Page 11 of Burned Dynasty: Part One

A heavy breath escapes my lips, and emotions quelled by passion have returned and formed a knot in my belly and chest. I spy tissue and grab some, but Damion is already back, pressing a towel between my legs. I sit up, and he sits next to me, fully dressed, while I have nothing but an off-placed bikini top. I right my top and look for a blanket that doesn’t exist.

Silence stretches between us, and I whisper, “I feel very naked right now.”

Damion reacts instantly, laying me back down and covering my naked body with his. “I like you naked,” he says softly, brushing knuckles over my cheek. “And I’m always naked with you, Alana, all the way to my soul, in a way no one else knows me.”

My heart squeezes with his grave confession. “I’m sorry.”

“I told you—”

“I know what you said. Damion, I don’t blame you.”

His lashes lower, and he cuts his stare, sitting back up and scrubbing a hand through his hair. He pushes to his feet and walks to the door, where he grabs his jacket and returns to wrap it around me. There is tenderness in the action, a protectiveness that speaks to where his headspace is right now.

He needs to protect me, but he didn’t bring me my clothes that would allow me to leave, should I see fit, either. He needs control, but he doesn’t feel he has it right now.

He eases down on top of the coffee table in front of me. “Better?”

I lean forward and press my hand to his face, the rasp of newly formed whiskers against my soft palm. “I’m always better when I’m with you.”

He covers my hand with his, leaning into the touch, tenderness, and torment in the action that sends off alerts in my head. He really does believe this is the end of us, and while I’d thought I was ready for that, thought I’d steeled myself for the torture of it, now that he’s here, now that I’m with him again, that is so far from true that it’s insanity that I believed otherwise.

“Damion,” I whisper urgently. “I did what I did to protect you. Because I wanted you to be king, not him. Because you will save people like Mary and her business, and he will destroy them all. Because you will sacrifice for others and me. Because you really are the best man I know. I knew you wouldn’t put yourself first. I knew you’d put me first and do something crazy, like kill him. You can’t kill him. You know that, right?”

He draws our hands between us and then brushes my hair from my eyes. “You’re beautiful. We were five the first time I realized that.”

As touched as I am by the tenderness in his voice, I am aware of his avoidance and the distraction of his compliment, no matter how sincere it rings.

“Damion,” I whisper, a plea in his name.

He kisses my hand and then pushes to his feet and starts undressing. “What are you doing?”

“You said please,” he replies. “I’m a little late, but I’m getting undressed.” In a matter of a minute, he’s naked and hard all over again, as if that should even be possible, and dragging me down on the couch with him. We’re side by side when his hand settles to my back under his jacket and he molds our naked bodies together, his thick erection pressed between my legs.

“How are you even hard again already?”

He laughs—one of his low, rough laughs—the kind that is oh so masculine and sexy and that I feel in every part of me. “It’s what you do to me. Still feel vulnerable?” he asks, the warmth of his body seeping into mine.

My hand presses to his face. “I’m always a little vulnerable with you, Damion, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Any time you dare to trust, you are vulnerable. And I dare to trust you.”

“Then we’ve come a long way.”

“So don’t throw it away and go to jail over your damn father.”

“I’m not going to jail, baby,” he promises, and he leans in and presses his lips to my ear. “I’d miss you naked and beneath me way too much to ever let that happen.” He scoops my backside and slides his cock along the wet, sensitive seam of my body. And then he’s inside me, and he’s created the ultimate distraction, but even as his mouth slants over mine, I silently vow to finish our conversation.

The moment I can actually speak again.

Chapter Nine

It’s a long time later when I lay with my head on Damion’s chest, and as much as I don’t want this time with him to end, we have to talk. We can’t hide here in this cottage, naked and pretending the outside world doesn’t exist. As if he’s thinking the exact opposite, Damion says, “I saw pizza in the freezer. I’m starving.”

I push off of him and sit up, reaching for the jacket that I’d long ago abandoned and pulling it around me before I stand to confront him. “You will not kill your father. And we need to just go home and face this. That’s all. That’s how it has to be. The end.”

He nonchalantly throws his legs off the couch and stands up, his hands settling on my arms, and he kisses me hard on the mouth. “Pizza it is.” He steps around me, grabs his pants, and steps into them.

“No to you ignoring what I’m saying to you, and no to pizza,” I say, though my stomach growls rather loudly in objection to that statement.

Damion laughs. “You’re clearly hungry. No good decision was made on an empty stomach.” He walks around the oversized gray cloth couch and then disappears inside a doorway that, considering Damion’s drive for pizza at present, I assume to be the kitchen.

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