Page 69 of Sire

I believe in freedom, but I want to control her sex.

I’m well aware of the contradictions.

They’d amuse me if I didn’t feel them splintering my soul.

“What?” Softly, Wren touches my cheek. “What did I say?You look upset. Was it the seven flavors thing? I’m sorry. I was joking. I only wantyou.”

I don’t have an answer, and she blinks, tears welling in her eyes.

“I mean it.You, Sire. You’re all I want. You’re just so honest with me, which I love. So, when it comes to sex, I want to share it with you, whatever that looks like, as long as it’s me and you.Together.”

With my heart pounding, I softly kiss her. I can destroy this delicate creature, while all I want to do is rip apart anyone who hurts her—even myself.

This must be love: this vortex of emotions.

Nature’s most powerful storm.

I nuzzle her forehead. “I only want you, too. All my years faded the moment I saw you, Wren. You became my now and my future. I know it because Ihavea past, and you don’t when it comes to sex. And I feel like a complicated, hypocritical, selfish man because I have pure feelings for you, like now, but then I get dark urges with you … like what we did with Nash.”

She nibbles her lip. She can’t control her reaction to the salacious memory, and I murmur, “You liked it, didn’t you? You came so hard when Nash watched me eat your pussy.”

“Yes,” she sighs. “It made me feel beautiful and powerful and dirty at the same time. I loved it, and I’m not ashamed to tell you that I want to do it again. I want to doeverythingwith you.”

This woman is a war I don’t give a damn if I win, just as long as I’m with her until the day I die.

“I want it, too. But then…” I brush my lips over hers. “I want to make you my wife and the mother of my children. You’re sacred to me, Wren.”

She rests her hands over my thundering heart. “I feel the same about you. Would it scare you if I told you that afternoonon the sidewalk, when I was holding baby Isaac, and waiting for his mom to pick him up, and you came over and held him, too: it felt like fate. I knew we’d have babies together, too.”

Fuck, I’m fighting tears. It’s moments like this that I believe in God and heaven and love … and … nowus.

“I had the same vision. It scared me, but it also made me happy. How is that possible?”

“Because, Sire,” she pauses, “we’re meant to beeverythingtogether.”

Age becomes another contradiction we share, because in moments like these, Wren’s the wiser one.

She won’t back down from our stare. She believes, “I think we can be sacred and sexy, complicated and committed, hypocritical and hot, selfish and?—”

Jesus, Jesus.

She’s the one.

The only one.

I grab her lips with a passionate kiss—a kiss like none I’ve ever had.

Wren’s first kiss felt like mine, too. Humility and hunger overwhelmed me, claiming her lips and tongue for the first time. I just kept kissing and kissing her, and going deeper, and finding my home. And I feel it now: home with her. And really …reallyfucking hungry for her, too.

She tastes like the sweetest sin, panting over our lips, “That was a helluva interruption.”

“You make a helluva good argument.”

“Did I win?”

“I’m losing my heart to you, Angel. We’re both winning.”

Trailing my lips down her neck, I inhale a new scent on her flesh: daisies, caramel, and sexy musk. Before, her scent was pure soap, but now, it’s pure seduction.