"You're the only one who makes me feel safe."
Knox goes still. Completely, dangerously still.
"Sarah."
"I know you think you're too old. I know I'm running from something. I know this is complicated."
"You don't know what you're asking for."
"I know exactly what I'm asking for. I'm asking for you."
He moves fast—one second by the bar and the next his hands are in my hair, tilting my face up, and his mouth crashes down on mine.
I expect harsh. I expect claiming.
What I get is desperation.
Knox kisses me like I'm oxygen and he's been drowning. His tusks press cool against my cheeks, his tongue slides past my lips, and I melt into him. My feet leave the ground—he lifts me without effort, without breaking the kiss, and my legs wrap around his waist.
The size of him should frighten me. Seven feet of muscle and tusks and feral power, holding me against his chest like I weigh nothing.
But fear doesn't live here. Not in this room. Not in his arms.
His hands span my waist, my ribs, the curve of my hips. Each touch reverent even as his mouth turns savage. He walks us backward until my shoulders hit the wall, he pins me there, his hips grinding forward, and I feel the hard length of him through his jeans—thick and huge and straining against the denim.
"Sarah." He tears his mouth from mine, breathing ragged. "You should be with someone your own age. Someone who—"
"I don't want someone my own age." My hands frame his face, fingers tracing his jaw, the curve of his tusks. "I wantyou."
A growl rips from his throat.
"I'm forty-two years old. I've killed men. I've done things—"
"I don't care."
"You should."
"Make me."
His control snaps.
He carries me to the bed and lowers me onto dark sheets. Then he stands over me and strips off his vest and shirt, revealing green-gray skin stretched over muscle that makes my mouth water. Scars crisscross his chest and arms—old ones, faded silver. A warrior's body.
"Last chance." His voice drops lower, darker. "Tell me to stop and I walk away. We pretend this never happened."
I reach for him.
"Don't you dare walk away from me."
He's on me in a heartbeat. His mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, the hollow between my breasts. His hands slide up my thighs, under my dress, fingers hooking in the waistband of my underwear.
"I can smell how wet you are." The words vibrate against my skin. "Your scent—I've been drowning in it since the first night. Arousal and need so thick I can taste it on the back of my tongue. Do you know what that does to me? Do you know how hard my cock gets every time you walk into a room?"
He yanks my underwear down my legs, tossing it across the room.
"Knox—"
His hands push my dress up, exposing my pussy to the cool air. "I'm going to taste you first. Make you come on my tongue. Then I'm going to stretch you open with my fingers until you come again. I need to get you ready for my cock—you're so fucking small and I'm not."
