Page 90 of The Biting Bargain

My throat tightens even more and I stomp down the bubbling feeling in my chest. No, impossible, he didn't do all this just for me...

"Did Stellan...?" he begins and his face darkens for a second. And at least now the anger is coming back, covering the completely pointless hoof-bubbling hope inside me.

"What? Touched me? Fucked me?" I yell, more heatedly than I intended. Vincent flinches, and I almost regret my words.

"I can reassure you, he was saving that for later," I add, looking down at my feet, but Vincent gently lifts my head with one knuckle under my chin.

"I'm sorry I sent you into this situation."

This time it sinks in. My heart softens like a stick of butter in the sun.

"I was a fool to send you away," he says. "I was a fool not to see that you mattered more than keeping my secret."

I blink in a desperate attempt to keep from crying.

"Can I undo it?"

"What do you mean?" I ask, and then my mouth drops open because Vincent — the big, strong, powerful vampire/werewolf who commands empires and has just messed with his entire kin, the multi-billionaire business tycoon who, by the way, is still stark naked and gorgeous — drops to his knees in front of me.

"Can I un-send you away?" He looks up at me, a strange gleam in his obsidian eyes. If I didn't know better, I'd almost say it was uncertainty.

And fear.

That he might lose me again.

"You mean you want me to stay with you?" I ask, and my voice picks this moment of all moments to croak out.

"Please stay by my side, Pollyanna."

"As your companion?" I whisper.

"You are so much more than that," he says. "I didn’t see it before. I was a fool. You, Polly, are the best thing that has happened to me in centuries. And I am so sorry that I had to lose you before I realized what a conceited idiot I am. I don’t know if I can make it up to you, but I will do everything in my power to prove to you I’m serious."

He grips my hand with his big, perfect hand, warm and reassuring, and I feel the bond between us that has been there all along.

My knees shake. The entire world shakes. Even my voice is wobbly when I ask, "But what about your club?"

"Forget the damn club!" And maybe it’s the conviction in his words that does me in.

I lean down and kiss him.

Vincent makes a surprised sound, but then he wraps his arms around me and pulls me in, against his hot skin.

And this kiss is like coming home.

I breathe him in as if I hadn't been able to breathe for weeks, wrap myself around him, pull him down with me, into the fragrant grass, and he follows me, lying on top of me. We sink down, sighing, into the warm sea of flowers swaying in the moonlight.

"Polly," he murmurs into our kiss, as if that were not my name but the only thing that is holding his universe in place, his voice a deep hum reverberating in my nether regions. As if he were as amazed as I am, as enraptured as I am.

Just as in need as I am.

"Please!" I press my body against him, his hardness pushing against my belly.

This need is non-negotiable, also on his part. I gasp into his mouth as he rips my dress in half, shuddering as one large hand cups both my breasts and squeezes.

"I missed your smell," he says as he dives down, bends my thighs apart. "Gods, your smell."

His tongue on my pussy has lust vibrating up my spine and I cry out. This feels so good, too good, and even more divine than the sensation of him lapping me up is the sight of him, spreading me wide open for his use and feasting on me like a starved man.

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