Page 49 of His Hold

His breath comes out ragged, a harsh rasp. “You have no idea what you’re doing.”

“Maybe not.” I stroke my hands against his thick length, my palms flat and moving unevenly, daring him to stop me. “But I’m not the one running from it.”

A muscle twitches in his jaw. He’s shaking, fighting whatever war he’s got raging inside him.

And then he snaps.

His mouth crashes against mine with a force that steals the air from my lungs. It’s reckless, bruising, a mess of teeth and heat and need. His arms circle me, gripping tightly like I might vanish if he loosens his hold.

I clutch at him just as desperately, my fingers digging into his shoulders. Despite the blood on his arm, despite everything, I can’t pull away.

The kiss is wild, angry, like we’re trying to hurt each other just as much as we’re trying to consume each other. My back hits the wall and he presses into me, his body heat scorching through the layers of my clothes.

“You make me want things I shouldn’t want,” he rasps against my mouth. “Things I shouldn’t need.”

“Then stop pretending you don’t.”

He growls something low, fierce, and his mouth finds mine again. His hand slides down my back, pressing me closer, like he’s trying to melt me into him.

I don’t know if anyone else will ever touch me like he has. Don’t know if we’re about to walk out of this room and straight into another fight.

But right now, none of that matters.

Because I’m kissing him like it’s my last day on earth.

And he’s kissing me like it’s his, too.

I take in everything all at once. He puts one hand around my waist, holds me tight and firmly, crushed into his chest. With the other hand, he caresses my hair, my cheeks, my neck, touching and kissing like this is a hello and a goodbye merged into one.

He moans into the kiss, before pausing. “I think…I…I…think this is…”

He doesn’t know what to say? Damn, I need a camera. For the first time, Nikolai is lost for words. I want to capture this moment but really, what I desperately want is to never forget the look he gives me now. The look of torture, of knowing deep down that this isn’t the end, and he’s falling, and the world has begun to tip over on its axis. That’s the sort of look he gives me now. He’s not smiling, and his eyes have turned more grey than anything else, stormy and hollowed out with something feral clawing underneath.

“Don’t talk,” I whisper as if stoned. “I need the relief right now or I think I’m going to burst right open.”

“There’s blood…”

“Since when have you cared about that?”

“Never,” he snarls, and then he’s kissing me again, devouring me whole. The ground beneath my feet must have opened sometime during his small stutters because, now, as he kisses me, I feel as though I’m left floating, untethered and sinking into him.

His lips are soft, but the touches are wild and fast-paced and breathless as though we have no time again. And maybe we don’t. We still don’t know if there are others, like these men, creeping toward us, and if we’ll soon be surrounded again, but for the moment, none of that seems to matter. I just want to have him close to me; I want to feel his body on mine again, and to know and understand the dynamics of something so fragile, so fucked up it’s shredding us both apart.

He’s so fucking hard. Panting.

He breaks the kiss to mutter something in Russian, which I don’t get until he’s trapped me against the wall and pushing my pants down my legs with rough hands, scraping my skin.

“Ty moyo nachalo i konets.” My beginning and end is you.

I don’t know if he meant to say this or if, like all the things he’s said before, he’d meant to keep this hidden. Shit, with him, I can never quite tell but I like it. Like how he seems to be in control all the time, but slips when it gets too much for him. Like that, it makes him human somehow, even as he’s breaking me open.

“God—I don’t think I can control how much I want you right now, Katya,” he says, voice pinched, trembling. “I don’t think I can be slow right now.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to take you and claim you. Dominate you. Wreck you until there’s nothing left but us.” His voice is rough, and his hunger is almost violent. “I want to fuck you until neither of us can breathe. Until it’s all you feel, all you know.” His eyes burn into me, and my nipples stiffen, his cock straining blatantly against his pants. “I’m so hard for you, Katya. Like granite. And maybe if I take you—if I devour you one more time—I’ll finally get this craving out of my system.”

My legs tremble, nearly giving out. My skin scorches, my pussy pulses with a desperate ache. He isn’t promising me love. He isn’t even hinting at companionship. What he dangles before me is a primal, no-holds-barred fuck with a body sculpted by divine hands.

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