Page 3

Aria

Jase has been gone forever, and I’m tired of waiting. He can sneak away for at least a little while.

I smile as a scandalous plan is conjured inside my twisted mind. But before I can set my plan into action, the door to the suite swings open, and Jase comes into view. His face is too serious, and it worries me, but the second his eyes meet mine, my heart falters.

I’ve never seen him look so determined, intense, and almost desperate. His long, purposeful strides confuse me more, and then he blurs to me, catching me by surprise as his lips crush mine almost violently.

When he tugs me, I jump up to wrap my legs around him, and my grip on him competes to be tighter than his grip on me. I hear the distinct sound of fabric ripping, but I’m not sure whose clothes it is. Nor do I care.

“I love you,” he says against my lips, making it sound almost like a prayer, and my fingers go to his hair as he drops me to the bed.

“I love you,” I mumble through the kiss, my head rushing as my body arches compliantly.

He owns me, and I love the way every part of me belongs to him.

He groans when he most likely reads my mind, and his rough kiss becomes almost painful, but so damn good. I spread my legs, inviting him to get closer, and he pulls me to him as my jeans are tossed away.

It’s almost happening too fast, like he can’t get me naked soon enough, and I grin in anticipation. This is so much better than the plan I had in mind.

“What did you have in mind?” he asks, smiling against my lips as my body becomes bare beneath him.

He leans up to tug his shirt over his head, and I bite down on my lip as I greedily rake my eyes over his chiseled body that seems to have been designed specifically for my pleasure. I’ll never grow tired of that sight.

“I hope not,” he says with a smug grin as he comes back down to me. “Considering it’s yours for eternity.”

My heart races as that thrill excites me, and I kick at his jeans and boxers until they clap the floor, putting him bare between my legs.

“Now, what did you have planned?” he prompts, biting down on my bottom lip before taking it into his mouth.

My thought process ceases to exist, and with his lips on mine in a hungry, devouring kiss, I see no reason to speak. Instead, I give him a visual with my mind for what I wanted to do to him, and he growls in response as he thrusts hard inside me. I cry out in pleasure from the brutal entry, and his tongue explores my mouth with expert familiarity.

He breaks the kiss, and his lips travel down to my shoulder as he pushes into me, his thrusts growing harder each time. He hasn’t been this crazy with my body since we almost lost each other.

An unexpected, sharp, searing pain strikes my shoulder, but just as quickly, the pain dissipates and turns to erotic euphoria as Jase takes my blood into his mouth. My loud moans can’t be silenced as the fire spreads through my veins, consuming me in a maddening rush.

A series of unintelligible sounds fall through my lips as Jase sucks the blood from my veins, making the resulting high almost tangible. His violent thrusts become all the more ravenous. As we fight for dominance, savagely ravaging each other, we roll off the bed and crack the floor beneath us when we land against the hardwood, but we never break contact. I manage to wrestle away the top position, and I sit up as he grabs my hips and thrusts into me from underneath.

It’s almost hard to hold my balance every time he slams into me with enough force to kill a human. I finally drop to push my lips to his chest, and his breathing falters just as I break the surface of his skin, lapping up the sweet sex-and-candy flavored blood that I can’t get enough of.

The burn of the erotic poison is welcome, and I push my hips down to meet his thrusts, hungry for as much as I can get. His hands wrap around my throat as I near the edge, and his name starts tearing through my lips loud enough to break through the soundproof barrier.

Our hybrid heats collide, turning our torrid breaths into steam, and the surfaces in the room begin to fog over. I fall to drop my hands on the floor on either side of his head, and the hardwood flooring singes beneath my touch.

He hits a spot that shouldn’t exist, and when he strikes it a second time, I lose my ability to stay solid. My body turns to rubber as I cry out my release, and Jase is forced to hold me up as he surges in again, finding his release and calling out my name.

I’m finally allowed to drop to his chest, fully spent and completely exhausted, and he kisses my forehead as we both pant viciously to try and catch our breaths.

I try asking him what all that was about, but my words sound like muttered nonsense. He chuckles lightly while holding me as close as possible, even though I don’t think I can ever get close enough.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says randomly.

“Right now?” I mumble, though it still sounds terribly indecipherable.

Good thing he can read minds.

He laughs again as he starts caressing my back, tracing imaginary lines until he reaches my sparrow.

“Not this second, but tonight. I thought we might go to see the progress on the Seminole compound.”

Instead of exerting the energy it takes to speak, I use my mind to continue the conversation.

The peace treaty signing is in three weeks. We should stay. You’re a little bit important to the United. Even though the words are in my head, my tone is still joking on the last note.

“I don’t have to be. Important to the United, I mean. With the war over, I can step down and you and I can just start living.”

I crane my neck so I can see his eyes, wishing he’d drop his pale blues and let me feel him through his real colors right now. But he doesn’t, even though he just heard the silent request.

“What’s going on?” I manage to ask, proud that the words actually make a little sense. “You fought your ass off to stay commander, and now you just want to quit?”

He shrugs as he drops his gaze to my shoulder and runs his fingers through my hair.

“That was then. We’re about to get married, and I want us to just be together for a while. We can take compound jobs that don’t require us to travel.”

He’s lost his mind.

“I had to claw and scrape my way into a tracker position. I don’t want to be stuck in the lab. Besides, I like being in the field with you. It gives us new locations to do this,” I murmur, pushing against him as he grows hard inside me again.

He grins as he thrusts up, and my breath almost leaves me.

“We can do this in a compound and not have to waste time doing things like traveling for days at a time.”

I brush my lips against his as I push down again, slowly setting a teasing, gentle rhythm that is in complete contrast with what we just did.

“Or you can just take me anywhere, any place, any time. I’m good with driving and fucking,” I crudely counter, making a low growl form in his throat.

The buzzing from the box tries to interrupt us, but Jase jerks me down to him, ignoring the annoying thing as though it doesn’t exist. I start to question it, when he says, “Anything they have to say can wait until we’re done in here.”

I can’t fight the stupid grin I have, because I plan on detaining him for a few hours at least.

“Good,” is his rasp response as he lies back and gives me sole control.

***

“We can skip the breakfast,” Jase says as I pull on the dress I picked out.

He’s very tempting right now, considering he’s bare on the bed with nothing but a sheet covering him from the waist down. He’s been trying to keep me in the room since he got back yesterday. We never even went out last night, and he hasn’t answered his phone either.

“Jase, I’m starting to get worried. You’re not acting like yourself. What happened yesterday?” I ask as I sit down on the bed.

A squeal bubbles out of me when he flips me to be on my back in a blur of motion, and he covers me with his body as his lips press to my neck, teasing the hell out of me.

“Let’s stay in. We can order room service and pretend nothing else exists. Then we can elope.”

I push him back just enough to give us some separation so I can think rationally. “Or we can go have the breakfast everyone is expecting you to be at. These people survived a three month stint in an underground prison. I think it’d be good for them to feel as though the commander cares enough to sit down and eat a meal with them. Especially since we skipped the dinner.”

His lips tighten as he looks down, not meeting my eyes. He hasn’t given me his mismatched hybrid blues since he got back yesterday either, so it’s apparent he doesn’t want to discuss anything. At all. But I know something happened.

“You’re shutting me out of your mind,” he says with a frown, bringing his eyes back to meet mine. “I can’t hear your thoughts, but I can tell you’re thinking.”

At least I’m getting a little better when I focus on it. “Then I guess that makes two of us. You’ve been shutting me off from reading your emotions since yesterday. And you won’t tell me what’s going on. Is this about Kellan coming here? Are you worried? Because you shouldn’t be. I don’t feel anything at all for him—”

“I know,” he interrupts, stroking my side affectionately. “I hear your thoughts any time he’s around. You really don’t care.”

He almost looks... guilty. It’s confusing the hell out of me.

“You’re right. We should go to breakfast. I’ll get dressed, and you can make everyone envy me for having the most incredible woman in the room.”

He gives me a smile that almost fools me into believing everything is okay, and then he kisses me sweetly before standing up. I watch with great appreciation as his naked body glides across the floor to the bathroom.

“I heard that,” he says, snickering as he disappears from sight.

“I wanted you to,” I say with a grin.

His laughter continues as the water comes on, and I resume getting ready. Maybe he’ll tell me what’s going on after breakfast.