Page 136

“I… How am I supposed to relax?” I shift closer without meaning to until our chests brush beneath the tangled sheets, my thighs parting around him as I feel the blunt press of his cock against my stomach. “You keep touching me like you already know exactly what it does to me.”

Ciaran pauses, his eyes tracking the way my pulse jumps in my throat. “Yeah, do you feel good, little mouse? Not too sore from last night?”

I bite my lower lip until it stings and shake my head, watching his thumb glide across the shape of my mouth.

“Instead of thinking, just feel my mouth.” His tongue follows his thumb to soothe the skin I just bit. “I can see you spiraling. You’re doing so well, baby.”

He widens his fingers inside me, and my cock pulses against his stomach. It grows harder as he brushes against my walls, and I can feel my body adjusting to him, tightening around his touch, yielding in ways I never thought I was capable of.

A sharp rush of arousal tears through me so fast it makes my thoughts blur at the edges, leaving me reckless enough to thread my fingers through his hair and pull him closer.

“Yes,” he groans, voice rougher now. “Go ahead and kiss me. You know you want to.”

“You’re unbearable,” I whisper, the words collapsing the second they leave my mouth.

“And yet?”

“I still let you touch me.”

My fingers tighten in his hair as my lips crash against his, the slick sound of him moving inside me almost too intimate, too vulnerable. It unravels me in ways I don’t understand, dragging out a side of myself that only Ciaran apparently knows how to reach.

He moans into my mouth, his fingers tangling in my hair while his other hand closes around my throat, holding me there with a possessiveness that makes my pulse stutter. His tongue slides against mine, slow and relentless, turning the kiss into something messy and consuming.

I can’t seem to pull away from him. Maybe I’m becoming obsessed with it—his intoxicating taste, the heat of his mouth, the impossible strength of him pressed against me. Or maybe it’s the way he seems to soften whenever I touch him, like all that control cracks open for me and me alone. As if, for both of us, the rest of the world disappears the second we touch.

Ciaran presses another finger deeper inside me, filling me so completely I groan against his lips.

“Light,” I whisper. “That feels…”

“Talk to me,” he says against my mouth, slowing. “Tell me what’s happening in that head of yours, little mouse.”

“I’m aching for you. You know that.”

“I won’t know until you tell me.” He smiles against my mouth. “I want to hear that voice of yours when you’re this wrecked.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.” Using his grip on my waist, he lifts me until my weight sinks fully onto his lap.

My cock brushes against his stomach, the skin there damp with heat while I push up instinctively, unable to look away from him.

Then he shifts me closer and pulls his fingers slowly from inside me, his cock nudging against my hole at the same time.

My breathing stutters as I lick my lips.

His gaze hooks into mine. “There’s something about you, little mouse, that makes me want to keep you.”

The words hit somewhere deep inside me, terrifying enough that my pulse jumps hard against my ribs.

This is really happening. We are doing this again, and I want it. Accepting my attraction to Ciaran was the first step, one I haven’t really come to terms with yet, but letting him hold me like this feels far more dangerous.

Do I want him to keep me? I probably should think about this further, consider the consequences, but I don’t seem to care.

For one ugly second, the memory crashes through me again—the watcher in the library, the feeling of being followed, that horrible sense I’ve carried since childhood that someone might already be closer to the truth than I realize. Even here in Ciaran’s bed with his hands on my body and his voice pulling me apart piece by piece, I can still feel that instinct clawing beneath my skin.

“Hey.” One hand settles against my hip before his thumb brushes over the medical band around my wrist, the soft vibration against my skin making me realize belatedly that it’s been warning me again. He shifts beneath me but holds himself at my entrance even though I can feel the effort it’s taking not to push deeper. “Are you okay?”

Heat floods my face at how quickly he notices. “I’m fine. It just does that sometimes when my heart rate spikes.”