Page 25 of Burned

Then his hand tightens slightly in my hair. “But you still crossed the boundary.”

His mouth closes over mine before I can argue.

Heat drops to me so fast my knees nearly forget their job and buckle beneath me. He kisses me slowly, taking me inch by inch like he has all the time in the world to prove his point. He owns me, and I’ll let him do anything he wants.

His hand slides from my neck to my waist, fingers digging in just enough to make my body arch toward him. I make a sound I would deny in court, and he catches it with his mouth.

I love that he knows exactly how rough I need it. His other hand comes to my hip, turning me, guiding me down until the backs of my knees hit the edge of the bed.

“She won’t come between us.” His voice is certain. His eyes tell another story.

I lift my chin. “Prove it.”

Then Lucian drops to his knees in front of me.

My breath stops.

The sight of him there — this man feared by everyone, this man who commands rooms and ruins lives with a word — kneeling at my feet with firelight over his scars and possession in his eyes, does something catastrophic to my insides.

“Hands on my shoulders,” he says. I obey before thinking.

His gaze flicks up. The corner of his mouth curves. “Good girl.”

The praise hits low and hot. My fingers dig into his shoulders. One hand wraps around the back of my calf, thumb stroking a slow line that makes my breath uneven.

His hand tightens on my calf. “Eyes on me.”

I look at him.

“I won’t punish you for being hurt,” he says.

My chest tightens. “But?”

His gaze holds mine. “But I will punish you for risking yourself because of it.”

My pulse trips. My dark place. My terrible shelter. The things I let him do to me that other women would find unthinkable.

The man who makes sin feel like safety.

“What about you?” I whisper. “Who punishes you?”

His hand slides higher, over my knee, up the outside of my thigh.

“You do.”

The answer is too honest.

“Every time you step outside the safety of my control. Every time I think I’ve lost you. Every time I feel the doubt that creeps in on you because of the way we met that first night.”

Before I can find words, he leans in and presses his mouth to the inside of my thigh.

I jolt.

His hand grips my hip, holding me steady. “Lucian.”

“Still angry?”

“Yes.”