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I’m about to joke with Marcus that it’s hard to catch your own clichés—hence editors being a necessity—when a loud crash from the living room makes me jump to my feet.
“Puffs!” I yell, running toward the sound—and sure enough, the disaster I expected is here.
One of the modern-art sculptures by the couch is lying in pieces on the floor.
22
Marcus
“Stop apologizing,” I tell Emma as I lead her into the bedroom, my hand resting on the small of her back. “I’m the one who insisted you bring them with you.”
“Yes, but I knew better than to listen. You’ve never lived with Mr. Puffs; you don’t know how destructive he can be. That cat is an absolute menace.” She sounds so disgusted I can’t help but laugh—though there’s really nothing funny about losing a piece of art that cost two-and-a-half million dollars.
“It’s fine,” I say, and to my surprise, I mean it. The broken sculpture was one of the first collectibles I acquired when I started making serious money, and each time I’d looked at it, I’d felt a sense of satisfaction at the knowledge of how far I’d come. And for years, that satisfaction, that feeling of acquisitive pride, had been enough. But not any longer.
Having met Emma, I want more.
I want to bask in her sweet, seductive warmth, to experience the affection she gives so easily to her family and her pets. And if that means I have to put up with some broken sculptures, so be it.
I want Emma to love me, no matter what it takes.
The realization detonates in my mind like a hydrogen bomb, and my heartbeat surges, my hand tightening on Emma’s fingers before I can catch myself.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, glancing up as we stop a few feet from the bed.
I drop my hand and step back. “Nothing.” But even to my ears, my voice sounds off, all hoarse and shell-shocked.
And I feel shell-shocked, blasted apart by the realization mushrooming in my mind.
How have I not seen this before?
How could I have been so blind?
“Love,” she told me the other weekend when I asked what more her cats needed after she’d fed them, changed their litter, and played with them. As far as I was concerned, all their needs had been met, but Emma knew better. She knew they needed what only she could provide: warmth, caring, affection.
Love.
“Seriously, are you mad at me?” A worried frown creases her smooth forehead. “I can take the cats home right now, before they can do more damage. And I’ll reimburse you for the sculpture. I know it’s probably crazy expensive, but I can make monthly payments until—”
“Fuck the sculpture.” My voice is low and savage as I step toward her. My face must also reflect the turmoil inside me, because her eyes widen and she starts to back away. Only it’s too late. Catching her upper arms in an iron grip, I drag her against me and, bending my head, claim her mouth the way I need to claim her heart.
Totally. Completely. Without giving her a choice in the matter.
Her lips part on a gasp as her head falls back, and I feed from her mouth, reveling in her taste, her feel, the sweet, addictive warmth that’s obsessed me from the beginning. I inhale her breath into my lungs, coveting it, coveting her. All of her. Her small, luscious body and her clever mind, her Salvation Army sense of style and her stubborn independence. Her compassion, her redhead’s temper, her love of animals—all the delightful, messy parts that make her so wrong for me, yet so perversely right.
Her hands come up to grip my sides, and her body melts against me as she returns my voracious kiss, her tongue pushing against mine, invading my mouth as greedily as I invade hers. She kisses me like she can’t get enough, like I’m the only man in the world for her, and as more blood surges to my groin, I lose the last shreds of my self-control, turning into that most primitive of all beings.
A man dying to claim his woman.
And she is mine. All mine. Every lush, delectable inch of her. I tell her that with every burning kiss I lay on her pale throat, with every greedy stroke of my hands over her supple curves. I brand her with my mouth and teeth and tongue, leaving pink marks on her tender skin. Her clothes rip in my impatient grasp, as do my own in the next few moments, and then we’re on the bed and I’m surging into her, taking her with a violence I didn’t know lived inside me.
A violence that should terrify her, but that she chooses to embrace instead.
Mine, I tell her with every brutal thrust, and she answers with a clenching of her inner muscles, with wet heat and silky softness, with her lips on mine and her arms looped around my neck. Her legs fold around my ass, her hips lifting to take me deeper, and it’s the closest thing to paradise I can imagine in this world. My mind is blank, my vision blurred as I drive into her, over and over again, propelled by a need that knows no bounds, no restraints.
