It tasted like spiced chocolate and melted instantly on my tongue. “That’s good.”
“It really is,” was all he said before kissing the crap out of me and running his hands over my body like he wanted to worship me. “It tastes better from your lips, wife.”
He laid me back against the soft mattress nudging my legs apart with his knee and then sliding it up.
“Only two more nights after tonight.”
“You can count,” he teased, with a soft laugh. “I’m so proud, my wife, the genius.”
“My husband, the sarcastic cruel man who wears a mask to hide from the world…”
“Not the world,” he said. “Just you, and only that first day, so you’d understand what you’re getting into. I had other reasons…”
“Did you kill him?” I couldn’t believe I was asking what I already suspected, that in order for me to be loyal to Valerian—he had killed Breaker.
Because what sort of accident has a person going nose-first off of a bridge?
“I can hear your mind trying to figure out the pieces, just the wrong ones, not the ones I want you focusing on, not that it matters now, I guess…” He sighed like he was disappointed.
“Why doesn’t it matter?”
“Because I’m out of time. I was out of time the day he died, wasn’t I?”
His tongue licked at the corner of my mouth.
I didn’t moan.
But my body trembled beneath his touch. “Tell me more about you.”
I was trying to put off the inevitable. Where I would fall apart in his arms and feel guilty later for giving in when I just wanted to leave.
“Well…” He drew small circles on my chest with his fingertip. “I went to university.”
“What did you study?”
“Sex,” he said in a teasing tone. “Or as my friends would have said, I was too focused on girls to really take a major and was extremely frustrated when I found out that wasn’t a thing.”
“It’s definitely not a thing.”
“Most disappointing day of my life. I nearly cried.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.” I found myself smiling.
“Yes, well… my heart and my head were in different places than my cock at the time.”
“What do you mean?” I suddenly wished I could see his face.
“Oh well, my cock just screamed, ‘girl, girl, girl,’ but my heart said, ‘we’re already spoken for,’ and my head said, ‘don’t be an idiot.’ So, I’d like to think I came out of it with a moral compass that didn’t completely point down and stay there, if you get my meaning.” His accent somehow seemed lighter, or maybe it was the story—how easy he told it.
“Nice double entendre there.” I smiled at his easy tone, and then the smile fell away as Breaker’s face lit up in my head like a Christmas tree. He’d been such a player.
I was always afraid to ask how many girls he slept with at Eagle Elite. But this wasn’t Breaker, was it?
“So, Mr. Moral Compass…” I leaned in until I could feel his face with my hands. “How many girls did you end up sleeping with?”
“Actual sex?” He was quiet for a few seconds. “That’s a trick question. You see, before college, there were quite a few, and then something happened… and after that, there was only one, and I told myself that they didn’t count anymore, only her.”
My heart squeezed in my chest. “What happened to her?”
“She got married to a total tool.”
I burst out laughing. “So, I’m basically her?”
“Basically.” His mouth found mine.
And for some reason, it felt right.
I let him kiss me.
Seduce me.
I let him put his hands on my hips, and then I let him pull my shirt over my head as his palms cupped my breasts.
His kisses moved down my neck until he stopped at one breast, took the nipple between his teeth, and sucked, sending a shot of pleasure all the way down my legs.
“Do you think—” I licked my dry lips as he continued sucking on my breasts, distracting me from my own breathing. “Do you think she’s happy?”
“Without me? Highly doubtful, princess, highly doubtful.”
“Arrogant.”
“Reason to be.” He chuckled. “Shall I prove it to you again why I’m arrogant, or can you even take it?”
“I can take whatever you have, Valerian.”
A shiver rippled through him, so slight I might have imagined it, then he released a long sigh. “Say it again,” he whispered, his head resting between my breasts as I started massaging his scalp, tugging at his hair.
“Say what again?”
“My name.” He sounded like he was in pain, so I brought his head up, cupped either side of his face, and spoke his name across his lips. “Valerian.”
I barely got the name out when he slammed his mouth against mine like I’d just validated him in some way.
His kiss was destructive to what remaining sanity I had left. His lips were almost too hot, his tongue seducing mine in a cadence that reminded me of sex, of him, of him between my thighs.