My hands clenched. “I know that. Why do you think I’m standing here?”
“I can’t give you what you deserve, Mia.”
“Then give me what I want.”
A sound left him that was somewhere between a groan and a roar, the rain beginning to pound as he hovered and hesitated and tried to resist.
I saw the second he snapped.
The moment I whispered, “Please.”
He crossed the space like some kind of warring avenger, on his way to plunder and annihilate.
To steal.
What he couldn’t know was what he was steadily stealing was my heart.
By the time he got to me his hair was soaked, rivulets of water twisting down the hard contours of his striking, glorious face. His jaw set in stone and his body a rigid, powerful force.
Clothes drenched.
We collided in a flash of hands and tongues and nipping teeth.
He gripped me by the hips and jerked me to his hard, hard body as his mouth slanted over mine.
The kiss frantic.
Possessive.
A growl climbed his throat and spilled into mine as our tongues twisted and fought, those hands tugging me closer, against all his heat.
Flames leapt.
Climbed for the sky.
One touch, and I was melting.
Liquid silver in his hands.
“Leif.” I clamored to get him closer, my fingers slipping through the slick strands of his brown hair.
He groaned and pushed me up hard against the door, controlling the mind-bending kiss.
I knew after this, I was never going to be the same.
“Fuck, Mia. Fuck. What have you done to me? I can’t . . . I can’t.”
I could feel his brow drawing tight, his frantic kiss fueled by guilt, his heart pounding with greed.
“Yes, you can. I want you. I want you. Please let me show you who I see when I look at you.” My nails dug into his shoulders, tearing at his shirt.
The thin, short nightdress I was wearing was soaked, sticking to my skin, my aching breasts straining against the material where I pressed myself against his body.
A rumble of need curled up his throat. “I will ruin you.”
“I want you to,” I begged.
I was already there.
My wreckage strewn at his feet.
He hoisted me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist while he kissed me mad.
Savagely.
Fiercely.
No restraint.
His hands kneaded my bottom and his cock rubbed between my thighs.
I clung to his hair, probably tugging too hard as he entered the code, opened the door, and carried me into the lapping shadows of the massive room.
The storm battered the long bank of windows. When the door closed behind us, it cut the volume to a howling, moaning whisper.
Thunder rolled. A low warning of what was to come.
He carried me all the way across the room, winding between the half-painted pictures that waited on easels. Ones I still couldn’t find the inspiration to complete. When he got to the far side, he set me down on top of a sideboard table, keeping my legs wrapped around his waist.
The fabric of our clothing stuck together.
Our hard pants rose into the air.
My heart struggled, leaping around in a desperate bid to meet with his, not sure if I would ever really be able to fully reach him.
Knowing it was okay if I didn’t.
That maybe he needed this one singular night as much as I did.
That we needed to share this.
He angled back for a breath, those brown-sugar eyes looking at me with terror. As if I could possibly be the one to hurt him. Like taking me would cost him everything.
As if he wasn’t the one who had already scarred me.
Written himself on my spirit and my soul.
A man I could never forget even if he walked out right then.
I needed to show him. Needed him to know.
I kept him in the grips of my gaze as I slipped off the stained wood and slowly sank onto my knees.
A shiver of reservation rocked through him, though his body bowed forward with need.
With lust.
With this energy that filled the space until it was the only thing we could breathe.
With trembling hands, I reached up and slowly undid the buckle of his belt, watching up at him while he watched down on me.
Tension winding.
Flickers and sparks in the space.
The man gravity.
That severity whipped around him, as intense as the storm.
Pulling me into his darkness.
I licked my lips as I got the belt free and tugged at the button of his jeans.
Leif grunted, his big hand coming down, the pad of his thumb sliding across my bottom lip.
Chills streaked. Desire making me shake.
“You don’t have anything to prove, Mia. You don’t have to do this.”
“You think this is obligation? Because I think I owe you something?” I jerked his belt from the loops. “This has been coming since the second I saw you. Since the second you had me pinned to that floor of the attic because I couldn’t walk away.”
I pulled down his zipper. The sound of it curled into the room.
A promise.
Reprieve.
His stomach tremored under the skin-tight tee, and his jeans stuck to his flesh as I went to pull them down, damp and heavy, just like every aching part of me.
My belly quivered and desire went racing like a stampede.
All reason trampled underfoot.
Breath punching from my lungs when his penis bobbed free.
Hard and long and thick. The head engorged and fat.
His jaw clenched tight, and he traced his thumb up and down the angle of my cheek. “Beauty.”
Didn’t he get that was what he had become to me?
The gorgeous stranger in the attic.
A dark storm.
A white light.
He watched me as he kicked his shoes off, and I tugged his jeans the rest of the way down. Leif shifted to free the wet fabric from his ankles. My gaze moved directly for the wound up high on his thigh, the skin pitted and torn and scraped.
I leaned in and kissed across the marred flesh.
“Fuck, Mia,” Leif grunted in shock, a hand fisting in my hair like he wanted to stop me. I grabbed him by the back of both thighs, letting my lips lightly brush the injury.
“Mia . . . what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“Adoring you. The person you are. The sacrifice you made.” My hands shook harder. “You could have been killed, Leif. I . . .”
I trailed off, unable to finish the statement, knowing it would reveal too much. That he would see he had already gotten to me.
He wasn’t even mine and losing him would destroy me.
Those eyes flashed. Desperation and desire.
He tugged at the hold he had in my hair, urging me up onto my feet.
“Angel,” he mumbled.
In a flash, I was propped back onto the table, and he was taking me by the knees, spreading me so he could make room for himself. My nightgown bunched at my waist, and he pushed his bare cock to the sheer lace of my panties.
“Fuck. Can’t get you off my mind, Mia. Tried, baby, I tried. But I close my eyes, and it’s you I see.”
I gasped. Moaned. Begged. My hands sought refuge under his shirt, pushing it up as I let my palms run the contoured lines of his abdomen. He tore it the rest of the way over his head.
One second later, the man was completely naked.
Glorious.
Magnificent.
Muscles hard and lean.
Rigid, brutal beauty.