Page 19 of Snowbound with the Vineyard Owner (Angel’s Peak #6)

Dominic stands by the fire, a living sculpture of shadow and flame.

The low light licks across the powerful lines of his body, illuminating every hard ridge of muscle, every tense, straining tendon.

One hand braces against the rough stone of the mantle, his fingers splayed wide, grounding himself.

The other wraps around the thick, heavy length of his cock, stroking himself in slow, devastating pulls that leave nothing to the imagination.

He doesn’t turn when I step inside the room.

He doesn’t stop.

He doesn’t even flinch.

He knows I’m here.

Every long, lazy stroke of his hand is an invitation and a challenge.

A raw, brutal display of need that makes my blood roar in my ears.

His head tips back slightly, baring the long, elegant column of his throat.

I watch, helpless, as the muscles there flex with the force of the pleasure he’s taking, the control he’s barely holding onto.

A low, wrecked sound breaks free of him—a sound so raw and beautiful it cuts through me like a blade.

I hover just inside the doorway, frozen by the sheer, devastating intimacy of it.

My breath comes in shallow, broken pants.

My hands curl into fists at my sides to keep from reaching for him, to keep from moving closer, even though every fiber of my body is screaming to cross the room and touch him, taste him, surrender to him.

The fire crackles and pops, the scent of burning wood filling the air, sweetened by the lingering traces of the wine we drank hours ago. The heat rolls off the hearth in slow, pulsing waves, wrapping around me, wrapping around us, until the whole world feels small and breathless and waiting.

Slowly, Dominic turns his head, his gaze dragging over me like a physical touch.

The firelight catches the brutal cut of his jaw, the shadowed hollows beneath his cheekbones, the hard line of control etched deep into every muscle of his body.

His hand never stops moving, the slow, relentless stroke a devastating counterpoint to the stillness locking the space between us.

His eyes find mine—dark gold, burning, unflinching—and in that single searing look, I know that he sees everything. Every tremor. Every ragged breath. Every terrified, desperate piece of me that came downstairs because I couldn’t bear the empty bed, or the empty ache, for one more second.

When he speaks, his voice is low and rough, dragging across my skin like velvet and fire, and the force of it nearly brings me to my knees.

“You came down.”

My pulse pounds in my ears as I drink in the sight of him, every slow, ruthless stroke of his hand ratcheting the heat coiling low in my belly tighter and tighter.

The hunger inside me sharpens until it’s a physical ache, until it feels like I might tear apart if he doesn’t touch me, if he doesn’t take this decision away from me the way he promised he would if I just stepped over the line .

And he waits. He holds himself in brutal check, letting me stand there, feeling the full weight of the moment, the full consequence of my choice.

I open my mouth, but the words tangle in my throat. Fear and hunger crash inside me, battling for dominance, neither strong enough to drown the other. My hands tremble at my sides, my legs locked in place.

“I don’t know what to do.” The confession is raw, terrified, and true.

Dominic’s eyes burn hotter. He doesn’t soften. He doesn’t reassure. He lifts one hand from the mantle and gestures lazily, almost tauntingly, toward the threshold I’m still hovering behind.

“You don’t have to do anything.” His voice is low, lethal, and patient. “All you have to do is cross that line.” The words drop like a stone into the charged silence, rippling through me, daring me to move.

I suck in a ragged breath, my whole body strung tight, every nerve screaming. His eyes stay locked on mine, unwavering, unrelenting, giving me no shelter, no mercy. Only truth. And choice.

My legs feel boneless, but somehow I force them to move, to bridge the last impossible distance. Step by step, breath by breath, until the tips of my toes inch over the threshold and land on the other side.

The second my foot crosses, Dominic is on me.

He moves faster than thought, faster than fear, a blur of predatory intent that leaves me gasping. One rough hand fists in my hair, wrenching my head back, the other clamps around my waist, dragging me into him so hard I lose my balance and slam against his chest.

His mouth crashes down onto mine in a kiss that isn’t a question, isn’t a plea. It’s a taking. Brutal, raw, merciless. His teeth catch my lower lip, biting just hard enough to make me whimper against him before he soothes the sting with the hot, demanding sweep of his tongue.

He backs me up, walking me backward across the rug, across the hardwood, until my spine collides with the rough timber of the wall.

The jolt knocks the breath from my lungs, but before I can gasp, he’s already stripping me, tearing the buttons of the borrowed flannel shirt open with impatient hands.

The fabric falls from my shoulders in a rush of cool air, baring me to the fire’s heat—and him.

His mouth never stops, never gentles. He kisses like he’s starving, like he’s waited forever and won’t be denied a second longer.

The shirt is gone, puddled at my feet. His hands find the waistband of my sleep pants next, rough and unhesitating, jerking them down my legs with a single brutal motion. I stumble, but he catches me easily, lifting me off the ground with a low growl that rumbles through his chest and into mine.

He lifts me, and my thighs part instinctively, wrapping around his hips, my bare skin dragging against the worn denim of his jeans.

The thick, hard press of him between my legs makes my head spin, my nails digging helplessly into his shoulders as he pins me there, body to body, fire to fire, with nothing left between us but heat and need.

I can’t think.

I can’t breathe.

I don’t need to.

Dominic’s grip tightens, anchoring me, controlling me, his mouth never breaking from mine as he devours every helpless sound I make, every shuddering breath.

I don’t know how to do this, how to be this , but it doesn’t matter—because Dominic knows. He knows exactly how to touch me, how to take me, how to steal the ground out from under my feet until all that’s left is him, until all I can do is hold on and fall.

Dominic’s mouth drags down from mine, scraping over the line of my jaw, the column of my throat.

He doesn’t kiss so much as devour, teeth grazing, biting, pulling gasps from my lungs that melt into desperate whimpers I can’t control.

His stubble abrades my skin, rough and punishing, a branding I never want to fade.

His hands are everywhere—gripping, bruising, urgent.

One palm splays across my ribs, fingers spanning almost from my spine to the curve of my breast, holding me still while he tears a path down the center of my body with his mouth.

The other fists my hair, yanking my head back, baring my neck so he can bite his way across it, each sharp scrape of his teeth a savage promise.

I gasp, arching against him without thinking, needing more, needing all of him.

Dominic growls low in his chest—a raw, brutal sound that vibrates through his body and into mine—and thrusts his hips forward, grinding the thick, hard length of him against my bare, aching core.

I feel him—huge, merciless, ready.

“ Fuuuuck ,” he snarls against my throat, the word more breath than voice, ragged and ruined. “You’re fucking wet for me already.”

I can’t speak. Can’t think. I can only cling to his shoulders, nails digging into the worn cotton of his t-shirt as he grinds against me, harder this time, the pressure sparking heat and pleasure and unbearable need all the way up my spine.

I catch a glimpse of him—the hard, slick length of his cock, heavy and engorged—before he’s there, lining himself up, the blunt head dragging through the wet heat of my folds in a slow, deliberate stroke that makes my knees jerk and my breath shatter into pieces.

Then he thrusts up into me in one brutal, claiming surge.

I cry out, the sound ripped from my chest as he fills me, stretches me, splits me open around the thick, merciless thrust of his cock.

He doesn’t pause. Doesn’t give me time to catch up or find my footing.

He just pins me harder against the wall with the brutal weight of his body, one hand cupping my ass to hold me open for him, the other braced above my head, caging me in, owning me.

“Jesus Christ,” he grits out, voice broken, forehead dropping to mine for a fleeting, trembling second. “You feel like sin, as if you were made for me.”

And then he’s moving—dragging out almost all the way before slamming back into me with a force that rocks the air from my lungs, that rattles the picture frames on the nearby wall.

Every thrust is brutal. Unforgiving. A wild, feral claiming.

My head falls back against the wood with a thud, my legs tightening around his waist, trying to anchor myself as he drives into me again and again, the thick ridge of him hitting deep, deeper, battering every locked door inside me until all that’s left is shattered pieces and desperate sounds I don’t recognize as my own.

The fire roars beside us, heat licking over my naked skin, sweat slicking between our bodies.

Dominic’s mouth is everywhere—biting at my jaw, my throat, my shoulder, like he can’t get close enough, can’t mark me deep enough.

He scrapes his teeth over my collarbone, bites down hard enough to leave a bruise, and I shudder violently, my body already careening toward something huge and terrifying and inevitable.

“You feel that?” he snarls against my skin, his voice a whip of sound. “You’re mine now. You became mine the second you crossed that line.”

I cry out, a strangled, broken sound that only makes him thrust harder, faster, the brutal rhythm sending shockwaves through my entire body.

Every stroke shoves me higher. Every snap of his hips strips away another layer of fear, of control, of everything I thought protected me, but only kept me hollow.

I can feel it building, a tidal wave rising under my skin, inescapable, unstoppable.

And when it crashes?—

When Dominic drives into me one last time with a snarled curse, I splinter apart around him, my scream muffled against his shoulder.

It’s not release.

It’s annihilation.

Resurrection.

It’s surrender, pure and brutal and absolute, and he rips it from me with his hands, his mouth, his cock, until there’s nothing left but him.

But Dominic doesn’t stop. He’s barely begun.