Page 50 of Burned

The one where I knew I was walking on dangerous ground.

I told her she was trouble. She told me, I’d paid for trouble

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “I paid for an innocent virgin.” I smiled then. “I paid for compliance.”

She was anything but. And she told me, right to my smug face.

“Then you hired the wrong woman.”

Now, she looks at me, that same challenge in her gaze. Only now, she wants me to prove she’s the right woman.

The only woman.

“You, baby. I love you.” My hand slides to the back of her neck again. “And only you.”

“And I am yours,” she says.

There it is. All I need to get through this madness.

Her fingers tighten around the fabric of my coat. “Say it again,” she whispers.

I press my forehead to hers. “I love you, Erin. My sweet girl.”

“And when Isobel walks through that door?” she asks, so quietly the woods almost steal it.

“When Isobel walks through that door, she will find you exactly where you belong.” I grip her chin and make her look at me. “With me. By my side. In my bed.”

I kiss her again, slower this time. Deeper. Crueler because I make her wait for every breath, every touch, every inch of closeness. I let my hand slide down her side, over the soft curve of her hip, then back to her waist, holding her there against me while the cold wraps around us and my body reminds hers of every promise my mouth has made.

“Lucian,” she breathes against my mouth. I know every version of the way she says my name.

The angry one. The needy one. The one she’s saying now; the one where she wants to surrender to me.

Satisfaction moves through me, dark and hot. I lower my mouth to her throat and kiss the pulse there. Once. Twice. Then harder, enough that she feels it, enough that later she will touch the spot and remember this moment.

Not a mark for Isobel. Not a performance. A truth. She belongs to me—every beautiful, fiery inch of her.

Her head tips back against the stone. I keep one hand at her waist and the other at her jaw, holding her exactly where I want her, exactly where she lets me.

“You are not one night,” I murmur against her skin. I lift my head and look at her.

“You are the woman who brought me back.”

I kiss her one last time, hard enough to leave us both breathing hard, then pull back before I lose the last thread of my control. Call off this whole thing. And drag her up to that room.

Her lips are swollen. Her cheeks flushed. Her eyes are bright.

Mine.

The back door opens.

Mack’s voice cuts through the cold. “Car approaching.”

Erin stiffens. I smooth my thumb over her cheek.

“There she is,” I whisper.

“Isobel,” she whispers back.