Page 94 of Under an Endless Moon

Even if it was only once.

Every hard, packed groove of his massive body flexed in a bid to suppress what urged and coiled between us. Bulky muscles twitched, and his beautiful heart battered at my chest.

I knew it now. I no longer questioned if this need was one-sided. No longer wondered if I was the only one who suffered this desire.

Being here with him for close to two weeks had proven what I’d hoped for all along. Those moments over all these years when I’d thought I was going crazy, imagining the energy that’d lashed between us before he’d turn around and call me his baby sister, assuring me I was only making things up.

But this could notbe fabricated.

This need that blazed.

A fiery, incandescent bond that shined so bright it was blinding.

A connection that keened so loud I heard it as a reverberation at the back of my mind.

A sense so profound I felt it curling around me, body and soul, dragging me his way.

“Fuck, Raven.” He muttered it in the lapping night. His room was nearly dark except for the vestiges of the moon that cast a murky haze through the windows behind his bed.

The outline of the soaring trees drawn in charcoal, and the endless sky smattered with a canvas of glinting stars beyond.

I could just see the shape of his fierce, glorious face within it. Could see the greed carved into every vicious line and the reticence scored into every harsh angle.

Tonight, there was no sign of the tease on his lips.

His jaw was clenched tight in sharp self-denial.

But it was his palm that slid down my side and over my hip that promised he recognized my need. What promised he saw me as something different than his sister.

What promised he saw me as a woman who needed this. To explorethiswith the one man she’d ever felt safe with.

Shivers raced in the wake of his hand, and I could barely breathe as he stared across at me with those blue, fathomless eyes.

Intensity thrashed, and his name whimpered from my tongue.

“Otto.”

He groaned as his palm glided back up, lighting a path of flames as he went. “I don’t want to hurt you, Raven.”

“You won’t. I trust you.”

“I’m the last man you should trust.”

I didn’t believe that for a second, but I could somehow see that he had taken on that truth for himself.

But right then, none of that mattered. I didn’t care about honesty or intentions or principles.

“I don’t care. I need this. With you. You’re the only person I’veever wanted this way. The only one who’s ever touched me, and I wasn’t afraid.”

“But this is different.” His voice was coated in gravel.

Was it? Because I swore that I’d felt it all along.

“Otto. I’m twenty-five.Twenty-five, and I have never let a man touch me.Reallytouch me.” It was the most transparent I’d ever been. Opening myself up to him this way.

Charleigh knew. I could tell her anything. But this was different. This was cutting myself wide open for the man I’d kept like a secret for so many years.

Uncertainty knitted his brow as he kept smoothing his hand up and down, pulling me closer with each pass.

---