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“This.” I hold up my hand, then squeeze, flattening the tomatoes to paste.

Her eyes go wide, and she slaps a hand to her mouth.

“The only survivor was Astin who’d also stowed away.

” I don’t tell her that it wasn’t just Nightshades.

He was shipping Brassicas too, and they weren’t happy with the loss of their people.

There was a gun fight. I took one in the leg and would have bled out if not for my belt.

The other side fared far worse in the end.

I never learned what Mr. Ato paid for that mistake. Maybe even he doesn’t know the full extent of what he lost. “Life’s cheap in my world. A couple bucks a pound. I’m a bad man. You should…you should stay the fuck away from me.”

The bedspread rustles, and I sense a form drawing closer, but I don’t look up. I can’t face her eyes drenched in hatred for me—even if I deserve it.

“That’s why you left.” Her voice carries around the room, and I try to shrink inside myself. “It’s me, isn’t it?”

My jaw drops, and I’m drawn to her. I brace for tears, but her face shines with surprising clarity.

“I kept thinking he got scared. He realized that I’m too much to handle. And he left. That’s what you did, right?”

“I couldn’t… The sight of you on the floor, gasping for breath. Hearing that it’s me you’re allergic to. I had to get out. I had to get away.”

“Why?” The sharp clang of pain rattles in her word.

“I’ve dabbled in a lot of substances in my life.” I lift my head and take her in. Even as she’s brimming with sorrow and hatred for me, my body pleads for hers. “But not a one of them intoxicates…devours me the way you do.”

Sadie gasps as if she hasn’t noticed.

I reach out, nearly grazing her shoulder. “The moment my skin touches yours it’s like my heart’s about to explode. I have to have you. To hold you, to taste you, to bury myself in you. To lose myself in you. You’re my sun, my moon, the earth beneath my feet, the air in my lungs.”

My hand glides across her shoulder until my fingers dance against her neck. Take it. Hold her. Pull her tight. Kiss her. Tear off those clothes.

Fuck her over and over knowing it won’t be enough.

Knowing that nothing will ever be enough.

“I had to leave. Even if…” My heart withers in my chest.

I don’t realize I’m holding her chin until she lifts it to stare into my eyes. Big, brown, beautiful—eyes I would kill for. Eyes I would die for.

“I wasn’t worried about the mob, about my past, about any of that shit. I thought I could handle it. But—”

“But what?”

I knew after that first night when I broke into a man’s house for revenge, that as long as I lived no one would hurt her. It just never occurred that it could be me. “If I killed you, if my insatiable obsession drove me to… I could never live with myself.”

A single quick sob escapes from her lips. I trace across the bottom one with my finger, feeling every quiver as she holds back her fear, her anger, her hatred. I don’t need her to love me. I don’t expect anyone to love me.

But I need her to breathe.

“You have to get away from me,” I demand even as I tease back through her hair.

“Is that so?”

Fuck, her eyes are heavy and she’s breathing deeper than before. I have to get her to see reason. I have to think. I have to…

My body bends at the waist. My hand cups her cheek, lifting her as her eyes close.

“Far, far away,” I moan against her lips. They flutter a moment before kissing me.

I plunge back into the bottom of her bottle.

My fingers tear at the buttons of her shirt, my hips pressing into her, guiding her back to the bed I warned her away from. Sadie roves over my chest, lifting the t-shirt and sliding her hand under the waistband of my sweatpants.

“No,” she declares and reaches right down to grab my cock. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Sadie…” I cry her name out like it’s the climax of a wet dream. She pulls me back by my dick, working us toward the bed. “You have to listen.”

“I will.” Her hand lets go, and blood spurts back to my brain for a second. “When you make fucking sense.” She tears off her shirt and I nearly yelp at her naked breasts bounding free.

If I touch those, there’s no going back. I’ll just fuck her over and over until I make a mistake. I can’t do it. I can’t…

“Aubry…” She squeezes her arms to the sides of her breasts, turning her cleavage into the grand canyon. I nearly plunge into it but the movement of her hand draws me in as she reaches her fingers inside her panties. “I’m so wet.”

My entire body clenches.

Sadie hops up onto the bed while fingering herself. Leaning back on her elbows, she starts to part her thighs and asks, “Don’t you want me?”

There is no part of me that doesn’t.

A mad man tears the clothes from my body. She inches higher up the bed, her eyes calculating my every move. I manage to kick off the sweatpants when she moves her leg up.

My hand catches her ankle. “Don’t,” I growl, pinning her to the bed. Her thighs soften and roll, forming a blockade right before her pussy. My teeth grind, wanting to take a nibble on them both.

“Don’t what?” she teases, wiggling under my grip.

This isn’t playing with fire. This is a nuclear warhead. In a fireworks factory. On the back of a truck.

I grab her other leg by the calf and start to yank her down. Get her on her feet, tell her to go. To never think of me, or look for me again.

But as she slides across the blanket, her soaking hot pussy brushes then molds around my shaft. I collapse around her. Arms above her head, teeth on her neck, cock pulsing to tear aside her panties.

“Leave,” I moan. The dragon has me in its clutches. The bottle won.

She sits up just as I kiss her. One hand under her ass, I drag her up the bed. I hope she likes it here, because she’s never leaving.

“Aubry…” she yelps in surprise as I drop her back to the center.

“Talong.” The angel mask I wore is gone. There’s no point pretending I’m anything but a demon. A hungry, insatiable demon.

I toy with the lacy hips of her panties, digging my knuckles into the give of her flesh. She arches her back to lift her ass off the bed. Right there, in front of me. Begging for it.

My tongue drags over the fine lace, working the pattering up her inflamed lips and to her clit. The taste of her, still fresh from me nearly blowing inside, hardens my cock so bad I use both my hands to finger her so I don’t grab myself.

This is insane. I shouldn’t be…

“Talong.” Her voice, moaning from my tongue sucking on her clit and vibrating her thin panties with my lips, sends me into a frenzy. Yes. I am Talong. Deadly enforcer of the Nightshade family.

I’ve extorted. I’ve brutalized. And I’ve killed.

All I want is to bury myself in you until my balls can tickle your cervix.

My world is her. The clutch of her fighting for breath, the grip of her fingers tearing through my hair, the swelling of her clit pushing against the holes in the lace.

I care for nothing save her coming on my face over and over.

She squirms, wanting to push herself into my mouth. Her toes curl around my back.

“Wait!” Sadie shouts.

My instincts tell me I misheard her. Some dying remnant of Aubry trying to play the white knight. No woman would want me to—

The thick thighs wrap around my chest, tighten, then spin me around. I’m so shocked, I offer no resistance as Sadie flings me onto the bed. I’m perpendicular with the headboard. “What was…?”

A hand presses on my sternum. Then another as she straddles above me.

“You think you get to tell me what to do?” Her voice crackles like thunder. I move to sit up when her hand cinches around my shaft.

Fireworks sock my gut at the touch. Then she rises on her thighs and the wet heat of her bare pussy slicks down the head.

“I am a grown ass…fucking woman!” Sadie shouts, thrusting down on top of me.

“Yes…” I groan, rolling with her bounding curves. First I take her ass and hips, trying to guide her, but she won’t listen.

She’s not slowing down. Thrusting on her thighs, she keeps sucking me in, pulling me to the hilt then halfway out. I fight to keep my hips locked to the bed, to not give in.

“So you’re an eggplant,” she says. “So what?”

Yeah. Who cares?

I turn into a vegetable. Big deal. Fuck me… Her tits bounce in front of my face like they’re trying to give me black eyes. I sit up to welcome the beating, but she’s too far away. So I hold them instead.

“Fuck, Aub…” Her lips shudder as I squeeze her nipples and run under her heaving breasts. “Talong.”

My hips jerk up, meeting her as she thrusts down. Yes! I’m so fucking close. Just a little more. A little…

I’m an eggplant.

I can kill her.

“Sadie—”

She’s not listening to me so I grab her hips. “Sadie, please…”

“Do you want me to stop?”

Yes. Yes. For the love of god, say yes!

“Ahh…” My balls slap her and I nearly explode. “No...” falls from my lips.

With a smirk, she rises up to tower above me. Then she reaches between her legs. Her brown clit beams between the black hair pulling all sense from my brain. I want to touch it. To feel her come around me inside and out. My palms slip, then I feel the end start to rise.

“You have to get off of me.”

“Tell me to quit,” she moans, tossing her head back as she strokes me with her pussy. Is she clamping down on purpose? Fuck, she is.

My legs press so hard to the carpet I lose all feeling in my feet. Throw her off. Tip to the side. Get out of here.

But I can’t. I’m trapped. Aching for a release and dreading it at the same time.

“Sadie…” I whimper, begging for her to not do this. We have no epipens, no way to save her.

It’s coming. I clench my jaws, fighting with my cock to not do what it was designed for. My hands clamp tight to her hips, ready to fling her off. But I can’t. I want her. I need her.

I’ll kill her.

Tears sprout in my eyes. “Fu—”