Page 46 of Marking Micah

He stared at her for a long moment, then he took her face in both his hands, cradling her cheeks. “Micah. Don’t you know I love you? That I have for a very long time.”

Her heart melted, just turned to pure liquid in her chest, and she felt momentarily paralyzed. But finally, she found her voice.

“You love me? You mean… youloveme?”

He smiled, a beautiful smile on his ruggedly handsome face that reached his eyes. “Yeah. Always have. Always will. But never more than right now, lovely girl.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She took a deep breath, blew it out. “But will you tell me again when my brain is really working and I don’t feel like I could pass out any second from coming and squirting a thousand times, and then admitting my deepest, darkest secrets to you?”

He grinned. “Of course. But it wasn’t a thousand times. That’ll be next time.”

“Oh my god, Arrow! Will you just kiss me already?”

He kissed her. Gently for a moment, then deeply, his tongue twining with hers. He pulled back to kiss her cheek, over and over, then went back to her mouth, pressing his lips to hers, then opening them with his warm, sweet tongue. And her heart swelled in her chest, her pulse fluttering with emotion.

He loves me!

She pulled away, covering his hands on her cheeks with her own.

“I need to tell you something else. I love you, Arrow, Sir. I’ve always loved you in some way. As my friend. My protector. And now as my Dominant. As my lover. I’ve wanted to love you like this for such a long time, even if I was afraid to admit it to myself. But I do. I love you.” It felt so damn good to say it, she had to say it again. “I love you, Arrow.”

He stroked her hair, brushed her lips with his, then her cheek. As he locked his gaze on hers, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it; first the back of it, then he turned it over and kissed her palm.

She’d never had a man kiss her hands before, and it was like a revelation. A revelation full of a zinging pleasure that went straight to her core. A revelation that made her feel loved and desired in a way she never had before. Treasured. Yes, that was it.

When he pulled one of her fingers into his mouth and sucked on it, the warmth in her body turned to molten heat.

“Arrow? Can you take me to bed, please?”

“Hell, yes! But first I need to clean this little spot where I made you bleed,” he said, reaching under the blanket to cup her breast in his hand, and the simmering heat in her body ramped up to a scorching flame.

He set her on the ottoman and got up, quickly moving to the cabinet and taking out the first aid kit, and in moments he’d wiped down and sterilized the tiny spot.

“I love that you marked me,” she told him as he finished up. “I loved it when you did it last night. Every bruise, every bite mark, every welt. It makes me feel…” she paused, letting out a deep sigh.

“Like you belong to me?” he asked.

She smiled up at him. “Yes. Like I belong to you. Is that okay?”

He knelt down in front of her and took both her hands in his. “Yeah, darlin’. More than okay. I want you to be mine. To hold. To play. To fuck. To mark. To be with. So, you tell me, is that okay?”

“Yeah,” she said slowly, her brain trying to catch up to what was happening in her body, and with the words coming out of his mouth. “It took you long enough,” she teased.

“Yeah, it did. Three years.”

“And three days here,” she added.

“It couldn’t have happened any sooner. In any other way. We both needed to know.”

She nodded. “We did. But now we do.”

He brushed her lips with his, sending tiny sparks of desire through her system. “You ready to go upstairs?”

“I’m ready to go anywhere with you, Sir.”

And she meant it. Meant it more than any other words she’d spoken in a very long time, except when she’d told him she loved him. Because that was her core truth, and if she stopped to think about it, it had been for a very long time.

He helped her back into her robe and her shoes. “Think you can walk?”

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