If I were his.
By the time we get back to the suite, I’m relieved.
At first, I thought I wanted this. Holding hands down snow-dusted streets. Heated glances across candlelight. Stolen kisses in the middle of the sidewalk, as if he couldn’t hold back.
It was everything I’d secretly dreamed about.
But dreams come with consequences.
Because the whole time I kept thinking I could get used to this.
And that’s dangerous.
When the door clicks shut behind us and we’re back in the private world we know, I breathe easier. This I understand. This is safe. This is what we’re built on.
Sex. Heat. Bodies. That’s all this is. All it can be.
Except tonight, Declan isn’t the man who presses me up against the nearest wall, rough and urgent. He isn’t impatient, like he’s been starving for me all day.
He’s slow. Deliberate.
He slides my dress off my shoulders as if savoring every inch of skin revealed, pressing open-mouthed kisses along the curve of my neck. His hands glide down my body with a patience I’ve never seen in him.
When he lays me out on the bed and pushes inside of me, it’s not filled with desperation or hunger. Instead, his motions have a kind of reverence I don’t know what to do with. His hand slides down my arm, not to pin my wrist like usual, but to lace our fingers together. He holds me there, not restrained but tethered. Connected.
It terrifies me.
I close my eyes, needing to distance myself from him. Fromthis.
“Don’t,” he rasps. “Look at me.” His voice is low. Commanding.
I force my eyes open, and the sight of him nearly undoes me. His gaze is molten, fierce, threaded with something I don’t dare name.
It’s too much. Too raw. Too real.
But I can’t look away.
“Declan,” I whisper, the need inside me burning hotter and brighter until I’m trembling, on the verge of tears. “Please. Harder. Faster.”
His grip tightens on my hands, his pace remaining slow and sensual.
“No,” he growls softly. “Like this. I want to feel you this way. And I want you to feel me this way. Want you to feel everything.”
And god help me, I do feel everything.
Every thrust.
Every kiss.
Every ragged breath.
It feels like he’s cracking me open from the inside out, peeling away all the defenses I’ve built, all the walls I’ve sworn to keep between us.
I hate it.
I love it.
I want more of it.
