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Staring down between us, I notch myself inside of her. Just the tip, but when her brows come together, I don’t push, even if I have a sudden need to be balls deep. As much as she tries to play this game of unrequited feelings, she’s still young. Perhaps inexperienced. Emotionally fragile, in some ways.

I push further, feeling her warm walls clamp hard around my shaft, and I’m chewing my tongue to keep from ramming myself up into her.

“Thierry, wait.” The worry in her voice has me glancing up to see her biting her lip, brows pinched tight. Struggling to take me inside.

“You’re not a virgin, are you?” She never bled in the woods, with the knife, but perhaps she’s never had an actual dick inside her.

She shakes her head. “I’ve just not …. It’s been a while. Since I’ve done this.”

Instead for forcing my way in, I wrap her legs around me and lift her up, carrying her down the hallway to the bedroom. Once there, I set her on the mattress, and I edge in a little deeper, watching her eyes shutter.

“I’ll take it slow, ma belle.”

Her eyes flip back open, and it’s then I realize what I just said. She doesn’t even have to speak French to know I essentially called her mine. Christ.

The moment she surrenders herself to me, a strange feeling fills my chest. With her hair fanned out over the white sheets, those green eyes staring back at me, a pink blush to her cheeks, she’s my undoing. A willing sacrifice. The magnificent aftermath, when a demon corrupts an angel.

With slow and tiny thrusts, I work my way inside, her soft sheath squeezing my shaft. I pin her to the bed, taking in the hint of fear in her wide eyes that stare back at me. The same look that prompted me to go easy on her out in the woods.

The rapid rise and fall of her chest draws my eyes to where my borrowed shirt stretches over her breasts. With my free hand, I circle my thumb over her nipple with every nudge of my dick, in an effort to distract her. “Relax.”

Green eyes flutter shut, and she shudders a breath, as if she’s consumed by whatever’s going on inside her head. I drive my hips a little further, and her brows come together in what looks to be a cross between pleasure and pain.

“Open your eyes. You wanted me to look you in the eyes when I do this. So open them,” I grit out, holding back the urge to plow into her like a battering ram.

When she does, something stirs inside of me. Everything that she is, every lie, every truth—it’s laid bare and naked. I see her as much as she sees me. No pills. No barriers. No boundaries. In this space, there is only Céleste.

The real Céleste.

Slowing my pace to long, languid thrusts, I continue to study her. The tiny scar at the corner of her eye. The much larger one across her jaw and throat. The way her top lip curves over a slightly crooked front tooth. A small freckle on her cheekbone, and the dewy glow of her skin. Everything that makes her so fucking beautiful, it hurts.

Turning her head to the side, she wears her discomfort like an innocuous shield. One thinned by her own design when she insisted that I look at her.

A tear slips out of the corner of her eye, and I brush it away with my thumb. “Am I hurting you?”

“No, you’re not hurting me. I don’t know what’s wrong. I wanted you to look at me, but I didn’t expect it to be this intense. This personal.”

“You’ve been used.”

“Yes.”

I don’t know why the thought of that makes me want to hunt down anyone and everyone who ever tried to hurt her. To avenge her honor against whatever insipid little prick tried to run off with a piece of her heart. Doesn’t make sense, given my own selfish pursuits and desires, but that’s the nature of humanity, I guess. To confuse the ever-loving fuck out of us.

For one brief moment, I allow myself to slip into the unknown. The what if. That improbable void between giving in and walking away. She’s the first I’ve allowed to step inside that dark and empty hollow, where terrifying possibilities hide in the shadows. The reality of my life, in which anything I desire, or want, becomes a fissure in the glass, a weak hand when the stakes become too high to bet. And what would I be willing to wager to call her mine? My life? Hers?

This feels too fucking good to walk away, though. With a fist full of her soft, dark curls, I take in the tilt of her head, the delicate curve of her neck, as I drive to the hilt. The flutter of eyelashes over her cheeks and the sweet look of ecstasy coloring her expression. I want to frame it for the times when she’s gone, far away from here, and I’m hard just thinking about her. “Why did you ask me to look at you?”

Still staring away, she curls her small hands over my biceps at either side of her, while I continue to pump in and out of her body, ignoring the need to come so badly, my balls feel like kettlebells. “Because I thought … I thought that …”

“You thought I’d see you differently this way.”

“You look at me like I’m some stupid little girl, but I’m not. I know men like you, Thierry. I know you don’t change for a woman. This is where I’m smarter than you, though. Where I win, in spite of you. Because even if you turn me over to those bad men? I still don’t regret this.”

She is smarter, because not even I could’ve anticipated the need building inside of me after one time with her. The ravenous craving to know what an angel looks like when she touches heaven.

What makes her so different that I’d sell my fucking soul for her right now, if she asked?

She’s crazy, that’s what. My personal shot of chaos. A drug I want to inject whenever the fuck I’m feeling too calm and settled and my blood needs a spike of absolute bedlam and turmoil. A rush of adrenaline and lust that has my heart pumping overtime, just to keep up with a sudden urge to jump off a cliff while holding hands with her.