Page 513 of Lodestar

"I’m willing to do the dirtiest shit imaginable to keep you safe. You’ve no idea what I’m capable of. You think you do, but I’m warning you here, now, that if you can’t handlethis, you can’t handle my worst.”

A raging silence followed my words, but he didn’t let go of my hand. Didn’t shove me away. Didn’t tell me I was a hideous person—I already knew that anyway.

When the silence continued, when it pierced my heart, when it ruptured my soul, when I realized I’d been a fool to let him in, I started to sit up.

Then, he whispered, “I can handle your worst. Just don’t expect me to laugh and joke about it.”

“You think I laugh and joke about what I’ve done? If thereisa hell, Conor, then I’m fucked because one day, I’ll be sitting beside Belyaev, Foundry, Smythe, DeLaCroix, and Reinier, just waiting for the devil to make us pay for the sins we’ve committed.”

More silence.

God, it was so cacophonous that it hurt my ears.

Then, a heavy sigh. “I love you, Star. Nothing’s going to stop that. Not your worst. Hell, not even your best. Understood?”

Trying not to take that to heart, I bit my lip. “Don’t say that if you don’t mean it because if you don’t, then I’ll walk out the goddamn door right this second and head back to West Orange.”

He sat up, slipped his hand around my throat, and tilted my face toward him. “Stop talking about fucking leaving me,” he snarled, his actions in direct contrast to the force of his words. “You. Are. Mine. Do you understand that?”

Then, before I could answer, our mouths were colliding, teeth almost clashing as he nipped my bottom lip so he could thrust our tongues together.

For a moment, I froze, totally unused to him like this, but the fire in him surged into me, swallowing me whole and sucking me down into the pit that was the want and the love I had for him. That was the love and the want he felt for me.

My hands slid around his shoulders, fingers digging into the muscles there as I held him close, needing him to be nearer, craving him to beinme. No barriers. Nothing between us.

I tugged at his tee, dragging it against his torso, raking it up his abs so that I could pull it over his head.

When he refused to stop kissing me, I settled with hooking it under his arms and letting my fingers explore his lean muscles.

As I delved between us, I toyed with his fly until I managed to unfasten the button of his jeans and could slide my hand into the pocket of space before I reached the bulge that was his dick.

With panting breaths, I let him tongue fuck me as I focused on shaping him and then jerking him off. His pre-cum made my palm slick and the immediacy of his response never failed to reassure any insecurities I might have had.

With a groan, he pulled back an inch, breathing just as heavily as I was, then he snagged a hold of my bottom lip with his teeth, nipped gently, then whispered, “You do not get to leave me.”

“I do if I’m not wanted for who and what I am,” I retorted with a panting breath.

His hand covered mine. “Does it feel like I don’t want you? Does it feel like you repulse me?”

It didn’t. But men’s bodies weren’t the most trustworthy monitor ofanything.

Still, this was Conor.

He’d let me stroke his hair, had held me as I had a nightmare, and knew almost all of my secrets and hadn’t run yet.

This was what acceptance felt like—it wasn’t always going to be easy.

My hand tightened around his cock until he grabbed one of the straps of my tank and urged it down my shoulders. He did the same with the second until my tits were hanging in the hammock the neckline made, and he bowed his head and pressed his mouth to one.

I dragged my nails along his scalp as he sucked on my nipple, biting it hard enough for me to hiss before he tongued the part he’d bitten which made me jolt in surprise.

Pleasure sizzled around those nerve endings.

My fingers clutched at his hair as my hips rocked when the zing of sensation zipped between my nipple and my clit.

“Oh, fuck,” I breathed. “That felt good.”

He growled against my skin, making me moan as he sucked, interspersing bites with sucks, and then his hand dropped down, flexing beneath the waistband of my sweats and finding soft skin beneath.

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