Page 38 of Intrigue

Alessandro exhales, something dark shining in his eyes. “You’re shaking.”

I am.

Because the second I do this, it’s over. No more pretending. No more fighting. If I touch him now, I’ll never stop.

“Selene,” he murmurs, his fingers brushing my jaw. “I need you to say it.”

The words burn. But they come anyway.

“I want you,” I whisper.

His breath catches. Then he kisses me.

Not like before. Not like destruction. Like possession.

Like I’ve belonged to him since the beginning.

His hands slide into my hair, his body pressing me back against the wall, his lips claiming mine with a hunger that hasn’t dulled in five years.

I don’t fight it. I don’t want to.

His tongue parts my lips, deepening the kiss, dragging me under. My fingers fist in his shirt, pulling him closer, because I need him closer.

I don’t care that I shouldn’t.

I don’t care that this is wrong.

Because nothing has ever felt so right.

His hands find my waist, pulling me flush against him, and I feel him—every sharp, hard part of him, all heat and power and barely restrained control.

“Say it again,” he demands, his mouth tracing my jaw, my throat, my collarbone.

My nails rake down his back. “I want you.”

A groan rips from his chest, rough and wrecked, and then he’s lifting me, carrying me to the bed, his weight pressing me into the mattress.

I ought to stop this. But I don’t. I won’t.

Not tonight.

Because tonight, I don’t want to be Cassian’s.

I don’t want to be anything but his.

“I want to fuck you senseless right now, but I also need you to sit on my face. Either way, that’s fucking heaven. See my dilemma? You’ve got me so hard I can’t even think straight.”

Oh lord!

He’s got a body of sin and a dirty mouth to go with it and staring back at him, I realize this is what I’ve always wanted. To be claimed and owned and given enough power to burn the world to the ground, then fucked into the ashes until I’m nothing but his.

“Is that all you want?” I ask, voice trembling, daring him to break me first.

He caresses my cheeks like it’s a fragile flower, like he’s afraid his coarse hands might hurt me when, in fact, those hands incite a belly of fire running up my veins and down to the soft bud between my thighs, pulsing and aching for him.

“Take off your clothes,” he says. “Right now, Selene. Strip for me, nice and slow, so I can watch every inch of you come undone.”

I stare at him, defiance evident, but my hands move anyway.