Page 38 of Mischief

My mouth traces down her throat, teeth grazing her pulse where it hammers under the skin.

I want to mark her.

I want to suck a bruise into her neck that blooms purple by morning, a claim for the whole club to see, and I can't, because a mark on the princess is a death warrant, so I press the need into her skin instead and let it go.

"You're mine," I breathe into her ear, low and rough. "Fuck the ruling. Fuck what they decided. Right now, in this dark kitchen, with my life on the line for it, you're mine."

Her hips buck against me, grinding into the hard ridge of my cock through my jeans.

"Prove it," she whispers.

I get her sleep shorts down her legs, and my hand slides between them, past the lace.

Gods, she wore lace, and I find her soaked and ready for me.

She bites down hard on my shoulder to kill the cry when I press inside, one finger, then two, working her open while my thumb circles her clit in rough, demanding strokes.

"This what you came for," I growl against her hair, watching her face come apart, her head dropping back against the cabinet. "To get taken by the prospect you're forbidden from, on your own family's counter, while the whole club sleeps twenty feet away?"

"Yes," she breathes, the word breaking in half. "Gods, yes. Bodul. I need you, now, I can't wait?—"

I pull my fingers free and bring them to my mouth, tasting her, sweet and salt and something I'd get on my knees for.

Ineedto be inside her, and I need it now.

I free my cock and line myself up, the head pressing against her, her heat teasing the length of me.

"Look at me."

Her eyes snap to mine, those eyes that see straight past the patch and the ink and the beating and the lie I'm still carrying, and they're full of a trust I have not earned and a love I have never once known what to do with.

I push into her slowly.

Even now, even like this, even with my whole life on the line against a counter in the dark, I won't hurt her, and the slow drag of it wrenches a sound out of both of us that we have to swallow down.

Then I move.

There's nothing gentle in it after that.

Each stroke is deep and claiming, and I fold a hand over her mouth when a whimper gets loose.

She moans against my palm and grinds down to meet me, silent and frantic, the two of us listening under the fever for any footstep that would end this and end me.

"Take it," I breathe, my forehead dropped to hers. "Take all of me. Every sick, buried, twisted part I've never shown a soul. I'm not gonna apologize for what I am."

She clenches around me, her walls fluttering, and I feel how close she is.

I shift my angle and drive deeper, my hand slipping from her mouth to her clit, working her in tight circles until her whole body draws bowstring-tight.

"Come for me," I whisper. "Quiet, baby. Come apart on me and don't make a sound."

She shatters against me, her whole body convulsing, and she sinks her teeth into my shoulder to bury the scream, and the feel of her going drags me over right after.

I bury myself deep and spill everything I have into her, shaking, silent, my face pressed to her hair.

For a moment neither of us moves.

The building sleeps on around us, oblivious.

We got away with it.

This time.

I rest my forehead against hers, my thumb tracing her cheekbone, wiping away a tear, or maybe a bead of sweat, I don't know which.

"I love you," she whispers, and the words land in me like a sledgehammer.

"I love you too." It comes out rough, wrecked, torn out of somewhere I keep locked. "Gods, Tindra, I love you so much it terrifies me."

Down the hall, a door bangs, and boots hit the floor, and we break apart in a scramble of dropped clothes and slamming hearts, and she slips out the back into the night before whoever it is rounds the corner.