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“Shh.” He kissed his way across her collarbone and up the side of her neck until he could claim her mouth. When he finally pulled back, she blinked up at him with a dazed expression that filled him with fierce pleasure. “Let me worship you, beloved.”
She trembled against him, and her gaze slid away from his. A clear sign of her inner struggle. Her doubt of him. Though he couldn’t blame her, his heart still cracked, the pain worse than when the glass had been embedded in his back. He lowered his forehead to rest on her breastbone. He didn’t deserve to be in her presence, much less worship her. She’d come here because of him, but not exactlyforhim.
Her hands tangled in his hair again. “Please.”
His head darted up at the soft word. He’d surely misheard her. Didn’t she know what he wanted? “This won’t be in anger like last time, Tes,” he warned. “Take me now, and I’ll kill to keep you. I promise you that.”
“Ber,” she whispered. “When have I ever not been yours?”
The question sent fire racing through his blood.
If she hadn’t grasped the depths to his words, he would show her. In his touch. Through whatever bit of a link they’d formed. And when he was done, she would finally be glad no one could hear her screams.
If this wasanother plot to destroy her, Tes found she no longer cared. Tonight, she needed him, and his reverent touch filled the same part of her soul it always had. How could she have forgotten the perfection ofthemduring their year apart? She could almost believe that no time had passed.
Ber had braced himself over her, but she felt no danger. And if logic and instinct had been truly aligned, she should have. The arm beside her head was corded with muscles from his hours of training, and she knew he would have at least one knife tucked away somewhere on his person. Yet despite everything, her heart pounded only with desire.
Yes, he was hers. Two scattered, broken fragments that somehow made a different whole—that was them.
He leaned over and kissed her, long and deep. But only that. She arched her back, hoping to make contact, and tugged at his hair with her free hand. After capturing that hand above her head, too, he chuckled against her lips. “Patience,” he whispered.
Patience just might kill her.
Forever must have passed before he kissed his way back down her throat. Her moan was as much frustration as pleasure. Cruel man. His tongue ran circles over the tender vee where neck met shoulder, and she tugged against his hold at the surge of heat. He lifted his head enough to pin her with his smoldering gaze.
“I told you that you’d be mine, didn’t I?” His grip on her wrists tightened. “Even after all these years together, I don’t think I’ve ever fully claimed you. Not as you should be.”
Her brows drew together. What did he mean? They weremarried, by the gods. They’d sworn to belong to one another. “Ber, what are you talking ab—”
His teeth closed over that tender little vee, and he sucked hard. She cried out at the instant heat rushing through her, forging a path she’d never quite known. Instinctively, she opened her legs to cradle him, but he lifted his body away. Tes whimpered.
“If I release you to remove my clothes, will you keep your arms in place like a good girl?”
Normally, she would have hit him for those words, but she was too hot to do anything but nod. His wicked grin rewarded her. Then he pushed himself up, standing beside the narrow bed so he could pull off his clothes. Delicious. She looked her fill, from his long-beloved face all the way down to his hard cock.
“Not yet,” Ber said, his hand gliding up her leg as he knelt between her thighs.
Tes lifted her hips. “Now.”
He grabbed her calves and placed both of her legs over his shoulders.Yes.She would have her way now. One thrust and—what was he doing? Sliding down the bed? Then he swept his hands up her thighs, circling around until he gripped her hips in a firm hold. His fingers would probably leave a mark, but she didn’t care.
Especially when he angled her hips so his mouth could lay waste to her senses.
Tes scrambled for any kind of anchor, her promise to keep her arms in place forgotten. One hand found purchase in the tattered blanket—the other in his hair. Neither brought relief. There was only the pleasure-pain of the rise, rise, rise. And an odd sense of passion magnified, the intensity sending her over the edge with a ragged scream.
He gave her no time to recover. Ber rose, hooking her knees with his arms so he could spread her wider. But the vulnerable position brought her no dread. No, wonder filled her as readily as passion at his fierce, possessive expression. The look would have bordered on brutal if it hadn’t been tempered by love.
The head of his cock teased her entrance until she wanted to cry. “Please,” she whimpered.
There was a wildness to the eyes that pinned her. “Swear that you’ll never leave me again. Even if we must part temporarily, you’ll always return. We’ll be bound for as long as we live. Swear it.”
A wave of grief and longing swept across her. His emotions? Hers? Maybe both, for in that moment, she understood the depths of her mistake. At the first test, her faith in him had shattered like a hollow light globe—but it should have been solid. He was everything she’d ever wanted. If what she saw in him wasn’t love, then it didn’t exist anywhere.
And if it was all a lie, then the world had already been turned irrevocably askew.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I swear.”
With a ragged cry, he slammed home, and she understood what he’d meant with his earlier words.Thiswas a claiming. He drove into her relentlessly, with a harsh frenzy he’d never truly shown. But it wasn’t enough. She needed to kiss him. Touch him.
