He sees it and his eyes darken with intent. He kisses me once, deep and filthy, then drops his mouth to my throat while his hand goes back between mylegs.
The room narrows to rain, thunder, the blue-white spill of his phone, and the drag of his fingers building me higher.
I glance toward the nightstand once when lightning flashes. The lamp is still dead. The phone light still burns.
Shiloh follows my line of sight and presses a kiss just under my ear. “You’ve got light, darlin’. I’ve got you.”
Something inside me gives over.
I come harder than I’m prepared for, shaking and clutching at him, face buried against his shoulder so I don’t hear how broken I sound. He talks me through it in that low velvet voice—praise and heat and softness laced with rougher words that make my body spark all over again.
When it passes, I’m boneless and raw in the best and worst way.
He brushes damp hair off my forehead and searches my face. “You okay?”
No one ever asks that like they mean it. No one I can afford to trust, anyway. I nod.
His gaze drops to my wrist. The rubber bands left red welts and one angry raised line. His thumb ghosts over the marks so lightly it barely counts as touch.
He doesn’t ask. That almost undoes me more than the rest.
He hooks his fingers into the hem of my sleep shirt and waits. “Can I?”
I should say no, but instead I lift my arms.
The shirt goes over my head and disappears into the dark. Cool air skates over my skin. His gaze drags down the length of my body and back up, slow enough to feel like a hand, somehow both greedy and reverent all at once.
“Tell me what you want,” he says, voice rough and low.
The answer sits behind my teeth, split in two.
I want information.
I want revenge.
I want Deacon dead.
I want this man out of my bed before he tangles himself into places I can’t cut him from cleanly. But my body is traitorous and honest where my mind denies the truth.
“I just want you,” I whisper.
His eyes close for a beat like my admission costs him something.
He kisses me again, slower than before, and shifts between my thighs. One hand braces by my head. The other finds mine and laces our fingers together against the sheet.
The intimacy of that almost makes me pull back, but he tips my chin up so our eyes meet, and he waits.
When I give him a small nod, he lines himself up and pushes in, slow and careful and devastating in a completely different way than the first time, never once taking his eyes off me.
I gasp and his mouth is there to catch it.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Breathe. Take what you need.”
No one has ever said it like that.
Take. Not give. Not earn. Not deserve.
Take.
