Page 78 of Revenge & Ruin

But for now, I let Teo guide me to the opaque door at the very end of the hallway.

I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted a shower, nor when I had asked Teo to join me. But now, suddenly facing the almost clinically clean wetroom, I begin to doubt myself. Especially when the door behind me closes with a soft click.

It’s just a power play. It’s always just a power play.

“Well?” Teo’s voice is low in my ear. He’s closer to me than I had thought. The hair on the back of my neck prickles with his soft breath.

I swallow hard. Then, I step forward toward the shower head on the far side of the room. As I walk, I begin to slip out of my gown and let it drop to the floor, making sure to sway my hips just so.

When I turn back to him, I keep my gaze sultry and unimpressed. “Well?”

His move. His face is half cast in shadow from where he lingers by the door, but even in the darkness, I can make out his eyes. That perfect shade of endlessness is staring directly at me.

I’m a forbidden fruit he just needs to reach out and take for himself.

I take a step back, still facing him, and turn on the shower behind me. The spray of water is immediate and perfectly warm to stave off the cold of the gray tiles beneath my feet.

He’s still watching me as I move into the stream. The gasp I make is entirely involuntary. After days of rotting in that room, I can barely imagine anything better.

I must close my eyes for half a second.

But when I open them again, he’s there, right in front of me. It’s terrifying and yet expected. Water splashes across his white shirt as those dark eyes bear down into mine as if he’s trying to look directly into my soul.

“Are you just going to watch?” I whisper, barely audible over the water cascading over my skin.

Every muscle in his body seems to tense up as if primed for an attack. And I welcome it. Oh, how I’mdesperatefor it. I’m open and vulnerable and at his mercy. Literally naked and presenting myself on a platter.

Please. Justfeast.

His gaze rakes over my entire body, over my taunt nipples, the frantic rise and fall of my chest, the way I have to squeeze my thighs together to maintain any semblance of dignity.

“Touch me,” I say.

He doesn’t. My mouth dries up.

“Touch me,” I beg.

He steps forward, fully clothed and fully drenched, but still not touching me. “It’s not real.”

“Then let’s pretend.” I sound desperate now. “Just for now, just for this.”

His hand grabs the back of my neck, and I almost sob in relief as he pulls me up to him.

“I don’t need to,” he breathes across my lips. “You’re going to ruin me.”

My heart breaks as I close the distance between us. Because it can’t be real, and yet itis.It’s real when I open my mouth and swallow his groan, when his arms encircle my waist and hold me firm enough to bruise me.

It’s real, and it’s desperate, and it’s filthy when he licks inside my mouth and draws out a sound I’ve never made before. I drown in how he presses himself to me, growing agonizingly harder with every brush of my tongue against his.

The water makes it difficult to remove his clothes, but I endeavor, peeling the shirt from his broad torso and revealing the rock-hard abs beneath that I let my hands explore eagerly. Not softly. Every movement is all claws and teeth and desperation.

He pushes me back against the wall as he kicks off his pants. Water drips from his hair across his eyes and I’m so fascinated by the darkness of his expression, his parted lips that betray his haggard breathing.

But it only lasts a moment. He dives in to capture my lips again, and suddenly, I’m lost again to the sensation of him.

“You are everything,” he murmurs against my neck during one of the rare moments he lets me breathe. And I melt entirely, pliant to his every touch.

He picks me up and wraps my legs around his waist, and I canfeelhis nakedness pressed up next to mine and it’s both agonizing and the most spectacular thing I’ve ever felt.

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