Page 111 of Cruel Cravings

It reminds me I have her in my arms after years of lurking in the shadows.

Tension seeps out of her. She softens against me as I draw back and frame her face in my massive hands. She feels fragile, even if she’s been strong, activating my most protective instincts.

No matter what lies ahead of us, I’ll be by her side. I’ll defend her until my broken, disfigured body has nothing left.

I wipe a tear away with my thumb and let my gaze speak for me. It says the things I struggle to verbalize otherwise.

She understands, sniffling. “I just… I wanted to find her. I wanted to fix everything. All the broken things from our past. But now…” She lets out a trembling breath that turns into a sob. “I’ve made everything worse. So much worse.”

“No.”

She blinks, her glossy eyes flicking toward mine.

I can think of no other way to communicate the devotion I want her to feel than doing something I’ve never done before. My hands leave her face to reach up toward mine, peeling away the minotaur mask I’ve hidden behind for so long.

I tear it off and cast it aside where it thumps against the cold, cracked floorboards. Where it will remain from this point on.

My scarred face hers to peer at, I meet her gaze so she can see the man beneath the mask. The man who’s willing to go down in a blaze of fire and bloodshed with her.

She spends a second studying me. Her brown orbs track the jagged scars and raised flesh in silence with the same fascination she’s always held when looking at my hideous face.

But there’s no disgust to be found—no judgment anywhere.

“Brontë,” she murmurs softly.

I cup her face again and silence any words she has to say with a kiss. My lips on hers, we kiss deeply and slowly, like we have all the time in the world. As helicopters scour the city and squad cars fill the streets, we’re hidden away in an abandoned warehouse making our own time.

We lose ourselves to the immediate hunger that comes on strong. After weeks apart, we’ve gone too long without each other.

Jael needs me as my lips press to hers and she releases a keening whimper. She twines her fingers in my shirt and tugs as if urging me to come closer.

Overtake her in all the ways I’ve done in the past.

My carnal instincts answer her pleas. I kiss her harder and force the zipper down on her jeans. I drag them down her hips as she parts her lips and pushes her slick tongue into my mouth.

We’re suddenly whipped up into a frenzy, wrenching clothes away, knocking into the pile of boxes on our way to the wall. They crash to the floor with a heavy thud, some of them spilling open. I bring her back up against the wall and she notches her legs at my waist as I slide into her wet heat in a single stroke.

The reunion feels so fucking good, we moan against each other’s lips. She clings to me, trembling from the intensity ofmy cock buried inside her. Pulsing warmth surrounds me. Heat that’s soft and wet and makes me lose my mind.

It turns me into the beast, the monster I am deep down.

I growl as I draw my hips back and then slam into her, forcing my way inside, spreading her slick walls that much more open so she can take me. She’s so tight, so fucking snug around me, that her entire body seizes up with my every thrust.

Jael cries as I fuck her, tears of pain, of pleasure, of relief pouring out of her.

She needs this.

I pound into her, feeding off her, giving her what her pussy milks out of me.

We reconnect like this, two shadows hidden away in the dark. Two creatures no one else understands, but it doesn’t matter because we have each other.

My cock slips deep into her spasming pussy and I’ve never felt more alive as her shiny brown eyes find mine and we ride the intense wave together. We hold each other’s gaze as our climax arrives in a burst of mind-numbing, body-racking pleasure.

I come inside her, framing her face in the palm of my hands, as I place a kiss on her soft lips.

When we pull apart, she releases a little sigh that tells me she feels what I do. But, for once, I need to speak for both of us.

“We can make it out of this.”

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