Page 140 of A Dusk Of Stars

“Yeah. While I was barely controlling myself around you, you were breezing in and out of class as if I wasn’t even there.” He lets out a frustrated laugh. “That is, when you weren’t telling me I was the worst person alive or ordering me to get away from you.” He shakes his head and looks down at the ground. “It seemed thatyoubeingmymate was right where it both startedandended.”

“You’re talking aboutbefore,” I protest. “It doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell meafterwe started having sex, after the Ball, when it should’ve been pretty clear to you it’s not exactly one-sided.”

“Alright,” he says. “You might not like it though.”

Fighting not to groan in frustration, I just nudge him to start talking.

He takes a deep breath, looking away in search of words. “I still thought you were only attracted to me,” he starts as he locks eyes with me again, “but there was hope that it could turn into something more, and I was afraid I’d scare you off if I told you, or put a kind of pressure on you that would simply be unfair to put on you, especially under the circumstances.”

It makes my anticipation build when he pauses, wincing a little but not taking his eyes off me. “But to be honest… I was used to people not having any power over me, Anna.” His eyes soften. “Thenyoushowed up, I took one look at you and I knew it in my bones — that I was yours to do with as you please.” His jaw clenches as he throws me an apologetic look. “So, even afterthe Ball, I guess there was still a part of me that just couldn’t handle it, especially for fear of this truly ending up being a one-way street, an unrequited love that would ultimately destroy me from within.”

For a moment, I just look at him, my anger dispersing and my eyes filling with tears. “Your feelings for me, do you still have a problem with them?”

He shakes his head and comes to drop on his knees before me, wrapping his arms around my waist and pressing his face to my chest. “You’d started changing me even before the month of pure torture that was my life after you ended things with me. I was a stupid,stupidman, but I’d doanythingfor you, anything to make you forgive me, to take away the pain, to make us start over.”

At a loss for words, I just lift my hand and run my fingers through his hair, both me and my wolf reveling in his touch.

“I’ve always had this immense drive, Anna,” he says pensively, lazily, making me imagine his eyelids dropping like a cat’s in the sun, “searching for something higher and turning the more restless and bitter the longer I couldn’t find it.”

He turns his head to nuzzle his nose against my stomach, making that infuriating need for him start swelling inside me. Squirming to make him loosen his grip, I get down on my knees with him, his arms coming to wrap around my waist and mine around his shoulders.

“Then I foundyou,”he keeps going, tugging me closer and lowering his head to press his forehead to mine,“and that was it for me.” He starts lazily stroking my back, making my eyes flutter shut and shivers run down my spine. “It’s like everything I ever went through has been leading up tothispoint in time, and now all I want from the rest of my life is to make you the happiest woman alive. You’reeverythingto me, Anna,” hewhispers against my lips, “my comfort and my passion, my dreams and my reality, my sun and my moon.”

At first, I don’t say anything. I just stay in the moment, feeling all my desire and love for him come crashing down on me. Then I take the collar of his shirt in one fist and come to whisper in his ear, my voice dripping with desire, “Ineedyou, Jericho.” I sense him tense up, his hands freezing on my back. “Right now.”

I don’t register exactly how it happens, but I find myself on my back, breathless with his hips between my legs and his face hovering above mine, the features twisted with unconcealed lust. His nostrils flaring and his chest heaving, he takes a single, hungry inhale of my neck before our hands start fumbling in a clumsy effort to tear the clothes off each other.

There are no games being played this time. Swelling with longing for him, I shower him with bites as he mumbles sweet nothings into my ear, before he pulls away, clamps his hands around my ass and brings the core that’s already throbbing for him to his greedy mouth.

When the flicks of his tongue start threatening to push me over the edge, I pull at his hair and almost instantly get his naked weight pressing into me.

I look into his eyes, for the first time in my life feeling like I truly belong to someone. The eyes dive deep into mine, deeper than ever before, the gaze turning into a languid kiss that hides nothing and gives everything.

And the more it gives, the more I want, my body becoming restless to become one with him again. It makes a gasp escape me, when I feel him push himself inside me, my eyes rolling back, my legs wrapping tight around him and my fingers digging into the flexing muscles of his shoulders. “It’s been a whole month,” he grits out as he starts thrusting, “you can’t do this to me ever again, Anna.” Then he slides a hand between us and starts working my clit with his thumb, making my hands startblindly grabbing onto his back. I just mumble something about missing him so much, meeting each thrust with growing urgency until I’m writhing under his body, completely losing myself in finally getting to feel all of him.

It all ends quicker than ever before. When our movements become desperate, I thread my fingers through his hair, I pull his head back and I take his bottom lip between my teeth. I give it a bite and the bite turns into a deep kiss that gets us moaning into each other’s mouths and flying over the edge together.

***

It’s in this blissful haze that I keep lying beneath the tree, propped up on one elbow, playing with that lighter of his with his arms tight around me and the entire length of his body pressed against mine. I’ve told him everything there is to know about me. I think I’ll still have to have a talk with him about letting my father be, this worry gnawing at me at the very thought of him trying to get revenge on someone whoisa human, sure, but still a powerful one. But right now, I’m just enjoying everything being out in the open with the man who makes me feel like I’ve come home for the first time ever. “Where did you get this?” I ask as I keep staring at the lighter, something stirring inside me at the very sight of it.

“A bazaar in Morocco,” he says as he keeps stroking the skin of my upper arm. “The guy ripped me off, but I just had to have it.” Then he leans to whisper in my ear, “I want to whisk you away, Anna, but I’ve gotten an impression that you don’t exactly like surprises.”

“As long as you get me back in time for the next Opening Ceremony,” I say with a lazy smile, “I’m up for anything really.”

“Oh I like the sound ofthat,” he growls as he takes a bite out of my neck. “Does that mean you’d be up for me sticking aroundevenafterthe Opening Ceremony? Or would that be too much for my little she-wolf?”

This makes me stop playing with the lighter, my breath catching. It’s not like I haven’t givenanythought to the actual future. Now that the whole Aurora thing is over, I’ll be able to focus on truly mastering shifting, getting that Archivist position back and finding more causes for Jericho to spend all that money on.

But this… I was avoiding thinking about this. I slide out of his arms to prop myself on both elbows and turn to frown at him, all breathless when I ask, “You’d do that?”

I find him resting his head on his palm and staring at me with eyes brimming with love. “I sure as hell am not planning on letting you out of my sight either way. If you don’t want me to come back as a professor, I’ll find some other way to be close to you.”

“No,” I say with a vigorous shake of my head, “I’d love that so much.”

“Yeah?” he groans with a lazy grin just as I feel his hand close around my ass, squeezing tight. “You’d let me follow that ass around the castle?”

I roll my eyes at him. “Just don’t call me ‘babe’ like you did in the Vein and we’ll be fine.”

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