Page 88 of For the Gods' Sake

His shoulder. A large human skull was inked into his shoulder. I ran my hand over it, realizing that it looked more worn than the others. Especially in contrast to the fresh black snake woven through the skull.

“Pine,” he explained, the words wrapping around my remaining sanity and running away with it.

“And Hades,” I finished.

“Rose, too. Both of them,” Adrian corrected. I looked up at him with curious eyes, wondering why the distinction was important to him. He answered, his brows pinched in pain. “Pine would have my ass if he knew I let—”

Words failed him. That was okay. Touch would do just fine.

I pulled my right hand from his, smoothing it over the last of the tattoos I could see. A trident and a lyre on his arm, before wrapping both my hands around hisneck. Pulling him close, so that our mouths were inches away.

I needed to get him back, to pull some familiar part of him out of the despair and the guilt. “I wouldn’t have told you to take my control if I didn’t trust you to hold it.”

He’d told me once that I was perfect, good. I wasn’t sure I agreed. But if it was enough to get the message across, that agoodperson trusted him with something like that, then—

Adrian’s mouth clamped down on mine roughly and I smiled against his lips. His hands were back around my waist, holding me with a dominance that had grown familiar in minutes.

“If you give it to me,” Adrian said, picking me back up and wrapping my legs around him. “I’m not giving it back.”

“I don’t want it back.” And with that rough confession, I saw every ounce of doubt flee Adrian’s eyes. Every restraint holding him back. The storm only seemed to grow more intense, wind and rain working together to slam against the sides of the cabin.

Adrian walked us inside, kicking the door closed with his foot. We weren’t kissing so much as attacking each other, a mess of lips and tongue and teeth fighting to get closer together.

His hands were twisted in my hair while I pulled on his own strands with a force I was sure was almost painful.

I couldn’t take in my surroundings, not when Adrian was commanding all my attention. But he was walking us back somewhere. Then he was tossing me onto a large, comfortable bed that took up the majority of thesmall bedroom.

Lightning flashed across the sky as I bounced backward.

“Take off your boots.” The words were a rough command.

I obeyed quickly, bending over to rip my knee-high boots off my legs as quickly as possible. But my fingers fumbled over the leather and the zipper, my attention too focused on the hard planes of Adrian’s stomach, over the ridged slope of his hip as it descended under his pants.

Over that soft dusting of hair trailing down his stomach.

“You do it,” I said when my hand slipped off the zipper.

Adrian’s face darkened. “Fine. Hands on the headboard, then.”

My mouth dropped open an inch, timed with a sharp bolt of desire racking my body. I wanted this side of him, wanted so badly to give myself over to his dominance, but now I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t destroy me.

But I listened, scooting back on the bed and laying flat, moving my hands up to curl around the iron bars of the headboard.

Adrian placed a knee on the bed, picking up one of my legs like it weighed nothing. My lungs seized when he brought my foot up to rest on his shoulder, his hands slowly pulling down the zipper then tugging off the boot. He repeated the move on the other side, leaving me bare in my bra and underwear, though I knew those would be discarded soon after.

“Adrian, please,” I begged, though I wasn’t sure what for.

Everything.

“Patience, honey,” he said, his hands lazily descending to his belt. I sat up, reaching for him to help speed along the process, but he stopped. “Headboard.Now.”

I swallowed roughly, slowly resuming my hold on the iron. Only once my hands were back in place did he resume his undressing.

The slide of his belt was so slow, it felt like a physical caress, rough and dirty.

Then his hands went to his pants, unbuttoning them and pushing them down his strong thighs.

Motherfucker.

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