Page 192 of Sorrow & Strangers

“We won’t fuck until you can call my true name before, during, and after. I won’t have you begging to come from an alias,” I answer easily.

“Right,” she says, her lips in a slight pout. Not expecting that, was she?

“And you must commit to me fully.”

Chapter Eighty-Two

Summer

“Acommitment?”

“If it isn’t clear, I am an extremely jealous and possessive male,” he says, pinching my chin, his gaze burning into mine. “If I’m fucking you, I’ll be the last person you ever fuck.” He drags his thumb along my bottom lip. “Is that understood?”

“What exactly are you asking of me right now?” I ask, flicking my tongue across the pad of his thumb.

“Nothing,” he says. “I am stating my position on when we fuck, and the lasting implications of us doing so.”

So I get little say in the matter? He’s decided, and that’s that. Sliding off him, I grab his shirt and pull it on as I walk into the bathroom. I’m not sure why I am so irritated. I was the one who didn’t allow him to taste me. Everything just feels so wildly overwhelming, and I’ve gone from hating him, or pretending to hate him, to not speaking, to being naked in bed together.

His taste still tingles on my tongue. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but I couldn’t help myself. As he told me about how he destroyed Torin, my darkness swirled deliciously inside me, and that he did it for me . . . I was putty in his hands.

I don’t regret it at all. My jaw aches a little from his size, and my throat still burns a little from him fucking it, but it’s just a reminder of what I did to him. How I made him come completely undone with my mouth. My core tightens at the memory, clenching almost painfully around nothing.

Fuck.

Okay Summer. Time to make a game plan.

I wash my face and then look at myself in the mirror. My lips are swollen, my eyes are still dark, my skin is glowing even though my body is feral for release, but I have decided.

When I leave the bathroom, all his focus is on me. He is sitting up on the bed with his back against the headboard, the silk sheet artfully draped over his lap, and I can see him harden from the mere sight of me.

Stay strong, Summer.

“Is that your only rule?” I ask, tugging at the cuffs of his shirt where the sleeves have swallowed my hands. “No sex?”

He tilts his head, his gaze sliding lazily over me, and I can tell he enjoys seeing me in his clothes. “Until the other two conditions are met. Yes,” he says.

A commitment, and I know who he is. Truly.

“Then I have some rules too.”

“I’m listening,” he says, lifting his arm and tucking it behind his head, leaving me momentarily mesmerized by his muscles and how they flex.

“No kissing.”

His jaw tightens. “Why?”

“Because you are still wearing a mask.”

He pauses, considering me. “I can’t spend this whole weekend without tasting your skin. Without feeling your lips on me.”

“No kissing on the lips.”

“Fine,” he says, lifting his chin in a shallow nod.

“And no sleepovers.” I had agreed to stay with him tonight, but this is one of my hard boundaries, and if he can enforce his, I can enforce mine.

He tenses, his eyes going molten. “This will be difficult for me.”