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Valerian places my feet on the warm stone floor and tips my chin up. I raise my eyes unsure what I will find.
“You could have died, my little rose. I told you to stay away from the atrium. It’s not entirely safe out here.” His head dips and he places a kiss at the corner of my lips. The warmth of his body presses against mine and I’m too starved for his touch to pull away like I should. My arms find their way back to where I had them around his neck.
“I can’t lose you,” he murmurs softly.
I work the inside of my cheek between my teeth unsure if I should say what I’m thinking.
“Bella?”
Whoa. The husk of his voice works through me. I am not prepared for the effect it has on me. My brain is telling me he is the enemy, but my body is loving the feel of his heat against mine.
I try to step away out of his arms, but he won’t let me.
“What’s wrong?” he urges.
“It’s an odd thing to say when you can’t bring yourself to be in the same house as me.”
He looms over me all taut muscle and looking like a gorgeous god. It’s hard to be mad when he saved me from dying. Yeah, I know. It would have never happened had he not brought me here, but the fact remains I am here and he kept me from going over that cliff.
“Look—”
“Look—”
We both start to speak at the same time.
Instead of saying excuse me or offering for me to go first, De La Rosa does something I should have expected from past experience.
He palms the back of my head and takes my lips in a hard kiss. It’s full of hunger and need to have skin on skin. Kind recognizes kind.
“I can’t seem to stay away from you. When I'm not here, your voice, your touch, your kisses are all I can think about.”
“I didn’t tell you to walk out that first night or to tell you to never touch me again.”
He scrapes his hands through his hair. Black and silver fall over his forehead, calling my attention to the blue of his gaze.
“Wanting you isn’t the problem, Bella.”
There is a seriousness to his voice that has my hands falling to his shoulders and then resting over his heart. I don’t know I am doing it until his hands come to rest over mine. He draws them up and then places gentle kisses on the insides of my palms.
“You are better off with me not around.” And yet his actions say something entirely different. They speak of the same hunger his last kiss reflected. His fingers twine around my wet hair.
“Come with me. You’re cold and I can’t have you getting sick.”
Above us, the water pounds against the dome glass ceiling. I can’t see much of it through the hanging vines, but the sound is soothing. Magical, really. I could easily picture being locked in here with Valerian and shutting out the outside world indefinitely.
He bends and hooks his arm behind my knees and lifts me in his arms. He moves us to another part of the atrium. This side doesn’t have any plants along the gray and black hand-carved flooring. He steps through a curtain of green leaves to reveal a sitting pool with shimmering blue lights and rising steam.
“Let me make up for the time I was away. I’ll be gentle with you.”
“These are your flowers? You tend to them?” I should have guessed.
“Yes. They were my most precious possession. And then you came along. You’re the most precious flower to me, now.”
My heart screams for him to prove it and my body agrees.
But can I trust him with either?
“You want a second chance?”
