AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And who are they?”
“That’s Pen.” The tip of his finger glides across the picnic table in the photo. “And that’s Leah and Ernesto.”
His shoulders stiffen when I touch Ernesto’s boyish face, and a sudden chill reminds me of his warning. “What happened between you two?”
After placing the frame back on the shelf, Marcus turns to face me. The charge in the air changes swiftly. It zaps with anger, suspicion, and something possessive that has my belly rolling with anticipation.
“I feel the need to warn you,” he says, freezing me in place as, one at a time, he plucks the friella from my hair and places them on the middle shelf, “Ernesto isn’t the innocent man he’s painted himself to be.”
I swallow, but my voice is merely a rasp when I say, “Interestingly enough, he said the same about you.”
His rage is a tangible, living thing when he speaks again. “Did he care to mention that he took Leah’s virginity just days before she caught him in a parking lot, fucking a married woman?”
A sinking sensation deflates my shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me that a week ago when I mentioned our date, instead of shoving your way into my business?”
Reaching for my hair again, he studiously unwinds the elastic holding each bun, and my scalp tingles at his delicate touch. Desperate enough for his response, I allow him to unwind the braids Sariah gave me.
“Answer me,” I prod him sternly now that my hair is loose and draping down the front of my blouse.
“Because I didn’t think you were telling the truth,” he says gruffly, rolling his broad shoulders as he crowds me. I shudder when his scorching gaze flashes to my lips. “But worse than finding out that the asshole accepted your money was acknowledging the lengths I would go to keep you away from him.”
One hand feathers through my hair until his palm cups the base of my head. He uses the strands as an anchor to tilt my face up and my mouth parts unbidden.
“What are you saying?” I breathe, pinned in his grasp while my body arches into him.
His pupils dilate, thinning the deep blue irises around them, and with certain clarity, I realize that Marcus didn’t bring me here with the intent of airing out his past. He brought me here because he’sstarving—and ready or not, I’m about to satisfy that hunger.
“I’m done with our games, Heather.”
A whimper lies behind my trembling lips as his stinging hold on my scalp lights my clit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
“Everything you think you know about me is a lie.”
“Then tell me the truth,” I beg with a throat-tightening whisper.
His dark brows draw tight with a frown, and just as I think he’ll confess, he shakes his head.
“I can’t… I won’t.” Marcus knocks my legs apart with his knee, and I’ll be damned if I don’t immediately roll against it. “Which means you decide, here and now, if that’s an acceptable condition for what I’m about to do to you.”
It may not be the truth I wanted, but it’s not the empty promise I once expected, either.
“Time’s ticking.” Marcus’s nostrils flare lightly as he waits. “What’ll it be, slayer?”
Alice is going to kill me for this, is my last coherent thought before I murmur, “Just fucking kiss me already.”
The room spins in a blur of colors when Marcus picks me up and drops my ass on top of the desk next to the bookcase. It creaks with my weight, jostling against the wall as our mouths clash in a heated flurry.
Frantic, wanton, and greedy. We claw at each other as if this kiss is the very sustenance we crave. We pant for air between kisses, while our roaming hands grasp and grope. My nails score his abdomen in a rush to remove his shirt and he hisses, grabbing it by the collar and slipping it overhead before descending on me once more.
My calves hook around his sturdy, flexing thighs, holding on for life as he takes my bottom lip between his teeth and sucks hard enough to deliver a delectable, pinching wave of pain.
This man is ecstasy incarnate, and when he presses his pelvis into mine, he siphons a half-feral moan from my lips. Gazing at my mouth in wonder, he says, “Make that sound again.”
I do as I’m told, throwing my head back with another needy moan while giving that deprived mouth another spot to devour.
“I can smell him on you, Heather,” Marcus growls into the crook of my neck. “And if I wasn’t confident that, after this, he’ll never touch you again—I would drag you down to that pond and scrub every trace of his scent from your skin until it’s raw.”
A secret thrill skitters up my spine with his roaming hands. If any other man spoke to me this way, I’d happily tell him to kiss my ass. But Marcus’s claim doesn’t dissuade me. It cranks the dial of my libido past the absolute maximum.
