His beauty was cruel.
How had I missed it previously, I had not a clue. I had to have ignored it. Because, for the last three months, I had dreamed of him. Every night.
But my dreams held nothing to the real him. Razor-sharp cheekbones. Upturned nose. Toned torso. The curve of his shoulders.
Just…him.
“Gedeon.” He erased the space between us, ramming his palms into my chest and pushing me against the door. Sparks of ache bloomed in the back of my head, blurring my vision?—
His lips collided with mine.
He was not gentle or pliant. He had crashed into me with enough force for his shaky sigh to vibrate through me.
Cold palms hooked behind my nape, and his thumbs mapped out a path along my ears. I clasped his waist, locking him in and sucking on his chapped bottom lip. The rough bits of dead skin melted on my tongue, the taste of him so much more exquisite than in my memories.
Gradually, the fight bubbling within him ebbed away, and I murmured into his mouth, “What do you need, Zion?” His name rumbled out of me like a wave, a full-body shudder.
His chest heaved against mine. “To feel you.”
Taking his jaw, I wiped away the crusted blood under his nose. He nipped my thumb, and my gravelly grunt made him repeat the action.
Seizing his hair, I craned his head back to assault his mouth. We writhed in hunger, unsatiated and violent, and I pushed us away from the door, toward the bed. The moment the backs of his legs hit the mattress, I shoved him onto it.
“You have no idea how long I have waited for this,” I confessed as I crawled over him. Straddling his hips, I tugged the hem of his fitted uniform shirt up.
He rushed to help me, yanking on the fabric?—
It tangled around his neck.
He pulled and yanked and tugged the synthetic material, but to no avail. “Godsdamnit.”
Batting his arms away, I maneuvered the shirt over his head myself and tossed it aside.
“I want to explore each inch of you.” I leaned in to nibble his throat, reveling in how he arched. “Learn what makes your groans falter.” I kissed down to the middle of his chest, circling his nipple and catching in between my teeth. “Your breathing hitch. Your core twitch.” Biting down on the sensitive bit of flesh, I pulled, and his hips bucked right into mine. “Just like that.”
He gripped my hoodie’s neckline. “I’m burning this.”
Chuckling at the idea of him incinerating my wardrobe like he had done with Kali’s, I jerked my hoodie over my head and discarded it somewhere behind me. I wanted no obstructions on the bed, only Zion splayed out on Kali’s fluffy duvet.
His hands roamed my front, lingered under my ribs, stroked the scar Kali had blessed me with.
Kissing down Zion’s abdomen, I licked the diagonal muscles running to his pelvis. He fisted the sheets at his sides so hard veins surfaced on his forearms.
A clang pierced his heavy breathing as I unbuckled his black belt, a standard issue for soldiers, and put it aside, on one of the two pillows resting against the ebony headboard.
He scrambled to get his zipper down?—
“No,” I objected.
He obeyed, gripping the pillow above his head, his triceps bulging in an invitation to latch onto them, to bite, to paint him in bruises.
His obedience burrowed inside me, coiling in my thighs. I flicked the single plastic button open, methodically dragged his zipper down, and pulled his cargo pants to rest below hips.
Quiet in my approach, I skimmed my lips across the top of his underwear, not a hint of my next move. Words seemed lacking at this point. Zion’s physical responses were far too mesmerizing to?—
“I don’t think I’ll last long.” His body bowed. “It’s taking everything I have?—”
I yanked his underwear to the middle of his thighs.
