I never spend another night with Jag Rath.
Present day
Every inch of distance I planned to keep is gone.The reason I sneaked onto the island, the stoic goodbye I practiced, it all goes up in smoke as Dove’s mouth yields beneath mine.
Her fingers twist into the front of my shirt, dragging me closer.Close enough to feel that she’s hurting and angry and still mine in ways she’ll never admit out loud.
I grip her waist so urgently her breath breaks against my lips.Then she kisses me harder, pressing every bit of her tongue into my mouth.
She kisses me like that night seventeen years ago.The night she was dripping need and innocence and climbing inside my pants because she thought I was good enough for her.
It’s the same desperation now.But stronger.Older.Damaged.
Her lips cling to mine, her tongue chasing, demanding, and furious.Furious she still needs me this much and frantic to swallow the years we lost.
Every exhale she gives me is hot and vicious, filled with memories I never let myself think about.
Seventeen years of wanting her rips through me in a single rush, and my body answers with zero hesitation.
I’m hard in an instant.Painfully.Stupidly.And she feels it.
Her whole body shudders against mine.A choked sound slips into my mouth.Then she wrenches me deeper into the kiss.
Fuck me.
My hand flies to her hip, her thigh, then the curve of her ass where I’ve imagined holding her a thousand times.
She arches into it, and I know she’s thinking about our life together on the streets.Not everything.Not the worst parts.But the parts where she trusted me.The parts where she loved me.
Her breath trembles, brushing my cheek, my jaw, my throat as she tries to keep up with the pace we’re both sprinting toward.
I recapture her mouth and kiss her like our lives depend on it.She opens for me, melting and clawing, fierce and hungry, her tongue sliding and dueling and rocketing heat through my groin.
My pulse jackhammers.I can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but feel her pressing up against the seventeen-year void in my chest.
With her hands in my hair and her breath hot on my tongue, she brings every buried thing inside me back to life.
The longing.
The fury.
The stupid, stubborn hope I thought I burned out of myself years ago.
I’ve waited half my life to feel her like this again.To feel her shaking and clinging and kissing me like she remembers who we were before I destroyed everything.
But it doesn’t last.
I know the moment her mind replays what I did that night.She tenses and rips her mouth away with a cry.
“No.”She flattens her hands on my chest and shoves.“No!Don’t touch me!”
I miss her lips so desperately I pull her back.
Until the cold, unmistakable edge of a blade presses against my throat.
Wolfson Strakh is the only person on the planet who can sneak up on me.
“Lower your hands, or I’ll remove those first.”He fists my hair and wrenches my head back, exposing the line of my neck.“Then I’ll open your throat.”
