Page 106 of Ashley & the A-Listers

She reached between them to grip him in her hand and stroked, watching his eyes drift shut before he forced them open.

“I think you love me,” she said softly, seeing the past ten years from a different perspective. “I think you always have, and it scared you because we were so young.” Ashley tightened her grip, and his hips shifted, grinding into her touch. “We’re not so young anymore.”

Dylan shook his head and cupped the side of her face, tilting her up to him. The light from the moon cut across their faces in a dim blue slash.

Ashley led him to her core, and sucked in a breath as she felt him nudge against her.

“I do love you,” he said, and pressed inside.

Ashley felt the words as much as she heard them, her heart seizing, because as brave as she liked to play, she was also scared.

Scared that he’d leave again, because she didn’t know if she’d survive it this time.

“I love you, too,” she said. “Maybe ten years ago wasn’t the right time for us.”

“But now is,” he breathed, and their hips met as he nestled inside her.

Ashley nodded, eyes fluttering shut before she opened them as his hand tightened in her hair, scratching through her undercut.

“Now,” she agreed, and he lowered his head to her throat, inhaling before sliding a little to the right, to her shoulder.

It put his own skin right before her, and she pressed her lips against him.

“At the same time,” he said suddenly, and she paused with her mouth against his skin.

Ashley nodded. Her heart was racing, and she gripped at him, hands flat on his back as she held him close.

She was never letting him go again.

They’d make sure of it.

Together they parted their lips and inhaled, and she felt his teeth in her shoulder at the same time she bit down on his.

It hurt. It was blunt teeth biting through skin.

It was euphoric. A bond formed through love and pain and time and distance made real, permanent.

His emotions flooded her. Love. Adoration. Disbelief. Arousal. Something darker, more delicious.

Obsession.

And Ashley wondered if he felt the same things from her.

The bond curled around them and through them, snapped like a vise and sank into them.

Ashley withdrew her teeth from his skin, then lapped at his wound and tasted the metallic promise as it welled.

Dylan moved, finally, drawing back his hips and thrusting while he tended her bite.

Ashley’s moan was muffled in his skin, and she peppered kisses around his new mark, tending it until her neck hurt from straining. When she was certain it was sealed, she let her head thump into the pillows.

Dylan hummed against her, nuzzling her throat, his arms wrapping around her as his hips unhinged and swung into her again and again.

The slap of their skin filled the room and why was Ashley worried about being quiet when that was the noisiest thing of the night?

What they’d spent the night doing would be more than obvious the next day, when they both appeared scented like each other and permanently connected.

Bonded.

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