Page 95 of Inside the Wicked

“Take me home.”

I think he’s going to sigh and tell me how my safety is too important and that my father is right. He doesn’t. Rhett squeezes my thigh.

“Okay, baby.”

CHAPTER 35

Rhett

Ishouldn’t have brought Ana back to the warehouse apartment, but how was I to fucking deny her and make her pain worse?

Despite the night falling and it only being a matter of hours before her parents realize she’s disobeyed, Ana looks so relaxed here, like it’s a different world between these four walls, one made just for us. I decide that’s worth risking everything for.

After taking off her shoes and coat, she makes her way over to the dresser. We managed to get some new clothes and pajamas while in town today, but she drops the bags and opens the drawer of my T-shirts and hoodies anyway.

It swells in my fucking chest.

I’m hovering, observing her every movement like a stalker. She strips out of her black skirt and top, takes off her bra, and pulls on a black hoodie with a snake embroidered in black down the center.

It reminds me. “You didn’t pick out anything with color today.”

Ana crawls onto the bed, and she’s so fucking sexy my dick twitches at her enticing smile. “Neither did you,” she says.

“We weren’t shopping for me.”

“I like the darkness.” She stretches out with a contented inhale. Her long legs are just begging to be wrapped around my shoulders.

“Did you wear black for me?”

Her head falls to look at me. “Yes. Part of me was mourning when I had no assurance you were alive other than my gut instinct. But it also made me feel like I had a piece of you.”

My hand curls around one of the four bed posts. I’m overwhelmed with love for this woman. Absolute devoted and entirely undeserving of her.

“Are you going to stand there looking at me all night or join me, Agent?”

For years I didn’t know what being alive truly felt like. Then I met Ana, and I don’t remember what feeling completely numb to the world was like. She’s a beating heart.Mybeating heart.

“Your parents are going to be looking for you, and it’ll only grow more intense the longer you avoid them.”

“Then I guess I’m your secret now too.”

I slip out of my leather jacket, then I pull my T-shirt over my head. I’m a selfish, deplorable bastard for this. I should agree with her father and take her to that hotel with new guards even if she fights me. But I can’t. I fuckingcan’t.

“You might want to start picking your new name,” I say jokingly.

“Ana Kaiser,” she says with a low, seductive edge.

When I ease onto the bed her legs part, knees settling around my hips. I take her hands, interlocking our fingers and sliding them up over her head as I hover over her.

“You don’t get to be just another creature of the underworld,” I say. “Are you ready to work for what it takes to rule it?”

Her eyes spark with a thrill. “Yes.”

“That’s my girl.”

I kiss her, long and deep. Her knees tighten around me, pulling me closer, and she lifts her hips to grind her pussy over my aching cock, tight behind my jeans.

“Impatient,” I mutter against her lips.

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