“We’ll have a thousand chances,” I promise her. “I want you by my side. Always.”
Her eyes seem to search my face before her hands come up and wrap around my neck. She slams herself against me, leg to leg, chest to chest.
“You make everything that should be unholy into something good and right and true. If you hear anything fromme ever, and choose to believe it, know that I love you. That you saved my life that night and that we’ll always be bound together. I’ve never been anything, never felt whole… until you.”
“Fuck.” It’s all there is to say. I’ve got nothing else in my arsenal. In a few sentences, filled up with all the sincerity in the world, she’s completely disarmed me.
I’d planned to steer her inside, have a serious conversation about her fucking parents, about getting her an apartment if she needs to leave, about telling her that she’s my woman now and the consequences be damned, about if she’ll have me, I’ll open up my home, my bed, my heart to her.
Instead of all that sweetness, that conversation I’d been rehearsing over and over in my head, my animal instincts roar on strong, and I need to claim her. I need to fuck her hard. Make her mine all over again.
I cart her up into my arms, my hands gripping her hips as she wraps her legs around my waist, already grinding her denim-clad core down hard over my straining erection.
If she’s gonna be my downfall, it’ll be the sweetest fucking fall that the world has ever seen.
Chapter Twenty
Leah
Iwas made for him.
I hate myself for my weakness, for what I’m doing to him, for what I’m going to do, how I’m going to hurt him, bring this great man down into the pits of hell my father has planned for him. I’m going to betray him, trap him, all in the hopes that he’s strong enough to break free because I’m not.
I wrestled with what I had to do for ages. I considered all the options. Wondering if there was a way I could double-cross my father, but I realized it was impossible. He’s too smart. Too devious. The only way any of us have a chance is for me to do as he says and hope that Steel is strong enough.
The decider was my father’s threats against my mom. Though she’s never been a real mother to me, I can’t leave the woman who brought me into this world to a fate far worse than death—even if she never cared for me. She’s as much a victim of Donovan Harris’ evil as I am.
“Stop thinking,” Steel says as he drops his head and suckles the tender skin of my neck. “Just feel it. All of it. Every raw fucking glorious second.”
I close my eyes tight and lean into him, inhaling his smoky, leather, masculine scent that I love so much. I give in to the swirling sensations that take me prisoner, twisting my insides.
I need this. This one last time. I am going to remember every single second of it, treasure it always. All I care about is Steel.
He kisses me rough, claiming my mouth, his tongue pushing through the seam of my lips, hot and demanding, and I surrender it all. I love the way his tongue fucks mine in long, luxurious strokes, an echo of the promise of what is to come.
When we reach his bedroom, and he turns the lock on the door, he drops me down, and my boots hit the floor.
I barely glance around at the sparse, ordinary furnishings because the only thing that matters is him. I love that the full golden light of day streams through the small window to the left of the bed. Love that I can take in every single detail of the glorious man in front of me.
“I want to watch you undress,” I say, panting. “Want to look at you. I want to see all your ink and your scars. I want to read that story of you, keep it inside me forever, everything that you are.”
His eyelids droop a little, and his eyes darken to a lush, smoky gray. Surprisingly, he does as I ask. His massive hands come up to unzip his leather jacket, the metal-on-metal and my harsh breathing the only sounds echoing through the room. He shrugs the vest from impossibly broad, powerful shoulders and hangs it over the chair.
He’s wearing a black T-shirt underneath, and the thin cotton fabric stretches to accommodate the width and breadth of his chest. He’s beautiful, ink scrawled all down his bronzed arms, his muscles shifting and bunching, alive under that silk sheeting.
When he sheds his shirt, my mouth goes bone dry. I’ve seen him like this before, naked, but I didn’t take the time to enjoy it. The flames of passion lick at me now, but I hold off their devouring intent and feast my eyes on the man who looksmore god than mortal, more myth than fact, but I know, for this moment, for these stolen hours, he is mine.
I let my eyes scroll over him, cataloging every single detail to memory. There will never be anyone else. Not like him.
He stands in front of me, head held high, a glorious mane of raven-black hair cascading over his shoulders. He’s more statue than man, except for all that ink, the scrolling dark ink that floods his arms and bleeds onto his chest in the form of a massive eagle, its wings spread across his shoulders, the feathers buffeting his heart.
I love the smattering of dark hair that trails lazily over his pecs, down over the ridged abs, lower to surround his navel, and then beneath his jeans.
My mouth is watering, my sex aching. I subconsciously slam my legs together, trying to stop the flood of heat stealing up my thighs, but it’s useless—since I find the denim already soaked and cool when I shift.
I drink him in, every single dark, raw inch of him. Love the thick veins that flow and pulse and trace their way over every inch of predatory muscle like the scrawling roads and river lines on a map. Love the white puckered scar on his side, an inch long, raised, but aged with the passing of years. Love the myriad of others, hints of a hard life, a life of violence, smoke, oil, gas, leather and the rushing wind of an open road.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he warns, his voice husky.
