Her soothing scent of wildflowers wrapped around him like an empty hug, trapping him.
Hell. Even away from her, she haunted him.
Groaning, he flung his arm over his eyes.
“Nik?” A hand gently touched his shoulder, and he went motionless.
A dream?
He didn’t care. He gave in to this overwhelming need to hold her, to take her chaos that blanketed his own madness. He dragged her kneeling form into his arms, settling her spine against his front, spooning her.
Fingers stroked his forearm, and she glanced over her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Not a dream then. He was inherroom…shit.
Dangerous. Leave.
But he couldn’t make himself move. He needed this—just for a moment.
Nik grunted and pressed his face into her silky hair…she came to him during his darkest torment.
“Oh, god, Nik.” A gasp escaped her, and she lifted blood-smeared fingers. “You’re bleeding!”
“I’m fine.” He swiped her hand on his shirt, then held her closer, submerging himself in her warmth—a warmth that seeped into him, soothing the eons old cold within. But holding her this way ignited a whole other problem. With her tempting bottom snug against his groin, his cock hardened uncomfortably, trapped behind the zipper of his leathers.
For fuck’s sake.
As if sensing his mood, she glanced back at him again, a faint tinge of pink stealing into her pale cheeks, but she didn’t pull away from the hard-on he sported. The reds in her eyes more noticeable in the gloom. An agonizing reminder she possessed a part of a genus responsible for his agony and torture, that left him trapped with those malevolent souls for millennia, and an aching emptiness that nothing could ever fill.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Like he could ever reveal the truth of his fucked-up life.
But she drew him like a beckoning flame. A dark, tortured groan of need escaped him. He threaded his fingers through her hair and crushed his mouth to hers, licking, nipping, and tasting her lips. With a soft moan, she turned in his arms, and he deepened the kiss. She pressed into him, sucking on his tongue, tugging on his piercing, a dragging sensation that punched him straight in his groin. Helpless to resist, Nik let himself sink into the feelings she drew from him, where nothing mattered. Just her, and this intense connection between them.
He ran his palms down her warm body to her hips, past the t-shirt twisted around her waist. He splayed his fingers on her warm, panty-covered bottom, holding her to him, desire burning his blood like a flame. A whimper escaped her.Theós. He drank in her scent, her taste, hungered for more—
The agitated souls thrashed harder, sensing freedom at his whirling emotions, looking for a chink in his armor.
Fuck—no, not now.
He couldn’t—he didn’t dare risk her.
Gently, Nik removed her arms from his neck, regret cleaving him in two. He didn’t want to start something they could never finish. Scraping every fragment of willpower he possessed, he bolted his mind’s shields, shutting out his longing for her.
He should leave, walk out. Instead, he shifted her, spooning her once more. Ignoring his aching dick, he buried his face in her nape again, unable to move.
Just holding her seemed to give him a little bit of his sanity back, and he drank in the sensation like a desert experiencing its first rains.
* * *
Shadow pressed her fingers to her swollen mouth, still reeling that Nik had kissed her. After their earlier fight in the elevator, she’d been dead sure he wouldn’t bother coming back to check on her, let alone sleep on the carpet in her room or kiss her with so much hunger.
And she’d finally given in to her attraction to him.
However, he didn’t want more. It wasn’t as if she was asking for a commitment. Any other guy would have already had her flat on her back, except for Nik. He drew her closer, wrapping his arm around her as ifthiswas all the connection he needed.
She swallowed her disappointment, gently pressing a hand to her wounded chest, trying to shut off her own need for him. Just as well, because it would be wading into disaster if she let this attraction…this yearning for him take over.
