Page 52

“Mm?”

“Is it bad that it’s been so long? It’s not going to be nice for you, I fear.”

“Hey.” His thumb slid around to rest on my lips. “Jules, I don’t know why they feared someone as gentle and sweet as you. It would be an honour to be the person to touch you like that. Damn, I get hard just thinking about touching you again.”

My eyes dropped to the prominent bulge in his trousers, and when I looked back up, he bit his lip.

Then Nikolai stepped back, gripped his shirt and took it off. Carelessly dropping it on the floor, he straightened up, confident in his nudity. My mother had stolen away the prettiest humans she could find, and yet I had never seen anyone more beautiful than Nikolai.

A cheeky grin flitted over his face as I greedily drank him in. Then he took both my hands in his and kissed me again.

Something in me cracked at the feel of his skin—warm as if he’d lain in the sun for hours—under my fingertips. I kissed him back, my tongue darting out to delve deeper into his mouth.

His primal groan stoked the fire in me even more. Our tongues tangled. My hands shook with nerves. I touched every inch of his skin I could reach. It was lightly fuzzed with hair as blond as that on his head, but the hair darkened around his navel where it disappeared under the waistband of his jeans.

I was starving to be touched and desperate to caress, to stroke, to kiss, and to tease. It’d been way too long. I couldn’t even remember the voice of the last person I had kissed. At the time, I had thought I was in love with Friedrich. Now I knew how wrong I’d been. Anything I had felt before Nikolai had been shallow, nothing but smoke and mirrors.

This man, though? I will never forget him.

I wanted him to be my last everything: my last kiss, my last fuck, the last face I saw before I followed him into the dark. Nikolai was the only one I would ever kiss for the rest of my life.

The sight of my shirtless Bunny burned itself into my soul. He was beautiful. His flat stomach with the lines of his abs was visible, and I saw a small tattoo on his hip bone. A light smattering of freckles dotted his chest.

And those pecs.

Panting, our tongues curling around each other, we moved closer to my bed.

I needed him on it and on me. I needed to see what exactly themoreI had asked for entailed.

“Take off whatever you feel comfortable with and lie down on the bed, Jules,” he told me in a throaty voice after we reluctantly broke the kiss. Those lips of his, I knew they would be my doom. Just like my mother had always warned me.

Love makes you weak, Julius.

But I didn’t feel weak, and if I was, it didn’t scare me at all. Nikolai made me feel powerful and strong. And, for the first time in my life, someone made me feelwanted. Wanted not because I washerson, but because they likedme.

Taking off the fresh tunic I had put on minutes before he arrived was exciting and a little daunting.

Am I attractive to a human man?

Nikolai exhaled through his open mouth as if to steady himself.

“Jules,” he whispered and took half a step closer before stopping dead. “Please get on the bed.”

I moved immediately to follow his raspy command but took off my trousers first, thankful I had chosen to put on a pair of cotton undergarments today.

Without meeting his eyes, I settled on the mattress, feeling a little awkward when I leaned back against the headboard.

Is it a good idea to put my body on display like that?

In this position I had no chance of concealing theexceptionallyhard bulge in the thin cotton fabric.

“May I get on the bed with you, Jules?”

I nodded, unable to speak through my dry throat.

“Thank you,” he rasped, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

He undid the buttons at his crotch, his eyes never leaving my face. I watched him push the jeans down his muscular legs until they pooled at his feet and he could step out of them.