Page 81 of Born of Ice

My breath catches.

“The single thought of not having you in my life kills me from within and I don’t have a fucking clue how that happened. Maybe it was the day you laughed on that ice out there. No…” he corrects himself quickly, as if the realization is hitting him all of a sudden. “No, it was before then.” He stops. “The day you played my goalie, and my puck hit your legs.” Exton’s hands leave my breast sand travel to the said legs, squeezing the useless flesh.

My eyes fix on the action.

But…did I just…how…?

“Yes, it was that day. That moment you cried out as if your soul had left your body and shot straight into mine. And I felt myself catching it, holding it, weaving around it, and tethering it backto life with my own. That was the day you ruined me, Electra Monroe.

“I tried to stay away from you. I tried to keep myself on a fucking leash around you when all I want is to claim you, to invade your mind like you have done to mine. I want toownyou, Electra Monroe. I want to beinyou. In all the ways possible, but you won’t let me,” he growls.

“Exton,” I breathe out, overwhelmed by his words and the brutal, raw honesty ringing through each syllable. “But I’m a cripple. You said so yourself.”

Exton huffs out a humorless laugh. “That’s all you got from my speech just now?”

“N-no,” I add shakily. “But that doesn’t change my situation.”

“Your situation?”

“How can you be attracted to someone like me? Physically, how can you want me?”

“Just like this,” he rasps out into my neck, his hot breath sending me into a frenzy when I feel one of his hands trail up my body, to my aching breast. His fingers slide over my pebbled nipple, brushing it roughly before he squeezes it hard at the same time as his other hand moves up from my thigh and over the lace covering my pussy until he brushes the top of the fabric and slips his hand inside.

“Fuck, you’re bare…”

I grip his legs with my hands, my fingernails digging into his muscled flesh as I let out a needy whimper, thrusting myself into his touch and losing my mind.

“Exton,” I breathe out. “What are you doing?”

“Do you trust me?” he asks in a husky voice, and I’m too far gone to freak out. But it’s more than that…

“You already asked me that.”

“I know. But now I need to hear it.”

“Why?”

“Because trust is more important than love. Love fades, rusts, and dies without stable ground and trust is that ground. It’s forever. And I wanted your trust, Electra Monroe. I wanted it without giving you all the options. Without warning you.”

“Warning me?”

“That I won’t let you go after you give it to me.” His whisper is sinister, full of dark promise, possession, and obsession as it runs down my spine. “Without giving you an option, I stole your life. Stole it and bound it to mine.”

“I…I…” My words get lost. I feel them. I want to say them, but I can’t.

But he knows.

“Shhh,” he whispers into my neck, running his tongue over my column, tasting my skin and I shudder. “Just feel, Electra. Feel how much I want you. Feel it all.” He seals it with a hard kiss on the spot his tongue was teasing, kneading my breast and I sense his finger on my clit.

But…there it is again. It’s more than a simple sensation of something happening down there. It’s a flicker, almost as if someone has poked me with a tiny needle, but it’s a feeling I haven’t felt since I woke up in that hospital room. And every time Exton draws his finger in a slow circle around my clit, I feel the pinpricks following it.

Almost as if…as if he’s unfreezing the flesh there.

You know that feeling when you get frost bitten from the cold and once you are back in the warmth, your body gets the tingles.

That’s how it feels.

My head falls back against his chest and Exton immediately brings his mouth to mine. He is much larger than me so it’s no hardship for him to bend over me and take my mouth in a savage kiss. Because that’s what it is.

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