Page 54 of Black Heart

Lightning flares, and in the split-second illumination, I see him leaning a fraction closer, as if drawn by some magnetic force. The glow from his mask reflects off the sheen of sweat on my bare skin.

“Kaden,” I whisper.

I’ve said his name so much since I’ve learned it. Maybe too much. But I love how it sounds. I love calling him by his true name.

His hand stills.

“What?” he asks, his voice just above a scrape. Dangerously quiet.

“I can’t sleep,” I admit.

“And why is that?” His thumb resumes its lazy circling of my navel, the heat from his touch searing through my skin.

“Because you’re here,” I confess, my words breaking through the storm like shattered glass. “And because … I want you.”

Kaden stops breathing.

“Fuhhck.” Kaden pulls his hand back and moves to sit on the side of the bed and putting his back to me.

“Wraithling,” he warns, an edge of desperation lacing through his restraint.

“I’m not blind. I can see the way you look at me.” My voice breaks, aching and exposed. I swallow and press on, compelled by some masochistic instinct. “You want me, too.”

His silence is deafening.

“And...” I hesitate, then plunge forward into the abyss. “And I think about it, too. All the time. About you touching me.”

He murmurs my name like a prayer, or a curse, his head bowed. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

I somehow find the courage to say, “Then show me.”

“Ten years,” he says without turning his head. “A decade since I’ve touched a woman. Since I’ve allowed that part of me to have even a breath of life.”

His voice scrapes over his vocal cords while my heart races and my cheeks flame at the deeper implications.

Whether he’s aware or not, Kaden has just bared himself to me in a way that has nothing to do with physicality.

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.

“You need to know.” There’s a finality in his tone. “If I start, if I let myself go, I won’t be gentle. I won’t be considerate. I’ll take what I want, how I want. And it will hurt. This is not something you can handle.”

I should be horrified, repulsed, and I am a bit of both. But most of all, I’m filled with an insane, overwhelming curiosity.

I want to taste the darkness he’s warning me about.

“Let me decide what I can handle.”

His chuckle is harsh and devoid of humor. Still, he doesn’t turn to me.

Kaden’s hand whips out and grips my ankle, pulling until I’m flat on the bed with one leg in his control and the other trying to find purchase.

He keeps his back to me when his hand, warm and firm, runs up the bare skin of my inner thigh.

It’s an intimate touch that sends a jolt to my core. His fingers skim over the lace edge of my panties before his hand comes to rest on the fabric against my heated center.

“Last chance.”

His voice is thick and heady as his fingers apply an insistent pressure.

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