Page 68 of Stroke of Shadows

He shouldn’t be there. He knew that, but instead he sucked at her tongue. Devouring her lips as if she meant something to him other than a fuck.

She tasted perfect.

She felt perfect.

If, in that moment, she asked him to drop to his knees and crawl, he’d do it.

Because she was poison.

A sweet poison he’d happily drown in, despite everything.

She moaned, her own hands reaching up to cup the back of his neck. To dig her little manicured nails into his skin. Lifting her up by her thighs, he crushed her against the cold tiles, pinning her with his weight.

Flashes of her on his lap, skirt up around her waist as she came so beautifully on his fingers raced through his mind, and if his cock wasn’t hard before. It was granite now.

He forced his head back, chest heaving with the exertion to break away. “Do you feel what you do to me?” He settled her heavier against him, the only thing separating them his jeans and her thin scrap of underwear. “Is this real enough for you, darling?”

A gasp parted her lips this time, and when she met his eyes, heat flooded his veins. She was devastating. Beautiful. Perfect.

She was ruining everything.

“Mine,” he growled, carrying her from the bathroom to the bed. He placed her on the edge, dropping to his knees before her. “You need to tell me to leave. Because if you don’t, I’m not going to stop at just a kiss.”

Because a single taste wasn’t enough.

He wasn’t sure it would ever be enough.

HARPER

Sythe kneeled before her, his hands planted on the bed beside her hips. He looked like an animal, his easy smile gone to be replaced with such stark desire it buried any fear or doubt.

“You need to tell me to leave. Because if you don’t, I’m not going to stop at just a kiss.”

Harper’s heart seemed to be trying to break through her ribs.

She knew he was angry for some reason, the tension along his shoulders and the way he’d crushed her lips a clear sign. She should be terrified, but all she could concentrate on was the heat that pooled between her thighs. At how her clit seemed to thrum to its own drumbeat.

Sythe’s hands fisted on the sheets, his body seeming to vibrate with how hard he held himself back. “I need you to decide.” His voice was strangled, and that was the difference with him and her other experiences with sex. Even in his anger, he gave her a choice.

Something she’d never had.

There was no hesitation as she slowly undid the side zip of her dress. She didn’t care about the consequences right then, not when he looked at her like that. Like she mattered.

Like she was a person. Real.

For one night, she wanted to be who she was at that club, and it made sense to share that with the same man who’d given her the most intimate experience of her life.

Reaching behind her back, she released her bra, and still Sythe waited for permission.

“Kiss—”

She couldn’t even get the words out before his lips crushed against hers, his chest brushing against her bare breasts as she was pushed flat against the mattress.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said against her skin, moving down the side of her throat until he was kissing along her shoulder. “You’re in my head, Starlight. I can’t seem to get you out.”

Looking up he met her eyes, making sure she watched as he flicked his tongue against her nipple before taking a bite.

Harper groaned, rolling her hips against his. A pressure had begun to build, her core aching with need. She’d only ever experienced it once before, and that was him, too.

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