Page 72 of Monsters in the Museum

“I refuse to be that cliché.” Adam’s eyes glittered with dark promise, and he stood before scooping her up off the carpet and depositing her on the enormous bed. He crawled on top of her and kept to his promise, their next kiss slower and more intentional. Nora parted her legs so he could lie between them, and the press of his pelvis against hers threatened to undo her completely. Still, his lips didn’t leave hers until she was shaking like a leaf in the stiff Chicago winds.

When he finally pulled away, Nora was sure she looked a mess, panting and glassy-eyed, but Adam’s gaze as he stared down at her only burned brighter. She tried to catch her breath, but Adam was having none of it, stealing the air from her lungs by bending down again to press his lips to her neck, alternating teeth and tongue as his hands trailed down her body at a torturous pace.

His lips mapped behind her ear and the hollow of her throat, painting her skin with the affection he had carried for so long. Nora let out a hiccupping sigh of desperation as she bucked her hips up, but one hand came to her waist, pinning her down. He pulled back, and Nora was of a mind to protest the loss of his heat until he moved to pull her shirt off over her head.

She found herself bare from the waist up beneath him. His lips were wet and swollen from their kissing and his eyes sparkled as bright as the stars embroidered in the bed hangings above him. Nora’s nipples tightened under his scrutiny, and as desperate as she was, she found herself smiling up at him—this man who had seen all the world had to offer, yet still looked at her like she was brand new.

He smiled back for just a moment before diving back down to resume his torturous attention. His breath ghosted over her breasts before teasing them with the flat of his tongue. If Adam noticed Nora’s fingernails digging into his shoulders, he gave no indication but to lavish even more attention on every inch of her. She wanted to urge him on faster, but she bit her lip to control herself, wanting this moment to be everything he had promised. But she could not control the shivering that grew to full-on trembling as he kissed down her belly, working her leggings down her hips before tossing them carelessly over his shoulder.

Then his mouth came to land between her legs, and she lost all ability for coherent thought. If Adam had seemed intent on his task before, it was nothing compared to how he took her apart now. He covered her sex with his mouth while his tongue parted her in one long stroke. Nora hadn’t had a chance to recover from the lightning his touch sent through her body before he used the tip of his tongue to trace tight, inexorable circles around her most sensitive point.

Nora could only rock up into him, one hand coming to cover her mouth and contain the sounds now forcing their way past her lips. Adam reached up and pulled her hand away from her face. When she glanced down, his eyes were desperate, as if being deprived of the noises coming from her physically hurt him. So, instead, Nora dug her fingers into his curls and let him have every groan and whimper she had to offer.

Her desperate noises seemed to only spur him on further, and he used his thumbs to hold her open as he devoured her. Even as her moans increased in pitch, they weren’t enough to drown out Adam’s own groans of pleasure, as if Nora were a delicious meal and he was a man starved.

The stars on the fabric above her began to dance as her vision swam.

“Adam,” she breathed, a warning and a prayer and a plea all mixed into one.

His response was to slide a single digit into her tight channel, and that was all it took to turn the stars to supernovas as she shattered, crying out and pulsing around his finger.

Her limbs still shook, and sparks still danced over her skin when Nora pushed Adam back and flipped them over so he lay on his back, and she was able to hover over him. She already felt like she might shatter again at any moment, barely recovered from the attentions of his mouth, but she was determined to hold out until she could be joined with Adam fully. He made a slight noise of protest at the sudden change in position, but a small smirk and a glint in his eye told her that he was far from unhappy with her enthusiasm. His lips glistened from her, and Nora ran her thumb over them, only for Adam to dart his tongue out and make sure he had licked her there, too.

She removed his clothing with much more haste than he had, knocking his glasses off as she ripped his sweater over his head. Once he was bare, though, she did pause to take him in, wanting to seal the way he looked in her mind, from the length emerging from the curls between his legs to the ruined look in his eyes.

She straddled his thighs as she looked her fill, tracing fingers over the divot between his pectorals, across his abs, before taking his cock in her hand. She reveled in the way he tensed beneath her thighs as she ran her thumb through the slick droplet at his head. She wanted to taste it, but it seemed that would have to wait, as even Adam had reached the end of his patience after millennia of waiting. He pulled her down to kiss him again, his lips still coated in her musky taste.

Now she didn’t make him wait, shifting her hips until his cock caught at her entrance, already slippery and desperate. When he slid inside her, Nora nearly cried with the satisfaction of it. She was reduced to a bundle of sensations: Adam’s hands on her hips, his breath on her neck, the slight scratch of his stubble against her cheek. Their bodies fit together like they had been made to do so, which didn’t seem so far-fetched anymore. Nora shuddered as her muscles were overcome with the pleasure of it all, her hips losing their rhythm as she tried to grind down onto him, but Adam took matters into his own hands. He flipped them over and drove into her, chasing after what they both needed.

She wrapped her legs around his hips, heels digging into his lower back as she urged him on. A dark curl fell into his face as he stared down at her, his golden skin glowing with the sweat of his exertion. He was beautiful, and otherworldly, and most remarkably, hers.

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes again as she tried to withstand the onslaught of feelings. One of Adam’s hands reached up to cup her face, holding her cheek gently, at odds with the way the fingers of his other hand dug into the flesh of her hip, holding her against him as he drove into her relentlessly.

She covered his hand with her own, the beginnings of her release cresting over her, but there was something else: something buried in her chest clawing to burst forth.

As Nora’s back arched and she fell apart in Adam’s arms, she found the words to say what she had been trying to this whole time.

“I love you.”

It hadn’t taken her long to realize that Dr. Adam Scott was the type of man she could love. When she learned the truth about the Eteria, she had convinced herself that he would never be able to feel that way about her, but every new facet of him she uncovered still drew her in further. Now, knowing all he had been through for her—how he had waited and suffered and respected her wishes even when it hurt him to his core—she was sure that her soul belonged to him, in this life and all others.

“I love you too,” Adam said, breathless but without hesitation, as if it were as necessary for him to tell her this as it was to breathe. As if he burned with it.

As he spent inside her, Nora knew she burned with it too. After long moments of trembling, Adam rolled sideways and pulled Nora into his chest. While the fire inside her banked, it remained warm and insistent, and she knew it would not be extinguished.

Later, when they were content and breathless in each other’s arms for the second time that night, Nora had the fleeting thought before she was claimed by sleep that this was worth waiting seven hundred years for.