Page 35 of Only for Him

His free hand returns, and this time it wraps around my throat. Thick fingers squeeze ever so slightly while his thumb feathers along the lines of my jaw. I hate that the pressure in my core builds. I hate how heat bubbles in my heart. And I hate how I can feel an undeniable wetness starting todripbetween my legs.

“Oh, little viper. Youarea murderer, aren’t you?”

The word chokes me harder than his hands ever could. “No.”

“No?” His thumb moves lower until it traces the vein in my neck to feel my pounding pulse. “Because I thought you know by now what happens to men who put their hands on what’s mine.”

“I’m not—” I start.

But he squeezes and chokes my response into silence.

I clench my jaw and manage to fight through his grip around my neck. “I don’t belong to you.”

“No?” His soft dark laughter rolls around my ear like a midsummer thunderstorm. “You’ve already lied for me. And you’ll do so muchmore.”

He pulls me closer, and I can feel another heat now prodding against the small of my back. A pulsing heat that warns me to choose my wordsverycarefully, or else he’ll make me pay for daring to refuse him.

My spine settles into place against his chest, and the lack of oxygen is making me dizzy enough to loll my head back under his chin.

He leans in, lips grazing the curve of my ear.

“I’ll carve his heart out and leave it on your pillow. Nobody is allowed to touch you except for me.” He nibbles my ear with every word. “And I. Don’t. Make. Fucking. Empty. Threats.”

His words are an ice bath even as his touch and his jealousy set my body on fire.

I fight to think through the buzz of his intoxicating smell in my nostrils and the heat of his body burning me down. I can use his jealousy. I’m sure of it.

My imagination is running wild. One half is thinking of what he might make me do to someone else, and the other half fantasizes what he might make me do to myself.

The hand around my neck releases, and the removal of that weight feels like an emptiness I can’t survive.

There is a slight shuffling behind me. He’s reaching into his pocket. For a second, I flinch, expecting a knife.

Instead, he brings his other hand to my ear, and I feel the familiar bite of an earring post sliding home. Once in my left ear. And then again in my right. His hand lingers, cupping my jaw. It’s all I can do not to push back into his palm, nor let him cradle my head as relief settles into my ribcage.

“It’s not so bad being mine,” he says. “I take good care of my things.”

He clicks the clasp closed, locking it in place with a tenderness his rough hands shouldn’t be capable of.

I shiver. It’s the most intimate thing anyone has done for me in a decade.

He doesn’t move away. “There are worse things than me in this city, little viper.”

“You’re a murderer,” I whisper, trying desperately to put a drop of venom in my voice even as my nipples tighten and the space between my thigh slickens.

“I only kill those who deserve it.”

“Who are you?”

He is silent. There’s nothing but the darkness and his heartbeat between my shoulder blades, steady and even. The smell of him continues to drive all thought out of my mind. His breath slows as he greedily inhales the air I expel from my lungs.

And my traitorous, tingling body starts longing for him to put his hand on my stomach and slide it all the way down to find just howbadlyI want him.

The first press of his lips against my neck surprises me. I bite back a yelp just in time even as it sends a burst of wet heatthrough my shivering skin. Then he starts kissing his way up, as if he’s counting just how many kisses it takes for him to claim the entirety of my neck.

I close my eyes, and clench my jaw to muffle the moan threatening to pour out of my lips at howwrongthis feels. At howgoodthis feels. At how muchmoreI want to feel.

If he hears just how much I’m enjoying his touch, his embrace, and his lips, then he’ll have won forever.