Page 116 of Shattered & Returned

Then again, maybe that was exactly where I needed to go.

Maybe I just had to be brave enough to fall.

“I’ll try,” I said, peering into his eyes.

He couldn’t tell me things, but I could seek clues.

He swallowed, a riot of emotions reflecting in his winter-green eyes. The first fragile light of hope pierced through despair, though he clearly feared to trust it.

“That’s all I’m asking,” he said.

The air between us whipped with electricity, his gaze burning with pure male need, mine answering with the same passion.

He was still my professor. I was still his student. What we wanted was forbidden. If we were found out, the consequences would be more than I could afford. If I surrendered to him, it’d change everything.

Yet this connection between us was more than desire; it was older, deeper. Nero was air to my lungs, and as I peered into his eyes, I saw the same truth mirrored back.

“Why me?” I whispered, needing to hear it. “Why do you want me when you could have anyone?”

“Your kindness,” he said, as if the answer was written in my bones.

“Plenty of people are kind.”

“Not like you.” His thumb brushed my cheek.“You’re compassionate, yet utterly untamed,though no one else sees it. You’re the wildest thing, even when they bind you. No chains, norules, no one can hold you down. You always find your wings, love, and you soar.” His voice dropped in reverence. “There’s never been another like you. Not in any world. Not in any lifetime.”

They called kindness a weakness, yet here he was, this powerful, lethal man, cherishing it like a rare gift.

And when he gazed at me like that, I melted. For the first time, I wasseen.

Something inside me cracked open. Awakening surged through my blood. My thoughts were relentless, my emotions a storm, my hunger for Nero roaring to life. In an instant, I became someone new. I was stronger, brighter, and more alive than ever.

Fuck the rule.

You live only once.

I seized his face between my hands, fingers tracing the scars that mirrored the ones on his soul, and crushed my mouth to his.

My lips were ice, fire, war, and desire. And they claimed what was mine.

Chapter

Forty

Bloom

Thorns and Roses

Somehow, I’d pulled Nero into the tub with me, kissing him like a starving woman, and he met me with equal desperation. His hands roamed my bare skin, his shirt and trousers drenched and clinging.

His mouth scorched me. My body was on fire. This need for him was primal, ravenous, as if lifetimes of hunger had gathered into this moment.

I ached for him. Only him. Heat coiled in my core. I rocked my hips against the hard ridge of his cock through the soaked fabric.

Liquid fire licked my sex, searing as it coiled tighter, consuming me. The heat became unbearable, and I urgentlyneeded his cock in me, filling me and stretching me. Only then would this deep, hollow ache relent.

“Fuck me, Nero,” I whimpered, pressing my face into the crook of his neck.

“I plan to,” he growled. “After today, after nearly losing you, I need to be inside you. Tonight, I’ll claim your maidenhood.”

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