Page 95 of A Bloom in Winter

“I’d rather not answer that.”

“Why?” More with the licking. Thank fuck. “Why don’t you want to—”

“Not often, okay. It wasn’t often.”

And when it happened, you were all I was thinking of, he thought—

Callum froze again. “I was?”

Fuck, guess he’d said that out loud. “Yes, you were.”

In the silence that followed, Apex looked over at the ashes in the hearth. Then at the suitcase that was still sitting there with its top blown off, like it was a shooting victim. And finally, he returned to the wolven’s beautiful, masculine face . . . specifically those lips, those eyes, that flush.

“What did you think of,” Callum said softly, “when I came to your mind?”

“It wasn’t anything bad—”

“What did you picture?”

Apex lowered his lids. “That I was about to kiss you.”

“About to?”

“That was all . . . it ever took.”

Callum licked his lips. “Are you thinking about kissing me right now?”

“Yeah. I am.”

With the prowl of the wolf he was, Callum stalked his way up Apex’s chest. Then he hovered his lips just two inches away.

“Was I this close?”

Apex started to breathe heavy again. “Yes.”

The wolven lowered himself a little. “How about . . . this close?”

“Yes,” Apex whispered.

Down a little more. “What about this close?”

All Apex could do was nod—because suddenly he was coming once more, his cock kicking as he groaned, his chest pumping as his hips did the same.

And that was when Callum sealed their lips—and went even farther. He laid his body down, all his contours fitting Apex’s like they’d been made together. The kissing just kept on going, but Apex was careful. His arms stayed by his sides.

He wanted Callum to know that he was free to leave at any moment.

Even as he prayed the male would not go.

The kissing . . . was waking up parts of Callum that he hadn’t accessed for years. Decades. Not since before he’d been—

No, he wasn’t going there, to that female and her guards. He was staying righthere, on top of his vampire, in front of the fucking ashes of the past.

Callum felt Apex’s orgasm once again, the wetness, the heat, fusing their stomachs together. And the mouth-to-mouth was incredible. Apex was a harsh male, a killer with a prison record,a remote mystery in so many ways. But fucking hell, he had the softest lips, and the sounds he made? It was a purring, a groaning, a panting—

And that was when it happened.

Callum started to find his own release.

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