Page 55 of Deal with the Devil

I sense, deep, deep down, that this man would free his monster to maim for me, would submit to torture to protect me.

Saying nothing, his large hands move to the strings holding the back of my dress in place, freeing them. The material relaxes around my breasts, loosening from my body before his inked hands slip under the straps on my shoulders and he pushes them slowly down my arms, watching in the mirror as the dress falls around my feet in a splash of white against black tile.

I’m in nothing but my white underwear now against the fully dressed, black ink backdrop of him.

It’s strangely erotic. I feel the tug of that need I seem to feel exclusively for this man awakening inside me as he drops my shirt to the floor, his inked hands moving to my belly, palms connecting with goose pebbled flesh, fingers splaying wide. The man is so much bigger than me, his hands cover nearly every inch of my stomach as he tugs me into his wide front, dropping his face to the side of my neck, pressing a molten kiss there.

That tremor intensifies.

He inhales the scent of me, his hands roaming my skin until I feel weak in the knees. It’s as though he senses I’m at a point of melting into a puddle on the floor with my dress, because he unclips my braand lets it fall to the floor, my breasts bouncing free as I gasp in a sharp breath, watching his blue eyes—the only splash of color in the dark—spark with heat in the mirror. Then his big fingers dip into the lacy band of my panties, slowly pushing them down my hips as he moves to his knees in front of me so I can still see our reflection in the floor to ceiling mirror.

“You’re beautiful.” His voice is rough and raw. A guttural rasp in the otherwise quiet space where only the thud of my heart and the quiet panting of breaths I try to hold in sound.

The way he’s looking up at me, those blue eyes shining with dark heat through ebony lashes has my heart racing. But it’s the way his fingertips curl into my waist, as though it’s physically taxing for him not to yank me down to devour me, that nearly brings me to my knees.

This man is on the edge. He’s clinging to it with his fingertips, clinging to control, for me.

I’ve never been so exposed in my entire life, standing naked before a fully clothed man.

I’ve also never felt so powerful as I do now, because although I’m naked before him—he’s the one on his knees.

“Fucking hell, Nevaeh,” he hisses when my fingertips spear through thick hair. We have to be going on three in the morning now, but I’m not tired at all. I feel as though I could go forever, high on him.

“Are you going to kiss me, husband?”

His eyes flutter closed as he tips his head forward, lips pressing to my navel. “Say it again,wife.”

“Husband,” I gasp when his fingers curl into my hips a moment before he stands, lifting me with him as he crushes his mouth to mine. He kisses me like he’s trying to slip inside me, like his soul is trying to touch mine. As though he’s sating a millennia old hunger, his soul having suffered through a thousand lives before finding the well of mine and drinking deep. Devouring wholly.

If Mama knew how I felt in this moment as Kane kissed me, she’d say everything that lead up to him was fate. All the pain and fear I suffered, the betrayal and abuse—it was the path I had to walk to eventually fall into his arms.

How can something that feels like this—like fate—be fake?

The sound of the water turning on in the shower hardly distracts me from Kane’s kiss. If it wasn’t for the way I slide down the length of his body as he sets me on my feet again, I’d have kept kissing him. Kept clinging to the solid mass of him.

I catch sight of my reflection in the mirror and startle at just how captivatingly dishevelled I look after his kiss. My lips are a brutal red and puffy, swollen from his kiss. My breasts feel impossibly full and heavy, my nipples pointed to him, pleading fortouch. I’m almost horrified by the glistening sheen that catches in the light of the reflection between my thighs.

I want him with every inch of my body. It’s written into my flesh as boldly to see as the ink on his own.

He hisses between his teeth as his eyes swoop over me, taking in the same desire-painted woman I see in the mirror. Heat prickles under my skin and I scrape my bottom lip with my teeth on a slow release as I suck in a shuddering breath.

Kane doesn’t speak a word as he grips the back of his shirt to pull it over his head in the way men do. It falls to the floor, exposing an inked chest I want to lick before big hands, deliciously veined, drop to the buckle holding his jeans in place. Leather slides through metal as a shiver slides through every inch of me. The wet between my legs intensifies, and I squeeze my thighs together, swallowing a moan.

His eyes hold mine as he pops the button, drops the zipper and kicks out of his jeans. His black briefs follow quickly behind until we’re both standing naked. My heart trips over one beat, then two, before it quickens in a race to keep pace with my breaths. My hands are trembling at my sides, why, I have no clue.

Maybe it’s because I love the thrill of knowing how much bigger he is than me. How easily he could crush me—destroy me. But I know he won’t. I know thatbetween these powerful hands, I’m safest. Beneath his massive body, I’m most cherished.

One of those powerful hands lifts from where it rests at his side to push into my belly, wordlessly commanding me beneath the spray of deliciously hot water. He follows, closing the glass door behind him as he crowds me in the space. My heart lurches as I watch him come closer, his desire on proud display between his legs.

The things I want to do to this man.

The things I want him to do to me.

The things I’d let him do…

I’m in trouble. Big, big trouble.

Kane doesn’t hesitate to reach for me, pulling my body against his. He holds me tight, his arms banding around my waist like iron as he lifts me, pressing hot kisses to my lips, my face, my throat. I lean back against the cool tile as I wrap my legs around his waist, feeling the swollen tip of him sliding against my core in a way that makes us both suck in air.

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