him where I need him. “I want you. I want this.”
His snarl reverberates through me, and his cock swells against my belly, thick and hard and promising.
My legs wrap around his waist when he lifts me. His mouth stays on mine as he moves, and I'm aware of the office door sliding open, of corridor lights passing behind my closed eyelids, of his stride eating distance while his tongue strokes against mine.
I don't know where he's taking me. I don't care.
A second door opens. Closes. The air shifts, warmer, carrying his scent so strongly that I know we're in his quarters before I open my eyes. I glimpse sparse furnishings, stone walls, a bed larger than any I've seen on Vahiri, before the mattress meets my back and he follows me down.
The heat of him blankets me in a warmth I want to drown in. His hips settle between my thighs, that hard length pressing where I'm aching, and I roll against him before I can stop myself.
“Get these off.” His fingers find the hem of my shirt, and the tremor in his hands undoes me more than any smooth seduction could. He wants this badly enough to shake with it. Wants me badly enough that his legendary control has crumbled to dust.
The fabric clears my head and cool air kisses my skin for half a breath before his mouth descends to my throat. Lips. Tongue. The scrape of fangs along the tendon that jumps beneath my skin. He traces a path from my jaw to the hollow of my collarbone, and each point of contact leaves fire in its wake.
