Page 59 of Under an Endless Moon

It was time for me to rise above it.

Agony filled his long stare before adoration replaced it. He let his hand glide up the words on my side then lifted it to cup the side of my face. Tingles raced as the pad of his thumb traced the apple of my cheek. “Sweet fuckin’ moonflower.”

Desire weaved through me like a giant thread. Knitting me in a desperation I hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

“Otto.” I murmured his name, hoping he would understand what I was asking of him.

We hovered there, connected in a way we hadn’t been for a long time. And I guessed it was too much for him because he suddenly flew off the bed.

He stood at the side staring down at me.

Hands clenched in fists, his big body rippling with explicit, untamed strength. With him towering over me, there was more of him on display than I’d been able to explore when I’d been plastered against him.

And now, I couldn’t stop from gobbling up the sight. This man the brute force of a bull. Obscenely tall and shoulders intrusively broad.

A pillar that covered me in shadow where he towered at the edge of the bed.

Pure muscle and brawn.

He wore these tight, tight black briefs, and I gulped when I saw he was still hard. Huge and hard and vibrating with need.

Flames consumed, and I was sure I was being burned alive.

A witch at the stake.

Because it had to be wicked and wrong, what I was doing. Ogling this man who’d reiterated a thousand times that he only thought of me as his family.

But I was only human, and he was…something else entirely.

A dark avenger. Carved of stone and hewn in gold.

Adorned in all those tats that covered every exposed inch of skin.

My mouth watered as I devoured every inch.

Only I froze when I saw it.

I wasn’t the only one who had gotten new ink in the last few years.

The stunning piece took up the entirety of his left lower abdomen and hip.

A tortured moon that hung in an ominous sky. Disfigured and misshapen. The earth was barren beneath it.

All except for the single moonflower that cracked the dirt and blossomed beneath the pale, murky light.

His jaw clenched when he realized what I was gaping at, my breaths coming short and my spirit spinning with possibility.

I looked back up at his beautifully brutal face, and my heart clattered in my chest as I struggled to get the air into my lungs.

Something tortured twisted through his expression. “You shouldn’t be lookin’ at me like that, Raven.”

“And what am I looking at you like?”

“Like you want me to crawl back into that bed with you.”

I exhaled a shocked breath. Unable to believe the way he’d given it voice.

Like…like maybe he wanted to.

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