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ChapterTwenty-Six
ROMAN
I’m on fire.
It’s cold and wet up on the balcony, even with the runes to protect us from the worst of it, yet I’m so hot I can barely breathe. I’m being burned from the inside out, the flames turning me to ash in her arms.
For years I’ve been standing in the flames as she burned me alive, but now I’m on fire for a wholly different reason as her lips touch mine and her little hands wrap around my neck.
Fuck, I came here for a reason.
To tell her everything, yes, but also to ask her to come with me. To tell her what her aunt said, and beg her to trust me.
But first…I wrench my mouth from hers and it’s almost painful. My voice is hoarse, like stone on stone. “Etta, wait.”
Her voice is shaky. “What?”
I pull my hand from her hair, and reach into my pocket, unearthing the black-velvet box that my mother gave me.
I’m about to do the normal thing and get to one knee, when I’m distracted by her shaking. “You cold?”
“No,” she lies.
I wrap my arms around her, pulling her in. “You’re a bad liar.”
“Just my feet,” she admits, completely unaware of my pounding heart and box clutched in my hand. “I don’t know why, but it didn’t work on the bottoms.”
I glance down and realize her feet are bare. She means the rune didn’t work on the soles. Huh—that’s a question for another time, I guess.
Transferring the box to my left hand, I grab her around the waist, lifting her off the ground and backing her against the house.
Fuck, this is the worst way to propose to someone. Or the best, I don’t know. Rather than kneeling, I’m standing with her entirely wrapped around me. It’s taking all my strength not to take her right here against her house. Not to tear into her soaked pajamas, to suck on her tits through the fabric, to thrust into her until she screams my name so loud that even the thunder wouldn’t drown it out.
I close my eyes, forcing myself to speak before I fully lose control. “Do you trust me?”
She looks up, her eyes shining with the rain sticking to her lashes. “Yes.”
I hand her the box—more clumsily than I would have preferred in any other position—but it doesn’t matter when her eyes go wide. “Then I need you to come somewhere with me, now, so we can make this real.”
She opens the box and looks down at the ring inside, a smile curving her lips, before closing it again with a snap. “You can put this on me as soon as I’m back on the ground.”
“Whatever you want, good girl.” I grin. “So, are we going?”
She adjusts against me and I try to stifle a groan as she accidentally grinds against my cock. Or, maybe not so accidentally from the way her smirk turns wicked. “Okay, but does it have to be now?”
Ah, damn her. We should leave right now. Only, as I look down at Etta, her gray eyes, blonde hair translucent from the rain in some places and dark in others, water pouring over her face…I can make more time. I’ll fucking stop time for an extra minute with her.
I capture her mouth with mine again, hungrily devouring her mouth. She moans against me, her tiny sounds of pleasure and the way she writhes in my arms driving me wild.
I move my mouth down the column of her neck, sucking and nipping at where I can still see the evidence of the bruise I left on her skin. I smile slightly at that, a possessive part of me loving that she’s marked as mine. Soon, she’ll be marked permanently if I get my way—and I will. I’ll get Etta forever in every way possible.
* * *
The castle of the Order, the same building where I fought with Tyberius what feels like a lifetime ago, looks more like a medieval castle than a standard church or underground gothic den of iniquity. There’s a light on inside, and I almost sigh in relief. Someone is already here.
Etta and I pull up in front and I turn to her in the passenger seat. “Run inside, I’ll park.”
“You sure?”
