Page 58 of Monster's Pretty Bride

I bare my teeth, voice a dark snarl. “You almost died, Eryss.”

Her chest rises and falls, lips swollen, breath ragged.

I take her jaw again, tilting her chin, forcing her eyes to stay locked on mine.

“If you ever fall again,” I murmur, my voice like a blade sliding through flesh, “I don’t know what I’ll do.”

Her breath is a shudder against my lips.

She kisses me back.

This time, it is inevitable.

27

ERYSS

The river rages. Wild and relentless. It carves through the land, just as he carves through me, unyielding, untamable, too much.

The storm of what just happened still pulses between us. The chaos. The near loss. The kiss. My head’s still reeling from the intensity of it.

His arms are locked around me like chains, his breath fierce against my ear. I don’t fight him. I should. I want to. But there’s something in the way he holds me, like he’s seconds from unraveling. Like if he lets go, he’ll lose something vital.

My chest rises and falls against his, too fast, too sharp. Water drips from my hair, clings to my skin. I should be shivering from the cold, but I’m burning. Inside. Out. Everywhere he touches.

I tilt my head up, meeting his gaze in the flickering silver moonlight. Molten gold eyes trap me, searing, demanding, furious. His grip tightens on my waist, talons scraping lightly, a reminder of what he is. What he could do.

I arch an eyebrow. “Are you going to kill me, then?” My voice is silk over steel.

His lips curl, not quite a smirk. Not quite anything soft. “You think I’d save you just to spill your blood a moment later?”

“You’re unpredictable.”

“And you’re reckless.”

A challenge. A warning. A mistake.

I should pull away. Instead, I press my palms to his chest, feeling the unsteady thrum beneath thick muscle. He’s still breathing hard. Not from the fight. Not from exhaustion.

From me.

His fingers flex on my waist, his restraint a living, trembling thing.

“This shouldn’t have happened.” I whisper the lie between us.

He leans in, the dangerous heat of him coiling around me like another kind of shackle. “Then why are you still here?”

My nails dig into him, daring him to close the distance. “I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

Lightning crackles through the sky. The water rushes over the rocks, roaring with its own untamed fury, mirroring the madness in my veins.

Then he does the one thing he shouldn’t. The one thing I never thought he would.

He kisses me. Again.

It isn’t gentle. It isn’t slow. It’s destruction wrapped in silk and teeth, a war fought between lips and tongues. He devours me, punishes me, lays claim to every single breath I have left.

I don’t fight him.

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