Page 88 of Bones

“Don’t know.” He lowered to sit on the side of the bed. I tried to unwrap my legs from his torso, but his hands spanned my thighs to hold them tightly in place. “How long have you had visions?”

“Don’t know,” I repeated his words. Not giving him the chance to think I was lying or being evasive as usual, I rushed on to share the story I’d only told one other person. “When I was sixteen, I woke up in the middle of the woods in Arkansas.” I was vaguely aware of his fingers reflexively tightening around my legs, but I kept talking to get it all out. “I was at the bottom of a bluff, so the working theory was that I fell while hiking.”

“You don’t remember?”

I shook my head. “Somehow, I knew my name was Aurora and that the accident happened on my sixteenth birthday. Everything else was gone. Doctors said I might eventually regain my memories, especially if I saw people I recognized.” That isolation that came from the rejection swirled in my churningstomach. “No one ever came looking, and I never got my memories back.”

Understanding dawned on his handsome face. “That’s how you knew how it felt when my siblings disappeared.” He cupped my cheek. “The loneliness. The frustration.”

I swallowed harder and nodded.

“Fuck, baby. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said automatically even though it very much wasnot. “I’m not sure if I had my curse before the accident, but I woke up with it.”

“Why do you keep calling it a curse?”

My fingertips instinctively went to my chest. His sharp gaze followed the movement, so I dropped my hand. “Because that’s what it is.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Iknowit.” I gave a quick shake of my head to clear the guilt that threatened to overwhelm me, but it didn’t help. “And now you’re forced to be with me because of our souls, and I’m so?—”

“Our souls don’t make me want you,” he cut in.

In that split second, embarrassment flared through me so completely, I thought my red cheeks would start on fire.

And then it changed to a different kind of heat when he gripped my hips and tugged me closer. “It has fuck-all to do with fate, the heavens, or our souls. Even if we weren’t mates, I’d sacrifice the world and my left nut for a single night with you.” His cock began to harden beneath me as he lifted a hand to tangle in my hair. He fisted the strands, and a bite of pain went across my scalp to zip down like those nerve endings were connected directly to my sex. His head lowered until I thought he’d kiss me. Until I was ready to beg for it. Until he was all I could see. “I want you because you’re you.”

And then his lips finally crashed against mine, the power and desire in his kiss confirming what his words had claimed.

That he wanted me.

That he needed me.

Not as his mate.

Not as his burden.

But as a woman.

He tugged my hair again—rougher that time—and forced my mouth open to give him more access. Plunging his tongue in, he dominated my mouth as his hips rocked with a tormenting, brutal intensity. His hardness pressed against my core, and arousal surged to leave me pathetically soaked.

Desperation on a level I never knew possible stole my common sense. Doubt. Breath. Thoughts. My hands released their grip on his worn tee to shove between us. Needing more.

Needing everything.

My fumbling fingers had barely skimmed his belt when he released my hair and hip to grip my wrist, halting my valiant effort.

I worried that he was stopping me before we got carried away, but it was just so he could take over to efficiently undo the buckle and the button on his jeans, all while still tormenting me with skimming lips and a teasing tongue. His zipper remained up as he spanned my ribs with one hand and palmed the back of my head with the other. He left the space between our bodies.

Left the choice up to me.

I didn’t have to think twice.

With a decisiveness I rarely felt, I unzipped his jeans and tried to get my hand inside. Or free him from where his cock was angled down his leg in a way that couldn’t be comfortable. I didn’t care which option happened so long as the end result was touching him.

But my sign of surety was all he needed.

---