Page 134 of The Scandal You Started
She might have rolled her eyes if baring her raw self wasn’t making her feel so strung up. She wasn’t regretting it, per se. But no one had ever warned her it’d be this unnerving.
He crawled closer until he was kneeling beside her. And damn him, because in a moment of vulnerability where she was already feeling small, he looked bigger than he ever had before.
“But you do not have to trust either if you cannot bring yourself to.” He took her hands in a secure grip. “All I ask is that you trustme. Trust that I love you dearly. Allow me to prove to you I can be trusted with your heart and happiness and wellbeing too. That is all.”
She stared at her fingers encased in his paws before raising her lashes. “You say‘that’s all’like you’re not asking me to hand over my entire life to you.”
He huffed a mirth-filled sound. “I do not want you to hand it over. I merely wish to share it with you. To enjoy it with you. Grow old with you.” Wispy tendrils caressed her skin as his gaze intensified. “I wish to take my last breath looking at you, knowing there was no one I could have ever loved more than I love you.”
Her heart was thumping hard, each rapid beat causing a mini earthquake in her chest. It was difficult to think over the racket, but the deeper she fell into the warm pools of his irises, the softer her erratic pulse became. Comprehension hugged her tightly.
He was right. She didn’t have to trust the concepts of love and marriage. She just had to trust him, herself, and this thing between them. She was halfway there already.
“I do trust you,” she uttered.
For the first time in a while, there wasn’t an ounce of doubt in her voice.
Dominic collapsed towards her on a shaky sigh of relief. A glassy shimmer slipped over his eyes that cracked her heart and fixed it in the same breath.
“Truly?” he said thickly.
Pulling away from the wall, she nodded. “I always have.”
It was the one thing that had remained the same since the beginning. Even when they were in each other’s faces, arguing. Maybe even when he’d had his hands wrapped around herthroat, she’d trusted that he’d let her go. He had. He’d always shown her he was trustworthy.
He guided her hands to his shoulders, and like they’d done it a thousand times before, she knew exactly what he wanted from her. He drew her up and closer with the support of a solid arm, allowing her to manoeuvre herself until she was straddling his folded legs.
She encircled his neck. He did the same to her waist. Tighter. Holding her flush to him.
It was only then that she realised this big, arrogant, roguish, self-possessed oaf of a man who’d thrown her entire world upside down with his determined, ever-present existence and declarations of love was trembling.
Her heart let out a sob and lurched against her rib cage with outstretched arms that desperately wanted to cradle him in. She did what it couldn’t and hugged him a little closer.
“May I love you, Rayna?” he rasped barely above a whisper.
She couldn’t help the amused breath that fluttered out of her. “A bit late to be asking for permission, don’t you think?”
He brushed a tender smile against her lips. “Truly far too late.”
Dominic kissed her. So lightly. So gently.So fearfully.
Like she was made up of clouds, and he was scared of pressing too hard in case she dispersed and became intangible to him.
Was that why he was shaking? Because he was scared of losing her?
It didn’t feel bad, but it wasn’t like him at all.
She couldn’t have that. She couldn’t let him feel like that, doubting she was there in his arms, real and wanting and not about to flee. Even if she wasn’t sure about the future the way he was, she was sure of him. She was sure of where she was, and she needed him to know that.
So Rayna scrunched his hair in her fist and crushed his mouth under hers. She sucked on his bottom lip hard enough for him torelease a hiss of sweet pain, then dragged a soothing lick across it. He opened for her, and she stole around his tongue, looted him of a groan, and came alive with feminine triumph as he responded with the same level of possession.
He tugged on her hair, wanting her to dip back over his arm. She went, and he chased her. Greedy and eager and panting. She kissed him harder, locked herself around him as she ground her molten core against his swelling cock. He moaned into her mouth, the sound piercing her belly with bliss, and she couldn’t take it any longer.
She tore away on a rough breath. “I want…I want to make love to you.”
Chapter 39
Rayna
