Page 33 of Taken By the Ripper
And kissed her.
This time, the burning inferno couldn’t be contained between them. She lost all sense of time and place as the rightness of their bond seemed to click into place once again, and this time she wanted it to stay.
His deft claws pulled on the tie to her apron to loosen it before shrugging it over her head. And before she found a single moment to catch her breath, her hair fell around her shoulders after he took the pins out.
He pulled her flush against his body and kissed her neck. She gasped, bracing herself against his solid chest.
“I kissed Claude!” she said breathlessly, not wanting to keep it a secret from him. “To distract him to take the files. I kissed him. I’m sorry.”
Instead of responding with anger, he chuckled against her throat, his lips moving from her jawline to her collarbone. “I don’t care. But you’reminenow.”
The flicker of disappointment over the thought of never kissing Claude again after this vanished with the heat of Jack’s warm lips on hers. His hands touched her gently but with a barely restrained passion, as if he wanted to be rougher but didn’t want to hurt her.
Another gasp escaped her as he pinned her hands above her head against the wall, his chest heaving as he gazed down at her with a desire to match her own. Slowly, his tail snaked around her waist, the tip barely brushing against her cheek. It was sweet. Intimate. Impossible.
And she wanted more.
“I want to make you my mate in every sense of the word.” His low, rumbling voice caressed her ears like a pleasant whisper. “Deny me now, and I will walk away. But if we go any farther, I don’t think I can stop.”
With her hands pinned, she couldn’t touch him the way she wanted, so she settled on winding her leg around his and pulling him closer at the knee.
In an equal whisper, she replied, “Then make me yours.”
Before the last word even left her mouth, he swooped her up in a quick movement until she rested inside his arms. It took all her willpower not to squeal in surprise. Instead, she clamped her mouth shut to prevent one of her sisters from hearing her. Honestly, she needn’t have bothered when Jack’s lips returned to hers, muffling each contented sigh and whispered word of affection.
She found herself hardly aware of her surroundings as the ghoul shuffled around the room in agile movements. The soft mattress of the bed met her back, momentarily snapping her out of her euphoria long enough to remember he was injured. They shouldn’t be doing this. No matter how much either of them might want to.
“I just stitched you up.” Her fingers lightly caressed his abdomen above the sutures. “Your doctor will not be happy should you tear them.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“But your wound!”
“Is inconsequential to me compared to this.” Sharp yet gentle claws caressed her face from temple to chin. “You are more important to me.”
“You are insane,” she breathed, enjoying the pleasant warmth his body offered from where it hovered over her.
A grin quirked at the corner of his mouth. “Then what does that make you?”
Her quiet laughter transitioned into a shuddering breath as his lips trailed across her collarbones, and as her dress loosened around her shoulders, between her breasts. Never in her life had she experienced such heat and warmth and desire. Being insane was the least of her worries, but she couldn’t find a single care to back it.
A trail of simmering heat followed in the wake of his touch as his hands traveled over her arms, her waist, her legs, made hotter wherever his lips touched her skin.
Along with the desire to be touched, she wanted to explore him as well. Her fingers grazed the hard muscles of his arms, his shoulders, and then she more daringly buried her fingers into his black hair. His accompanying sigh gave her more courage to pull back on the dark strands to expose the cords of muscleon his neck. And when she brushed her lips along his throat, something between a whimper and a growl escaped his mouth.
“You will be the death of me,mon amour,” he murmured with a wild look in his yellow eyes. “And I will walk into that death willingly if it means you will remain here in my arms.”
“Stop talking about death,” she laughed, smacking his arm. “It’s morbid.”
“I thought you enjoyed morbid things. Morbid or romantic, there’s no telling with you.”
The faintest memory sparked in her mind, but she couldn’t latch on fast enough before Jack distracted her with another kiss. And then another. Until she fully lost herself in his touch, in the scent of him.
“Will this infect me?” she asked huskily, arms braced against his shoulders.
“If you drink my blood, then perhaps.” A smirk grew across his face. “But even I am not that tarty.”
She laughed, but the sound was promptly cut off by his kiss. A contented sigh escaped her as she wrapped her arms around his neck and arched her back to bring herself closer to him. This blossoming feeling inside of her… She dared not call it love, especially when she hardly understood it herself. But…
