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Thea’s eyes were lined with sorrow. ‘It’s for you… For after.’

‘After what?’ he growled.

‘You know what.’ Thea’s lower lip trembled, but she met his gaze with a determined look. ‘After I’m gone.’

Wilder raked his fingers through his hair, fighting to get enough air into his lungs as he snatched up the offending item and held it out to her, hopeless. ‘You’ve left me a death book, is that it?’

‘Not a name I would have chosen, but… in a way, yes…?’

Wilder was trembling, fury gripping his bones and sending fire to his heart. ‘You’ve been writing me death letters? Since when?’

‘Since we got here.’

He flipped through the countless pages. ‘If you had this much to say, why not say it to me? I’m here. I’m with you now.’ He could hear the pain straining his voice, but he didn’t care. Didn’t she know that she was breaking him apart? Didn’t she know that he wouldn’t let her go anywhere without him?

‘It’s just in case,’ she whispered, her eyes wide.

Wilder cast the notebook aside and grabbed her, hoisting her up onto the war table, sending maps and markers scattering. He shoved her thighs apart and seated himself between them. He hadn’t allowed himself this, hadn’t allowed himself to be touched by her since before the Scarlet Tower. But now? Now he needed her hands on him. He needed to bury his cock deep inside her, needed the sanctuary of her body.

‘We’re not doing anything just in case,’ he growled, before ripping her shirt in two and tearing it from her body.

She gasped, but he didn’t stop there.

Instantly hard and aching for her, he tore the band around her chest down the middle, exposing her full, round breasts to him in the flickering candlelight.

‘Wilder,’ she murmured. ‘Anyone could come in.’

‘I don’t give a fuck,’ he told her, and closed his mouth around one of her nipples.

Thea’s head tipped back as she moaned, her body bowing beneath him as his teeth scraped the hardened peak, teasing the sensitive spot. Her legs widened, wrapping around his lower back and drawing him close so that he could grind his rock-hard erection against her core. The friction sent stars into his vision.

Thea seemed to understand the shift in him, because her hands were at the buttons of his shirt. He couldn’t wait; he tore straight through that fabric as well, letting the tatters fall from his arms to the floor. Thea’s hands were on him in an instant, tracing the lines of his chest, the plane of his abdomen and the dip of sinew that pointed right to the bulge in his pants.

‘You’re everything,’ she whispered, but he silenced her with a savage kiss.

Wilder claimed her brutally, and she welcomed his exploration of her mouth with frenzied strokes of her own tongue. All the while her nails marked his skin, heating his blood to boiling point.

He caught her lower lip between his teeth and bit down hard, pinching her nipple at the same time, eliciting a sharp cry from her before he kissed over each small pulse of pain.

Thea’s hands went to his belt, and he helped her with the buckle and then the buttons of his pants. He shoved them down his muscular thighs, letting his thick length spring free, kicking his pants aside.

Thea’s mouth fell open at the sight of him and he let a sly smile grace his lips. ‘See something you like, Princess?’ he said, his voice rough with desire.

‘Yes,’ she breathed, reaching for him. ‘Something I’ve missed…’

Wilder didn’t give a fuck who heard them as her hand closed around his shaft and he let out a carnal moan. Her thumb swiped across the broad, leaking head of him, teasing his tip with decadent circles before she stroked him in earnest.

‘Fuck.’ Wilder braced himself against the power of that single touch. She worked him in gloriously long, unhurried caresses, coaxing waves of desire to unfurl from the base of his spine, tightening in his balls. He thrust into her hand, savouring each pass over his cock as he popped open the buttons of her pants.

He wrenched them down to her knees, along with her undergarments, her breasts bouncing with the movement. Thea’s grip left him as she wriggled out of her pants completely. More army pieces fell from the table, maps tearing beneath Thea’s shifting body. Wilder grabbed his cock and dragged it through the slickness between her legs.

They both moaned at the sensation.

‘Gods,’ Wilder murmured. ‘How is it that you feel so good and I’m not even inside you yet?’

Thea ground against him, edging him closer to her entrance. ‘Wilder…’

His name was a curse and a plea, and the sound of it on her lips nearly had him throwing all notion of restraint to the wind. Furies save him, he’d never been so fucking hard in all his life. White-hot need blazed through him like wildfire and it was all he could do not to sheathe himself inside her in one powerful thrust.