Page 99 of Sweetheart: Part One

Impossible and foolish as it was, for the first time, I truly let myself want his claim, his love, his protection—and to offer him mine, so the demons chasing him would never catch up again.

I realised I’d just been staring at him in silence. I should… say something, right?

He’d just told me… He’d just said…

“I…”Fuck.

He pressed his finger to my lips, and he didn’t look hurt. There was an impish grin creeping onto his face. “I don’t mind being a little crazy when it comes to you, but I don’t want you saying anything unless you mean it.”

That wasn’t it.

Lovinghim wasn’t the problem.

I could do that and still be a hopeless wreck. Butsayingit? When I’d proclaimed love to this pack upon posters a million times over, the word felt diluted. More so, whenhe’djust said it to me. As if it was impossible to make it mean what I wanted.

“Just tell me I haven’t scared you off, and I can still make you come until you’re begging me to stop.”

An embarrassing sound slipped up my throat, needy and desperate. A substitute for what I so desperately wanted to tell him. I nodded, though, still speechless.

He cupped my heat, slipping his fingers to my sensitive clit, making me gasp. I writhed against him, breathing ragged as he drove me to the edge of another orgasm, my body still on fire from the first. This time, his face was inches from mine, watching every movement with wonder.

“Kiss me,” I begged.

He bit his lip in a smile, his raven curls feathering my cheeks as he sped up the friction on my clit until I groaned. Finally, he pressed his lips to mine. His tongue drove into my mouth with passion right as I tumbled into another orgasm.

When I’d come down from it, his touch still lingered, circling ever so slowly now, and I was shivering with each movement, overwhelmed.

“Can you come again, beautiful?” he asked.

Again?

“This is what you want?” I asked. Of everything, this wasn’t what I’d expected him to want when I’d offered submission—for him to makemecome apart?

“Vex, I’ve never seen anything more captivating in the world.”

I bit back a whine of delight.

He was still watching me, tense, waiting for my answer.

I nodded. “For you.” My mind was hazy with lust and wonder, and I’d do anything he asked right now.

His impish smile returned, and then he took me in his arms, shifting us both so that he was propped up against the back of the daybed and I was straddling him.

Again, two fingers slipped between my legs and the prominent bulge I could feel beneath his jeans. I shuddered as he dipped his fingers back in.

“You getsopretty when I find just the right place,” he murmured, curling his fingers against that perfect spot in my core. I let out a little breath, and his free hand tangled in my hair, holding me steady as he began stroking that spot.

“Fuck…” I let my eyelids flutter closed for a second, shaking with the intensity of his touch.

A growl slipped from his chest. “Eyes on me.”

My eyes snapped open at the weight of those words. It was a command, backed by the full force of his damned strong aura—even if it wasn’t out in threat.

My lips parted in shock, not just at the intensity of his gaze, with his pupils blown as he watched me, but at hearing Drake use his alpha bark at all. And I hadn’t even felt the urge to fight it, which was a simple matter of will, unlike the commands I received through the dark bond.

I didn’twantto fight it. It hadn’t been tainted like commands of other alphas, as if his intent backed it somehow. Not cruel, but protective—over me.

Hewasdifferent.

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