Page 45 of The Hellkeeper

“Mark me. Claim me. Make sure everyone I interact with knows I belong to you.”

The challenge is too tempting. Before I can think, I grab his hair and pull his head back. I sink my teeth into his neck. Hard. Again. Harder. My lips trace fire down his throat, my teeth leaving bruises in their wake. A bite. A kiss. Another mark. And another. Until his neck is littered with evidence of me.

His hands fist in my dress, his breathing ragged. “Fuck.”

I pull back, my lips tingling. Damien’s pupils are blown wide, his expression wrecked.

“Mine,” I whisper.

“Say it again.”

I graze my teeth over his jaw. “Mine.”

Damien grabs my hand and places it over his heart.

“No one makes me feel like this but you.” His lips ghost over my ear. “And no one ever will.”

Chapter Sixteen

Damien

My obsession. The bane of my existence. My reason for breathing, for existing… for living.

She’s straddling my thighs, marking me with her mouth. Each hickey sears through my skin and straight into my fucking soul. My little flower, staking her claim, pressing her lips into my flesh like she’s carving herself into me. And she is. She already has. She’s in my blood, in my bones, in every breath I take.

Have I died? Is this heaven? Or is it some cruel hallucination—where I finally have what I want, but in the end, it’s just an illusion?

Because nothing has ever felt better than this.

But something festers beneath the pleasure. Something dark. Possessive. I love seeing her riled up, jealous, her touch desperate and needy. But I fucking hate that she had any reason to feel this way. She should never doubt where I belong. Who I belong to.

Her. Only her.

I’ve failed if she even had a second of insecurity.

Linda. That little parasite latched onto my life the moment I turned her down. Entitled. Pathetic. But now? Now she’s stepped into territory she has no business being in. She tried to put doubt in my flower’s mind. Tried to wedge herself between us.

She won’t get away with it. I’ll make sure of that.

Amelia pulls her mouth from my neck, her lips red and swollen. I feel her gaze peeling me open. Unconsciously, I turn my head, angling my face away.

Her fingers catch my jaw, forcing me to look at her. I’ve never hidden from anyone, never cared how anyone saw me. But her...

She’s staring at my lips like she wants to devour me, the same way I want to devour her.

I trace the swollen curve of her bottom lip. “I bet you’ve been wondering, haven’t you?” I rasp. “Why I tasted every delicious inch of you but not these lips.”

“Don’t ruin the moment,” she whispers.

I let out a dark laugh. “I wanted you to choose, little flower. I wanted you to decide if you wanted to kiss a beast of a man.” My thumb brushes her cheek. “I know my scar isn’t exactly—”

Something shifts in her expression. Something haunted. Broken. And fuck, I want to rip my own tongue out for whatever I said that made her look like that. Before I can say anything else, she crashes her lips into mine.

It’s forceful, almost clumsy, her lips just pressing to mine, unmoving. She doesn’t know how to kiss. It reminds me that I’m the first man to have this, to have her, in every way.

I take control, tilting my head, coaxing her lips open with mine, slowing her down, teaching her. My hands fist in her hair, keeping her where I need her. Her hands shake as they press against my chest, and I groan into her mouth, fucking obsessed with the way she melts for me.

When she pulls away, my breath is ragged, my restraint shredded.

---