Page 154 of Watch Me Burn
The admission unlocks something inside me, like opening a door I’d kept bolted shut.
“Having dark thoughts doesn’t make you a bad person, Luna.”
“Maybe. But there’s a difference between having dark thoughts and acting on them.”
“A smaller difference than most people realize.” His thumb traces the curve of my cheek. “We all have the potential for violence, Luna. The only question is what catalyst will bring it to the surface.”
Damien reaches for me then, pulling me onto his lap with ease. I straddle his thighs, his hands settling on my waist.
“I’m not going to stop, Luna.” There’s no room for debate in his voice. “But I won’t be reckless about it either. No more gifts. When someone disappears without a trace, that’s how you’ll know. And you can choose to acknowledge it or look the other way.”
It’s a compromise. More than I expected him to offer. Less than the world would say I should accept. But we left the world behind somewhere between the mask and the blood.
Now we’re just two broken people finding completion and safety in each other’s darkness.
“Okay.”
The word barely makes it out before I’m kissing him. Sealing it. Making it real.
The gentleness lasts seconds before heat takes over. His palms move over my skin, and my body responds with a shudder that starts deep in my core.
“I need you.” I breathe the words into his mouth, the aches in my body forgotten, morphing into another kind of ache entirely. “I need you inside me.”
He lifts me like I weigh nothing and settles me onto the bed. Sunlight streams across the mattress, across us. He moves over me, blocking out everything but his face. For the first time, I can study him in full light. See everything he’s feeling written in his expression.
“I love you.”
I pull him down to me.
“Show me.”
He starts with soft kisses along my jaw and down my throat, taking his time to worship every inch of exposed skin. His stubble scratches against my sensitive flesh, a perfect contrast to the gentleness of his lips. When he finds that spot wheremy neck meets my shoulder, the one that makes me gasp and arch beneath him, he lavishes attention there until I’m purring.
His hands trace my body like he’s memorizing it all over again, but this time without the urgency of our previous encounters. Every touch is deliberate and meaningful. When he takes my breast in his mouth, I arch into him and hold him closer.
“Damien.”
His name escapes my lips on a gasp, and he moves to the other breast and devotes himself to it with the same hunger.
“Love hearing my name on your lips.” His words vibrate against my nipple. “Say it again.”
“Damien.”
He smiles against my skin.
When at last he slips inside me, it’s with a slow stroke that makes my spine curve, my thighs tighten around his hips, and my walls clench around him, drawing him in. We both groan.
“God, you feel incredible.” His forehead drops to mine, his breath hot against my lips.
“Look at me,” I whisper as his eyes drift closed, and when they meet mine, I see everything there. His love, his vulnerability, and his complete surrender to this moment between us.
The pace that builds is gradual, our bodies slick with sweat, every nerve ending alive and singing.
“Come with me.” I dig my nails into his ass. “I want to feel you lose control.”
He begins thrusting deeper, and the world shatters. My body seizes around him as his name rips from my throat. My thighs shake against his hips as waves crash through my core, my orgasm tearing through me. He groans, pulsing inside me.
My muscles clench and release, and his hips jerk, his cock twitching as he empties himself. His mouth finds mine, tender in the aftermath of our frenzy, and his hands glide over my skin, his touch gentle where it was bruising moments before.
