Page 115 of Dagger in the Sea

She nodded. “A little.”

“A little?”

“I stopped it.”

Hell no.She needed to be coming and screaming and writhing with the force of it. The force of me.

I tugged on her hair. “You wanted me to kiss you that night in Athens. You made that happen. Why? Because you thought you’d never see the tourist from America again?”

“That’s right. A risk without consequence.”

I lifted her chin. “I’m your consequence, baby.” I licked the seam of her mouth and she let out a moan. “Do you like my kisses?” I breathed against her lips.

Her eyes flared. “I love your kisses.”

“How do I kiss you?”

“Like you want all of me right the hell now. Like we don’t have tomorrow.”

“On this island, there is no tomorrow, only now.”

Since those hours on Evgeny’s boat, the adrenaline constantly outraced the blood in my veins, but my blood just caught up. Heat filled me, driving through me; a euphoric calm. I brought her in front of my body, my arms circling her, and pressed her back against my chest.

“The night of the shooting, when we spent the night on the boat—” I nuzzled her neck and she shuddered in my hold. “Did you and Alessio fuck?” The evil me wanted to know.

“No, I took half a sleeping pill and slept.”

My fingers lazed a trail around a breast, around a nipple which was already hard as a pebble. My lips skimmed her throat, a finger following down the warm slope and back up again, tracing her lips. “You want me to kiss you now?”

“Yes…”

She slanted her head to mine, and my teeth nipped at the delicate skin at the base of her neck. She shivered again, and I pulled her closer. Adri was a wine spiced with passion, laced with vulnerability and a very slight hit of shy, and I breathed in that aroma, tasted that full-bodied richness. It mesmerized me, filling my senses with delicious possibilities.

When I’d first laid eyes on her, I’d assumed she was the jaded, wealthy Euro party girl, an easy pick, a fun diversion. She wasn’t that, she was so much more. An unexpectedother. I wanted her more than anything or anyone I’d ever wanted before.

She’d stopped time by bringing us here, and Andros had enclosed us in its veil. Had stopped the clanging of swords in my head, thepoffof gunpowder, the rip of that violin, that horrible cheering of a greedy, bored mob intent on blood.

I’d been inside that fear, I’d ridden it, and it had stripped me, stripped pieces of me I’d always taken for granted, had cultivated.But here, now, right now with Adriana, that fell away, didn’t gnaw on me, drain me. It was me and her on this rock. That was it, and that was all that mattered.

“Go farther with me, Adri,” I whispered, my voice rough. “For however long we have.”

“You are willing to get uncomfortable with me?” she breathed.

“Yes.”

She turned in my arms and our eyes met. We held on to each other on that cliff in a rich silence, the seagulls cawing and dipping over the choppy Aegean. She took my fingers and put them in her mouth and sucked on them.

My fucking heart stopped.

She brought my hand down between her legs, inside her shorts, past her panties. My fingertips grazed wet.

I let out a groan. “Are you sure?”

“Touch me.”

“Don’t fake with me. Don’t. I’ll know.”

“I want this with you,” she breathed. “I want you. For real.”

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