Page 44 of The Soul of a Rogue

His voice dipped slightly, almost rough. “Yet maybe you should want more.”

“Not for what it will cost me. I had everything, had it planned out until the day I died, and it all disintegrated with that one shot of a pistol.” Her eyes closed, her forehead dipping forward, the self-pity invading her for only a second. She gave a slight shake of her head and her eyelids cracked open, but she couldn’t lift her chin, her stare fixed on the floor. “I cannot ever want that again—a future. Not ever. My husband may not have loved me, but it…it was my world and it crushed me. Losing all of it crushed me.”

“Elle—”

“Don’t.” Her eyes lifted, her stare seizing him. “Don’t ask for more from me, Rune. Don’t. I don’t have it in me. I can’t have it in me.”

Silent, his stare clamped onto her, fire invading the copper in his eyes as he took a step forward and the heat of his body overtook her.

“Then I won’t ask.” His head dipped downward, his lips landing lightly on her neck, his words soft along the curve just below her ear. “I’ll take. A thief, I’ll slip under your skin, burrow a way into your heart and soul, and steal away what little I need from you. Take it before you know what I did. Before you can resist.”

Her head fell backward as his lips worked downward along the slope of her chest, his fingers sliding up under her left breast, his thumb brushing through her dress across her nipple. Words choked up her throat. “Why would you want that? You never wanted this attachment.”

His words stayed on her skin, heating her pores with every word. “Because as it turns out, you were the first thief to the party, and you have a part of me I never thought to give.”

Against everything logical and sane in her mind that screamed at her to stop, that it was time to break things with him, her hands lifted, her fingers threading in through his hair. “You’re dismal at this vow of no attachments.”

“I excelled at it until I met you.” His fingers slid to the top of her bodice, tugging down the fabric, her stays, until her left nipple was bared. A swipe with his thumb, and then his lips clasped around the bud, teasing. “Until you stood in front of me, naked. Beautiful and challenging. Kissing the scar over my heart. You stole it away from me then, in that moment.”

“I could give it back.” Her hands moved down from his head to tug at his lawn shirt, pulling it up and over his head.

His mouth left her skin for only a moment as his shirt disappeared before tugging down the other side of her dress to find her other nipple. “I don’t want it back. I want you to have it. To have that piece of me that I hate to be gone—because I fear for its survival—fear for its loss. But I want you to have it. Hold it. Protect it.”

His words sent a lump into her throat and her gaze followed her fingers as they trailed down his back, riding the numerous ridges of the scars that dotted his back. “It is hard to look at your body—it is so perfect, but the scars built up over scars hide so much from me.”

His head angled up, his lips moving to her neck until he was standing over her, his breath next to her ear. “You know more than anyone.”

“And yet I don’t know anything.” The truth of the words didn’t stop her fingers from finding the fall front of his trousers and setting his member free, already straining for her touch, her body.

His hands went along her thighs, dragging up her skirts, lifting her as his tongue swirled circles just below her ear that sent shivers down her back. Holding her body high, he set the tip of his member at her entrance—her already throbbing, begging for him, entrance.

“You know this.” He drove into her without preamble, stealthy, stealing her breath.

Her legs lifted and tightened around the back of him, her mouth burying along the skin of his shoulder.

He sat deep inside of her for a breath, not moving, their bodies entwined so securely it shook her to the very core of her being.

She did know this. She knew it for the visceral, carnal need that she’d never felt before, never experienced. Their bodies together were otherworldly, shouldn’t exist.

But they did. Right there. Every time they were joined.

A breath and a rake of her teeth across the cord of muscle along his shoulder and he growled, stepping forward and crashing her back onto the wall behind her.

The mosaic shifted—brittle old tesserae dislodging from the mortar behind her—but she didn’t care, couldn’t care for what she needed to happen.

He withdrew, slamming back into her, sending shocking waves vibrating through her body. Again and again, so furious in the need of it his shaft bored up into her, stretching and stoking alive nerves that had never existed before. Until she was gasping, fighting for air, fighting for control of her body.

“Come, Elle. Come. Don’t fight it.” His words ragged in her ear, she could hear he was close to breaking.

But she needed to fight it—fight for these moments where there was nothing but the two of them on the precipice—no world around them, no past, no future. Just their bodies doing exactly what they were meant to. A match made in the bowels of hell or the gardens of heaven, she didn’t care.

He continued to stroke, a growl rumbling in his chest as she panted, taking every one of his thrusts, opening up farther and farther to him.

One brutal drive, and his cock swelled deep within her, filling her, sending her over the edge to where she couldn’t fight any longer, only surrender to the vicious waves that tore through her body, taking everything from her and leaving sizzling wakes of agonized pleasure.

Her head curled down to wrap along his shoulder, her breathing heavy into his neck. She fought for air, for the sanity that deserted her every time they were together. How he was able to do this to her body he must be the very devil himself.

Under her fingertips, his skin pulsated, and she slid her hands along the sleek muscles of his back, still wondering at the mysteries of the many lines of scars marring the smooth of his skin.

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