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“I didn’t mean to make you cry tonight,” he murmurs. “I had just thought that we might...” Jasper’s lips twist ruefully, and color trails sheepishly into his cheeks again. “It’s my own fault. I suppose our interactions are usually rather charged.”

My mind trips over his blush. Falls hard. On its face.

This remote glen suddenly looks different. Less like the gallows or a sadistic scene carefully chosen for how well the leaves might disguise a pool of blood.

He didn’t bring me here for an interrogation.

He’s blushing .

Heat floods my face in what must be some kind of sympathetic nervous response.

“You—” I stop. Try again. “We were with Lucky. We could have?—”

Jasper’s eyes crash against mine like dark matter, too full of mass and meaning. “I plan on spending many, many nights with the both of you.” My mouth turns dry. “But you and I need time also. How I feel for you exists outside of how I feel for Lucien... and it needs different things.”

His hand traces around my neck, along my collarbone. His fingers dip into the hollow where my pulse hammers.

“I’ve worried that we’re too similar for our own good,” he murmurs. “Too reserved.”

It’s a thought I’ve had before, wondering whether we’re doomed to our own orbits. Whether by circling Lucky we’ll only ever shine on him and never one another. Wondering if my past with Henry, and his with Soomin, has left us too skittish and bruised.

“Too cautious.” I nod, mulling that over.

Hesitantly, I bring my hand from his side up his chest. I reach up and push back the hair that’s fallen across his forehead again, the sweet lock that always teases me. I tuck it into its place, where I know it won’t stay long, and marvel at how silky soft it is.

“Lucky’s not cautious. He makes it easy.” It’s my turn to smile.

He catches my wrist on its way down. “Lucien has his own delights and challenges. He might be a masochist and beautifully free with his affections, but he’s also a brat, and he has little patience for my rules.

You might never delight in pain, but you don’t test me the way Lucien does.

” His mouth dips closer to mine, and his eyes darken as I shiver.

“And the way you respond to me, Eden...”

He bends my arm behind the small of my back, bowing my back, and every part of me turns soft.

“The way you submit . . .” His voice edges toward raw, almost a snarl. Liquid, lascivious things whirl between us, and my head dips to the side, exposing my throat.

“It’s like going to church.”

He breathes against my skin in sharp, hungry pants, and I want to rub and squirm against him. If he were any of the others, I would. But Jasper is holding me still.

So I’ll be still for him.

He kisses my fluttering pulse, so lightly.

“We’ll work it out,” he says, mostly to himself.

My heart squeezes and my head spins, and I whisper, “I know we will. I want it, Jasper. I want you .”

Jasper’s shiver takes me over too, as we’re pressed so close together. His grip on my wrist eases, and the next moment, he’s cupping my face.

“I’m going to kiss you, darling girl.”

I suck in a sharp breath. His thumb is on my too-large lower lip, pulling it down, parting it like he’s entitled to entry. And he is.

He’s so perfectly beautiful, and his lips are hovering a millimeter from mine when I pull back just slightly.

“Wait, I need to... Jasper, is this the first time?” His brow lifts, and I’m too urgent, too scrambled when I ask, “That first night, with Beau. Did you kiss me then? I was never sure who it was, and I need to know if...”

“That night .” His voice isn’t silky anymore.

It’s not refined. “That night ruined every attempt at sleep I’ve had since you arrived.

Yes , Eden, we kissed. I took your throat, your pretty breasts.

I had tasted every sweet inch of you I could reach.

We kissed .” His upper lip curls, and his eyes narrow.

“There’s little similarity between me and your disreputable doctor, my girl.

In the future, I expect you to be able to tell the difference between us—even if you were blindfolded. ”

My breath shivers over his mouth. “Yes, Jasper.”

His lips tease mine, and he delicately licks the deep Cupid’s bow. “Study me carefully, Eden. I’m going to kiss your cunt exactly like this when I get you home.”

My mind misfires.

His mouth slants against mine in a pitiless, studied claiming.

Whatever he says about his reserve or caution doesn’t apply to this kiss.

There’s an inherent cruelty in the way he does it, the way he luxuriates in the sharp pinch of teeth and the following licks of heat.

The way he leans into pressure, and his nails bite too harshly, even while he stokes nerve endings I never knew existed.

I’m dizzy and sizzling with it, my heart beating wildly, adrenaline-drunk on the whiplash and wondering if the next slide of his mouth will hurt or cause that hot, liquid swirl through my abdomen.

He kisses me until I’m clinging to him hopelessly and he chains my hands behind my back.

He kisses me until I cry, and I gasp his name into his mouth.

He kisses me until he groans into my throat and tells me I’m perfect, I’m beautiful, that he needed my limits list yesterday, and that my essay on submissive- dominant safety is overdue.

He kisses me until, if I had enough air, I would say the words beating against my skull.

I love you.