Page 35 of In Her Blood
She stared up at him, every feeling she barely had hold of colliding inside of her and melting beneath the fire of his words. This was not how they generally talked. He wasn’t one to give praise. Then there was the way he was holding her, which triggered an immediate and physiological response in her chest. And other areas.
She licked her lips, a dangerous temptation whispering through her.Everything else is changing … why can’t this?“You know, you never actually said what happens”—she raised herother hand to lay it beside the one already resting on Otto’s sturdy chest—“if I push things again.”
Otto tensed, his grip tightening.
She batted her eyes in a slow, hopefully sultry way. “Now that I’ve used up my freebie.” She really wanted to just kiss him, to jump up and wrap her legs around him and kiss him with a reckless abandon. But if he shoved her off and rejected her, it would crush her.
Worse, if he didn’t want such advances from her, it would destroy the balance of their existing relationship. And while that wasn’t the vibe she thought she remembered from the moment he’d touched her the other night, she could admit to herself she’d been half out of her mind with exhaustion and possibly a bit inebriated from the medicine. It was possible she may have misinterpreted. And the very last thing she wanted was to destroy them.
To lose him.
She already risked that just by opening her mouth.
“What happens?” Otto repeated, his voice rougher than before. He didn’t wait for a response before he tugged her flat against him, one hand leaving her hip to glide up her spine and tangle in her hair as he pulled her head back to keep her stare. “You really have no idea what you do to me, do you?” He bent closer and brushed his lips over her ear. “Every damn day. Every damn minute.”
The breath caught in her throat as raw desire licked through her.
“Are you brave enough to find out, Lina?” His words whispered across her skin, tickling and teasing, but his lips never touched.
Evelina reached up and hooked her hands around the back of his neck before he could straighten. “Show me,” she said softly, her own lips up against his ear. She turned her head and let her tongue slip out, teasing the skin at the base of his jaw similarly to how he had her the other night.
Otto groaned deep in his throat, raised his head enough to lock his stare onto hers again for a long, heated second—and then he was kissing her. He’d crashed his lips to hers as if gravity itself had pulled them together.
She had enough time to close her eyes and push up on her tiptoes before his tongue was sweeping into her mouth, taking complete control. He held her so tightly she wasn’t sure her knees were actually still functioning. What she was sure of was the way his chest vibrated with a low rumble when their tongues met, and when her nails dug into his skin, and the way she liked it.
He sucked her tongue into his mouth as he dropped his hand from her back to her butt, his strong fingers squeezing in time to the curl of his tongue around hers.
Evelina did the only rational thing. She used his strength as leverage and hopped up, tightening her arms around his shoulders as her legs locked around his hips. The kiss broke sloppily as the change had her grinding directly over his erection.
“Fuck,” Otto cursed, his hand sliding from her hair to the back of her neck.
Evelina threaded her fingers into his hair and chased his kiss shamelessly. “More,” she breathed against his lips.
He made a guttural sound as he licked back into her mouth, the hand on her butt readjusting, and they started moving. And kissing while he walked with her wrapped around him was hot as hell, she decided. His kiss was all-consuming, lighting her entire body on fire until even her skin ached.
He moved his hand up to her hair again and wrapped it around his fist, prying her lips from his. A glistening strand of saliva held their mouths connected for a moment longer before he licked his lips, never taking his eyes from hers.
Her core clenched at the hunger in his stare.
“Say the word, Lina,” he said roughly. “Say it, or we don’t leave this room until Kat comes pounding on the door to drag us off for the weekend.”
For as much as she was looking forward to the retail therapy—and PI detour—Evelina absolutely wanted what he offered more. So, she flicked a quick glance at the wall-mounted clock, rolled her lip between her teeth, and said, “Sounds to me like we have a few hours. Because I seem to have forgotten the word.” She grinned enough to hopefully reassure him she had not magically forgotten her stupid word.
Otto tipped them forward until he was pressing her back into her mattress and rocked his hips, using the new angle to grind harder against her.
Her eyes rolled back in her head and she let out a moan.
Otto nipped at her jaw, then soothed the spot with his tongue. “I’m not fucking joking, Lina.” His voice was almost hoarse. “If you let me cross this line, even once, I can’t walk itback.” He adjusted himself to rest his weight on one arm and catch her chin with his other hand, holding her gaze. “Once you’re mine, you’remine. I’ll never fuckin’ share you.”
Her mouth opened, but she had no breath for words. She’d already been feeling emotional, then he’d gone and turned her on terribly, and now he was speaking …romance? It wasn’t that she was opposed to what he said. She was just horrendously unprepared. She hadn’t allowed herself to think that far ahead.
As she scrounged her brain for a coherent response, Evelina suddenly found herself plummeting through an old, once humiliating memory. The kind of thing that was bound to happen when you were a hormonal, mildly rebellious, teenage girl saddled with severe restrictions and a broody-but-hot and equally off-limits older man as a bodyguard. It’d been a classic ‘girl seeks alternative outlet and gets caught’ scene, and she’d been so embarrassed she’d even tried to run away after. Which also, of course, had not worked out. Nor gained her any sympathies.
It had been a while before she’d looked back on the memory of the night she lost her virginity and realized that when Otto had inevitably found her—because her ‘secret places’ were never secret—his anger had been weird. She’d been a naïve nineteen at the time. She’d just figured he hated her for making him see that, maybe also for the risk it exposed him to as a result of the fact that it’d happened.
But there was one thing he’d said, as he beat on her brief lover, that had stuck with her.“She’s not yours.”
For years, Evelina had assumed he’d meant she wasn’t meant for that boy. Even that she wasn’t in charge of her own future.
