Page 106 of The Broken Note

I grit my teeth, mouth open to speak, but it’s too late.

He descends without warning and all I can do is gasp.

The crescendo is quick and rough, snapping through my mind like a crack of thunder and expanding beyond that. A cry escapes my lips that I can’t contain, no matter how hard I try. A million notes being played at once, fingers stretching, stretching, stretching until they’re bound to snap.

Dutch moans and the music lashes.

He moves and the earth shatters, taking my body with it, tearing me into a million little pieces.

His lips crush mine, ripping what he wants from me, possessing my mouth the way he possesses every part of me—body and soul. The kiss is cruel, almost savage, a brutal reminder of who I belong to and why that will never change.

I should fight back, find some way to claw for equal ground, but I’m being wholly and totally devoured to a frantic rhythm matched only by the wild, forceful pounding of my heart.

I can’t hear the music anymore. We’re making our own. Sounds I can’t stop. Sounds I didn’t even know I could make. Gasps, groans, and heady whimpers that unfurl from inside me and lash out like a whip.

My body rocks forward. Our tongues clash like swords.

It’s unstoppable—the pleasure. It courses through me, a torrent of flames that makes me scream. He mumbles something, probably another line about me belonging to him. And maybe I do. Maybe he’s right. I can’t control myself. I can’t hide how good he makes me feel.

He’s claimed me in every way and even if I say I hate it, I don’t think I do.

I… I might even love it.

Dutch flips me around, and the rug barely manages to stay tethered to the ground as he grabs my hair and unleashes a wild, forceful storm. The music we create changes again. The raw, animalistic slap of our bodies is a forbidden song.

His breath gets choppy. I hear it and something inside me instinctually responds to it. The ruthless king of Redwood stripped to his base form. Brought to his knees by me. Beneath the anger, beneath the obsession, beneath even the hate—a surrender.

I arch my hips and he groans, a dark, thrilling note that’s thick with need. His fingers tighten on me. Savage. Crazed. Forceful. So hard and fast I wonder if he’s trying to snap me in two.

And then he cries out my name.

I can’t see his face, but I feel him. The tension. The pleasure.

He rolls off me and I tilt my head to look at him. Amber eyes. Menacing lips. A creation of darkness and shadows, and yet he made me see the light.

Dutch rakes his fingers through his hair, his gaze hot enough to steal my breath away. Moonlight pours through the sun roof above the treehouse. Its silver fingers stroke the lines of his face and I know without him having to tell me—the night is far from over.

“This truce is just for tonight,” I pant, because it will probably take me all week to catch my breath again. Besides, I can see in his dark gaze that he thinks this means I’ve accepted him. The ring. The future he wants for us. Everything.

“Truce or not, tonight is the beginning of forever.”

“Forever?” I scoot back. Close my legs. My shoes are gone. I don’t even remember him taking them off. Trembling slightly, I inhale and get hit with the scent of him mixed with the musky scent of us. “We’re still young, Dutch. And life is unpredictable. You really think you want forever with me?”

I try to inch back again, but he doesn’t let me get far.

His hands slam on the rug like brackets on either side of my thighs. Muscles and ink. A perfect combination. At least on his long, lean body. He presses forward, his face a breath away from mine.

My eyes flash on the slight scratches on his shoulder from where I raked my nails over his back.

“Cadence,” Dutch says, drawing my eyes back to his lips. My mouth throbs, recalling all the ways he bruised it. My lips aren’t the only part of me that’s aching. I can already tell my scalp will be sore in the morning.

“What?”

“Marry me.”

I hold his stare, my heart thundering like a war drum in my chest. “You’re really trying to piss me off, aren’t you?”

Dutch’s mouth curves into a sharp grin, teeth flashing white against a face thrown in shadows.