Page 74 of Creatures that Breathe

I clamp my thighs together to punish the throb tangling in my blood. “There’s no one to kill. You’re the only—”

“I shouldn’t like that so much.” His fingers brush the heat of me, and before I can jolt, he groans. Nasty and dark and wild, gaze slanted up at me, a warrior alone in a sea of endless night.

My heart batters my chest.

“You were saying?” he asks, fingers gliding through the wet mess of my center, lazy and proprietary.

I marvel at the rampaging pulse in his wrist. The gape he’s cleaved out in my waistband is almost crude.

Kind of delicious.

“Talk to me, pyro.”

“I …” Was I saying something? The gentlest brush of his thumb hits me with needed friction and pressure. I gasp, squirming on my toes, rush out, “I’ve been engaged since I was eight. I haven’t ever—”

Teeth scrape my hipbone. Bite. “Then I should make it my mission to see you undone.”

He pulls back, withdraws his fingers, his hand, stretches out his hard, naked body to loom over me, close but out of reach.

The absence of him shears open a vile, festering wound in my stomach.

I almost scream at him.

For enticing me once away, for luring me in and—

Effortlessly, he lifts me into his arms and spreads me out on his bed. Controlled, purposeful, resting my head on his pillow, my body cradled in the crater where he must sleep.

It’s filthy with his scent. Clean, a tang of blood, some leftover fruity essence, as if he’s in the habit of leaving orange peels on the nightstand.

I inhale, fill my lungs with him, like he might imprint me on the inside too.

Cross shares a low chuckle, nose skimming my jaw. “I know,” he utters. “I know. I’ll fix it.”

His hands trail fire up my torso, lingering over each tattoo before skating between the valley of my breasts and pressing down, as if to erase the tattoo there.

As if to say, are you better alone? Really?

The look he gives me tears at me, intense and sure.

Better with me, it insists.

So many colliding, tempting sensations swell inside me. I want to run and stay and drink in every touch while simultaneously forgetting the thrill of sparks only his hands have ever given me.

Cross strips off my pants, kissing each new expanse of skin exposed, the roundness of my thighs, the hollows under my knees. “Ask me—” he murmurs amidst a heated kiss along my calve. “Ask me if I have regrets between us.”

My eyes are closed, my hands knotted in the sheets.

I must ask. Because he responds.

“There are none.” He’s down on his knees, again, like he can’t get enough of the feel, the angle, and then he yanks me off the pillow and down the bed, straight to him. Sets his chin on my bent knee. “I’d kiss you again in the cold. I’d kill again, let the curse tear into me again. I’d take the bullet. I’d dive into the freezing surf.”

I’m breathless, shivering. “Why?”

He’s devastating. Lips full and wet, dark eyes ablaze with desire, only a lone band of his holster breaking up the chiseled lines of his body sat in devotion for me. “Because I’m fucking greedy. Because he pulled your hair. Because they threatened you. Because I want to take your pain. But mostly, because each time you’ve closed your eyes, and you’ve said my name.”

My mouth goes dry, my stomach flutters. “Cross.”

His expression darkens further. “Just like that,” he sounds hoarse. “Spread your legs.”

---