Page 103 of Under an Endless Moon

Nearly cried when she pulled one of those hands away, only she was peeling her tank all the way up, exposing her belly and bare tits.

Sight of them nearly knocked me the fuck out.

Part of me wanted to fixate on the fact I was getting a real look at them for the first time. Her dusky pink nipples peaked and primed for me to suck into my mouth.

But I got sidetracked.

Fury ripping through me when I saw the scars that marred the flesh of her stomach and hips. Uncountable circular burn marks that made me feel like I was the one standing in the flames.

But it was the mangled one on her side that turned my guts to ash, the tattoo cutting through it where it was stamped on her side.

I will make it to the sunrise.

Raven’s head shook on the pillow. No doubt, she knew exactly where my focus had gone. “Don’t, Otto. Don’t look at me that way. Look atme. At who I am. As a whole. As a person. As the woman who wants this with you.”

“I’ve always seen you, Raven.”

I’d just always wanted to protect that. Protect everything she was from me.

She pulled her shirt up even higher, and she lifted her ass from the bed. Begging me to mark her. The woman fisted me even tighter with her one hand that was still covered with mine. She had me captured by that gaze as she murmured, “Tell me you feel it, too, Otto. Let go, the way you asked me to.”

And fuck, bliss gathered fast, her touch and her boldness, her aura taking me whole.

A sweet fuckin’ moonflower.

It hit me like a landslide. A storm of pleasure.

I moaned as I jerked and spasmed, and Raven was writhing all over again, her eyes going wide with desire when I dumped myself on her flesh.

And maybe I’d known it all along, but I knew right then that I’d met my match.

This fucking gorgeous woman who was going to be the end of me. Because I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to let her go.

TWENTY-EIGHT

RAVEN

“Stay right there.”Otto’s voice was a rough scrape as he pushed back. He tucked himself back into his briefs, before he swung off me and slipped off the side of the bed.

While I struggled to breathe.

To push the air in and out of my jutting lungs and calm the violent race of my heart.

I watched him stride across his room and into the attached bathroom.

So beautiful in all his intimidation. Tall and wide and tatted. His butt and thick thighs flexed with each step that he took, and it nearly had me begging all over again.

My body twitched and jerked in tiny spasms while my mind whirled to wrap itself around what had just happened. My brain was having a hard time comprehending the shift. Accepting that it was real and not another one of the fantasies I’d given myself over to for so many years.

I listened to him shuffle around in the bathroom—the clatter of a cupboard and the run of water—while the truth of it sank down over me like an embrace.

Otto Hudson had touched me.

He’d touched me.

And I’d touched him.

And I hadn’t been afraid.

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