Page 73 of The Verdict

“This is dangerous.” His head dipped, and he growled into my ear, his touch working a furious rhythm over my clit until I shook and clutched the wet fabric of his shirt for support.

“I’m used to danger.” I rocked my hips against his hand, feeling his fingers push delicious pressure inside me.

I didn’t know what it was that made me so desperate for this—for him. Maybe it was the recovery from my attack. Maybe it was the lingering traces of meds. Maybe it was the truth—that when that knife punctured my side and I saw Rhys standing in the doorway, all I could think was that I wasn’t losing my life, but I was losing my life with him.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he groaned against my neck. “So fucking good. It’s all I dream about.”

“Yet you stay away from me.”

“Because I’m afraid,” he snarled, his fingers pleasuring me in an almost savage way. Pushing. Pressing. Stroking. Refusing to give me a second to steady myself. “Because all I think about are those moments, too. When he hurt you. When you collapsed in my arms. When I thought… when I thought I’d lost you for good.”

“Rhys,” I panted, my nails clawing into his chest as the wave of heat inside me whipped and turned and swirled.

“I think about those moments and know that if I gave myself the chance to have you again, I wouldn’t let you go.” His teeth latched into the pulse on my neck with a low growl.

I ground against him, pleasure mingling with pain. Everytouch reached a part of me that was supposed to be unreachable. A part that was supposed to be locked up and buried so I’d have no weakness. No vulnerability.

“Please.” I squirmed shamelessly, begging now for him to fill the empty, swollen ache inside me with relief.

“Having you again is all I think about.” His fingers curled against my front wall, sending pleasure screaming through every one of my cells. I gasped and convulsed into him, holding on for dear life. “Holding you. Kissing you. Making you come over and over and over again until you’re too fucking weak to try and leave. Until you’re too weak to do anything but trust me with the truth.”

“Rhys!” My release snapped inside me like a firecracker. Bright heat and colorful pleasure filled me with relief as I sagged against him with a long moan, my body gulping down the welcome tremors of release like it was starving.

I didn’t know how long passed in a mosaic of gasping breaths and galloping heartbeats, but soon I felt the shower on my skin, tattooing it with a kind of painful caress. Still clutching his shirt, I looked up at Rhys, his eyes a smoke-soaked mess of lust.

As if knowing my thoughts, he reached and turned off the water, and I shivered at the thought he was going to pull away again.

“Rhys…” I sounded winded. Breathless. My body still clenched around his fingers, and I didn’t want to let him go. “More,” I begged as those fingers slipped free.

“Merritt…” He trembled. Barely controlled lust drove stakes into his bones and anchored him in place.

“I’m not weak enough yet.”

His lip twitched, and then his hands framed my face, his mouth crushing mine. It was punishing. Hard and demanding and furious. He angled my head and pushed his tongueintimately deep to claim every corner. And before I could beg for breath, I was in his arms. The slopping trail of water we left was a problem for another time as he carried me to the bed and gently laid me on it.

His teeth worked a path along my jaw, but when I reached for the soaked waist of his pants, he brushed my hand away.

“Rhys—”

“You’re injured.”

No.I wanted to protest—to scream that I wasn’t weak. Wasn’t defenseless. That I didn’t need to be babied. But before I got even a second to form some kind of verbal protest, his forehead dropped to mine, and he muttered, “There was so much blood, Merritt. And I’ve seen blood—seen war. But seeing you… all that blood. Feeling you go limp in my arms… I was so fucking scared.”

My lips parted, air snagging on every soft word, as his eyes met mine. “Me too.”

I’d never seen his jaw this hard. Never seen his eyes this dark.

“Let me take care of you.” It was his turn to beg as his tongue licked over the flutter of my pulse. “Please.”

My jaw dropped as his hand snaked from my waist down between my thighs. I was swollen and drenched from my last orgasm, and so,sosensitive. My body hummed like the first rush of electricity into a line, and my mouth projected the sound of all my cells coming back to life.

His mouth lowered along the column of my throat, his tongue sinking like a soft knife into the skin. “I need to taste you.”

Needed to.

“Yes.” My moan was my acquiescence.

His raspy growl left a trail over my chest and stomach. Mylegs widened to fit the broadness of his shoulder as he sank between them.

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