Clutching him closer, I gasped as whatever self-restraint he had left snapped.
His tongue delved into my mouth, kissing me desperately. He held onto me as if he was terrified I would vanish. His hands were everywhere—my hair, my neck, my breasts—touching everything as if he needed constant proof I was real.
The more he touched, the more my body responded.
Wicked, dangerous power flooded me with every heartbeat. That odd coldness that’d started answering to Lucien’s heat no longer just tiptoed through me butgushed.It turned wild and hungry, sending frost rippling through my veins and freezing my heartbeats...but I wasn’t cold.
I was...perfect. Absolutely perfect because I didn’t feel any pain.
For the first time since I could remember, I didn’t suffer a single drop of misery—no headaches, no nausea, no weakness.
The floodgates unlocked. Frost turned to snow, whipping the air into eddies as my emotions burst free.
Every feeling I’d done my best not to feel—every worry, every fear, every joy and ecstasy and desire—feelings that always ended with me in agony and passed out—erupted all at once.
My body plunged from icy to arctic.
My vision fractured as the connection I felt to Lucien turned feral—demanding, wanting, clawing,claiming—
I couldn’t stop it.
Couldn’t control it.
I arched under the force of far too many things.
“I’ve got you.” Lucien was there in the heart of my storm, the fire in his blood parting my coldness like a hot knife. “You’re safe.” His arms tightened in the fiercest embrace and his lips captured mine again.
I kissed him with everything I had.
I’d never felt so...free.
My fingers fisted in his hair, tugging him closer, needing more, more,more. Needing his heat, his weight, his fire. That sparkling tether lashing us together grew stronger and stronger.
I could feel himeverywhere—in my blood, my soul, my heart.
I couldn’t extract him from where he’d taken root, consuming me with every breath.
Mine.
The word echoed like a tuning fork as his mouth slid along my jaw, my throat, my collarbone. I arched without thinking—hungry and unashamed, shaking with need so sharp, it turned every other thought into confetti.
The more we kissed, the more my senses magnified until I dwelled in a different dimension of hypersensitivity.
His scent...something I’d never even thought about, suddenly became the best thing in the world.
Burning cedar. Charred amber. Rich and smoky, male and powerful.
Every inhale made me dizzy and drunk.
My entire soul locked onto him with predatory focus.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
I wanted him.
