Page 70 of Iron Crown

I bit down on her clavicle, drawing her skin into my mouth, sucking on the salt of her sweat, leaving a bruise there to mark her as mine.

“Please!” she whined, her nails digging into the flesh of my back as she left marks of her own.

I was so fucking close, and so was she. She’d tumble down with me, and I knew it.

“No!” I ordered again. “For once, Kira, I don’t want to force you into a vow.”

“You’re not forcing me.” She shook her head back and forth, as if the pleasure was too much for her. “I’m begging you!”

I loved her pleasure whines. My balls ached, ready to spill.

“If we make that final vow,” I said between thrusts, “It will be when we’re of sound mind. When our family is whole.”

“Eoghan!” she screamed, her eyes wide. She threw her head back, her mouth open, as she let out a long, silent scream.

“I do not want a vow made in desperation and fear,” I told her. “Not this time. Not now.”

Her entire body tensed around me, and her glorious cunt sucked the seed from inside me. I convulsed, as my release took what was left of my soul and gave it to her.

I collapsed on top of her, and she wrapped herself around me.

When her breaths evened out, I rolled to my side so that she and I faced each other, our bodies entangled, my cock still inside her sweet, warm center.

“I love you,” she said, her fingers looping into my hair, scratching at my scalp in a sweet gesture. “I will love you the same tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that, and the one after that. I will love you when there is war, and when there isn’t. I will love you in this haunted house, or in your New York penthouse.”

I shut my eyes, savoring her words.

“I loved you even when we were apart,” she said, putting her cheek on my chest, snuggling into me. “I loved you when you gave me one thousand orchids.”

I felt her body relax against me, as her breaths evened out as she began to drift to sleep.

“I love you now,” she said, her words getting lost in a sighing yawn. “Even after I know what happened to Morelli, the painting, and Yuliya.”

I kissed her forehead and placed my nose at the top of her head, closing my eyes, as I gave in to a different passion than what we had just expressed.

It was the passion of tenderness. It wasn’t lustful, or desperate. It was the simple, quiet comfort of feeling at home when you lay beside the one who made you whole.

Chapter twenty-two

The Inner Circle

Kira

He’d held me in my sleep and woken me up with the gentle nudge of his nose on my throat. He peppered my cheek with loving kisses as he ran his fingers through my hair. He dressed me the next morning. It was sweet, and I savored it far more than I ever had in the past. Even if it was just into cargo pants and body armor.

It wasn’t as sensual as when he gently dragged stockings up my legs, his skin grazing my skin in that tender seduction that ruled our co-existence.

All was right in the world when he held my hand, as the two of us walked out of the Green Mansion, weapons slung across our chests, into the armored SUVs that his men used as transport.

“If something happens to me, promise me you will call Dairo,” he told me. “He’ll have instructions for how you and Cillian will be taken care of.”

I looked up at him, my brows pinched together.

We were going to start a Mafia war, but considering the plans I’d seen, and the men we had at our disposal, there was no reason for this morose talk.

Victory would be violent but assured.

“Nothing is going to happen to you.” I shook my head, correcting myself. “Nothing is going to happen to us.”

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