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I press my lips together, though I know it’s pointless. The words spill out of me anyway.

“I imagined you taking me in just about every position possible. I imagined your weight settling on me, your hips between mine. I imagined your evil-boy body fucking mine over and over and over again. I imagined it sweet and nice, I imagined it rough and kinky. I imagined you when I was alone … and when I was with other men—I even called out your name once. I imagined it all, and it still didn’t hold a flame against the reality of you.”

The Bargainer watches my mouth as I talk. Finally, he leans in and nips my lower lip. He rolls it between his teeth before releasing it.

He smiles in a distinctly masculine way, his wings appearing behind him. “You called out my name when you were with another?”

I feel myself flush.Whyhad I shared that?

“Cherub, I think we’re going to have to make Truth or Dare a regular part of our days.”

God no. There are so many things—things like what I just divulged—that are better left unsaid.

He walks us down the hall towards the back of the house.

“What’s my dare?” I ask.

“I think you’ll figure it out soon enough.”

We enter my bedroom, the lights flicking on.

“For seven years I yearned to enter this house of yours,” Des admits. “It ate me up, needing to know what sort of life you made for yourself here.”

My skin pebbles at his confession.

“That first night I returned to you,” he says, “you cannot know what it felt like, lounging on your bed, knowing you slept in it. My mind was a mess.”

Hismind was a mess?

It wasmymind that was a mess. The wicked, untouchable Bargainer was back from realms unknown, come to collect his debts and break my heart all over again. I was the bumbling school girl and he the aloof, mysterious one.

“I’ve wanted to sleep with you here,” he continues, “your body tucked against mine … Gods, how badly I wanted to insert myself into this life of yours.”

The Bargainer’s magic tugs at my clothes. One moment they’re there, and in the next, they’re a puddle on the floor.

Now I understand.Thisis the dare—sex wrapped up as a game.

He lays me over my sheets but doesn’t join me. Instead he stands at the foot of the bed, feasting on my naked form.

After several seconds, the Bargainer flashes me one of his scary-as-shit grins. It’s trouble in a look.

He grabs my ankles and spreads my legs wide, indecently displaying me. “I’ve had my own fantasies of you. Taking you right here, in your bed.”

Sliding his hands under my thighs, he drags me to the edge of the mattress. I feel the cool bite of his bronze war bands against my leg.

“Tonight, I’m staking claim to this bed and everything else here.” He presses a kiss to my inner thigh, his lips then dragging across my skin. “Starting with you.”

Chapter 21

Des trails kissesalong my inner thigh, moving inward until—until—

I fist my sheets and bite back a cry, my skin immediately flaring to life as he nips one of my outer lips, then the other. I feel him smile against me, and that’s almost worse. I have no defense against devilish Des.

He runs his tongue up my slit, and Jesus Christ and all the saints, this isdirty.

The Bargainer nips my clit, and now I do cry out.

So very,verydirty.