Page 67 of Unwrapping Deviance

Inches.

They brush when I gasp his name, and I feel the contact straight to my toes.

“Quiet, you bad girl.” His head lowers. His nose bumps my cheek. My stomach flips at the gesture. “We need to talk. We need to set some fucking rules. We need a firm understanding that if you ever lock yourself in a place I can’t reach you when you need me, I will remove every door in the house. I will remove every lock. You are never allowed to do something like that again. Understand?”

The heat in his eyes, the feral weight of anger barely masked beneath a fragile calm has my heart quickening. My mouth goes dry. There is no humor in the way he’s waiting for an answer, and I can’t catch my breath.

“Yes,” I whisper.

His lips ghost my cheek, millimeters from the corner of my mouth. The morning stubble lining his chiseled jaw tickles my skin and I ache to feel it against other sensitive areas of my body, but the hand in my hair takes that moment to tighten, to drag my head back.

I groan a sound torn deep from my chest, a guttural sob of raw pleasure. My body heaves with the sweet pain crashing down my spine. The cock wedged against my mound is hot metal wrapped in silk and I fucking want it. I want it slamming into me, breaking me. Destroying my sanity.

“Please. God, please, Daniel,” I beg, shameless. Desperate. “Please.”

I would give him anything, anything he wants. I would sell him my soul. He has me so close to the edge, I only need a nudge. A flick.

But he has me pinned. Not an inch of space for any kind of friction while he sucks my neck. Marks my skin.

“Quiet,” he growls into the hammering pulse at my neck. “I’m not done.”

Against my will, a moan escapes my chest. It vibrates up my throat to where he’s back inches over my parted lips.

His fingers tighten. Strands of hair are torn from their root, but I feel nothing, except every part of him aligned with mine. Every breath he takes. Every twitch of his cock.

“Look at me, Mira.” He waits until my lashes have lifted away from that haunting mouth, and he’s captured me in the dark pits of his promise. “If you ever mention another man fucking you, touching you, tasting you, I will kill him.” His free hand brushes my cheek gently, calmly. Like he’s not threatening to take a life for me. “I will do unimaginable things to him, and when I’m done, I’ll make you help me bury his body.” He ignores my weak whimper of a gasp. “No one is allowed in your pussy,” his lips brush my jaw, “your ass,” he skims a kiss to the tip of my nose, “your mouth unless I let them use you. You are mine. Do you understand?”

My heart is pounding in my chest. It’s a frantic bird filled with confusion and desire. It knows I shouldn’t like the things he’s saying. Shouldn’t be thrilled by the possessive purr of hiswords he’s planting into my skin with every stroke of his lips. I definitely shouldn’t be getting wet or excited by the only part of that whole speech that actually took root in my brain.

“Do you mean it?” I pant.

“Every fucking bit of it. Mine, Mira. All fucking mine.”

I’m trying not to squeal with unimaginable happiness as I drag my hands free and up his hard muscles to cradle the back of his neck.

He said it twice yesterday, but that was yesterday and he could have changed his mind.

“You’re mine,” I tell him.

My tormentor lifts his head. His expression soft, loving. He brushes my cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Always.”

I’m a grown woman. I may not have all the experiences in the world and my past relationship consists of one boyfriend who wound up cheating on me, but Daniel isn’t Kalen. He’s not a teenage boy with teenage hormones and careless hands. When Daniel tells me I’m his, only his, I brim with excitement, fear, apprehension, panic. I’m flooded by every emotion and sensation and so lost in the need to do something drastic and crazy that I don’t think, can’t think.

“I love you,” I blurt.

My heart cracks hard against my ribcage. It throws itself up into my throat. I’m choking on my horror and desperation. I’m freaking out and I can hear the alarm bells sounding in my head, calling me every kind of idiot, because Daniel’s eyes have gone wide. His entire body has gone rigid atop of mine. He’s not moving. I’m pretty sure he’s not breathing, and I can’t breathe. I’m ready to take it back, to crawl out from under him and throw myself out the window.

“Mira.”

Oh God, he’s going to tell me that’s sweet, but he doesn’t feel the same. That I’m too young and stupid to know what actuallove is. Or worse, he’ll tell me it’s in my head. That I think I love him because he’s all I have in the world, and he’s partially right. He is all I have, but that’s not why I love him. Not the only reason.

“Please don’t,” I gasp, shredding the plea through clenched teeth. “I didn’t...”

His fingers capture my chin and I’m being forced to face the man who’s about to destroy me.

“Look at me, brat,” he coaxes, and I realize I’ve squeezed my eyes shut to keep from imprinting his face in that devastating moment to memory.

Tears spill with the parting of my eyelids. They slide down my temples into my hairline as I make myself look at him.

---