Page 105 of Monsters Wear Crowns
My heart thundered. “I love you.”
The sound that ripped from his chest was almost animal. He gripped my hips, surely bruising my skin. He kissed me again–slower this time. Not softer, butdeeper. Like he was trying tolearn every corner of me, every inch of the woman who had just given him the one thing he never believed he deserved.
And then he whispered into my skin. “Don’t leave me.”
The words were so quiet, I almost didn’t hear them. But they devastated me anyway. I pulled him tighter, my voice thick with tears. “I won’t.”
All the walls we’d built, all the armor we wore... crumbled beneath the weight of his mouth on mine. Rafe groaned into the kiss like he’d held himself back for far too long and couldn’t anymore. His mouth never left my skin, leaving a trail of heat across my throat, my collarbone, and the swell of my breasts.
“God, Adela,” he groaned, thrusting harder, deeper. “You feel like fucking heaven.”
I moaned, clenching around him, my hands tangled in his hair, pulling him closer. “Don’t stop. Please,don’t stop.”
He didn’t.
Every grinding thrust drove us closer to the edge, bodies slick with sweat, the room echoing with our need. My cries, his growls, the slap of skin against skin.
We were chaos. We werewild.
His hand found mine and pinned it above my head, fingers lacing through mine, grounding me as I shuddered around him. My climax hit like a tidal wave, my back nearly bowing off the bed, his name torn from my throat. I trembled beneath him, breathless and raw.
Rafe followed with a broken curse, his body slamming into mine one last time before he stilled, spilling into me with a moan that sounded like salvation and surrender all at once.
He collapsed on top of me, chest heaving, his face buried in the crook of my neck. I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him close, not ready to let him go–not now, not ever.
His voice was hoarse, almost too soft to hear. “You’re everything.”
I turned my face toward his, pressing a kiss to his temple. “So are you,” I whispered. “Even when you don’t believe it.”
***
RAFE
I didn’t remember stripping her. I just remembered the feel of her skin under my hands–the warmth, the softness, the way she opened for me.
And I’d never fucking wanted anything more.
Her body welcomed me like she was made for me, and when I sank into her, I felt something tear open inside me. Not pain. Not fear. Something worse. Something better.
She gasped my name like a fucking prayer, her nails digging into my back, and I couldn’t stop moving. Couldn’t stopneeding. Every sound she made destroyed me. Every breath she took while wrapped around me broke another part of the wall I’d built to survive this world.
She looked at me like I wasn’t a monster. And that was what ruined me. Because Iwas. I was darkness and violence and blood. I was everything a woman like her shouldn’t be able to tame. But Adela…
Shesawme.
And somehow, impossibly, she still touched me like I was worthy of this. Of her. I buried my face in her neck, breathing her in, tasting her skin between kisses. She whimpered when I rocked deeper, and my heart cracked wide open.
This wasn’t just lust. This wasn’t justneed. This was surrender. I wanted to keep her. Wreck her. Worship her. Give her everything I had, even if it wasn’t enough.
Her arms wrapped tighter around me, her mouth meeting mine with a desperation that matched my own, and that was when it hit me–fully, finally.
I was in love with her.
And fuck, I was done for. I pulled back just enough to see her face–flushed and beautiful, her beautiful blue eyes heavy witheverything we weren’t saying. “I don’t deserve you,” I whispered against her lips, voice breaking.
Her fingers tangled in my hair, dragging my mouth back to hers. But the way she kissed me… it saidI know. I love you anyway. And I would spend the rest of my goddamn life trying to be worth that.
Her body clung to mine, hot and slick and trembling. Her perfect pussy gripped me so tight, so greedily, it felt like she was trying to pull me deeper, take all of me,keepme. She was everything I could have ever wanted. Everything I never thought I deserved.
