Page 65 of How to Kill Your Rival

I close my eyes. ‘James.’

‘I’m yours. I have been yours for a very long time, and I need to hear that you know it. Tell me you know it.’

And I know it. God, do I know it.

‘I know it,’ I say.

He presses his forehead to mine and breathes out, slow and unsteady. Eventually, he moves, and I arch with him. The world narrows down to just him and me and our combined flesh.

‘And you’re fucking mine. This is my home. Not the estate, but right here between your soaked thighs.’

The pressure builds until I’m panting. One hand lost in his hair and another on his lapel. It’s entirely possible that this moment in the library will change me permanently.

We are lost in our heated need when I hear footsteps in the corridor.

James hears them at the same moment I do, stilling for a few seconds while he assesses the situation.

But he chooses not to stop.

James shifts his angle, pressing me further back into the shadows, his body blocking the view from the still-open door. His strokes become slower and all the more devastating, his eyes locking onto mine in the dark.

The footsteps get closer.

When I hear them talking, I know it’s two of the Stewarts. Eddie’s family.

I go to say something, and James slaps his hand over my mouth.

His eyes lock on mine, and he doesn’t stop moving.

He does not stop.

The footsteps slow.

My heart is hammering so hard, I can feel it in my throat. James keeps those grey eyes on me as he fucks me so slowly, I want to scream. But I can’t. Because he’s covering my mouth.

‘—not what Evan promised,’ Callum, Eddie’s younger brother, is saying outside the alcove. I can only catch snippets.

His brother says something I don’t catch.

‘She’s running it into the ground,’ Callum says. ‘Give it a year.’

‘If she lasts that long,’ the other one snickers.

A moment passes between us, but of course, while this will pique James’ interest, he doesn’t know the truth about the Stewarts’ threats. Because if they’ve found out I turned their brother into pig food, then there’s no knowing what they’ll do.

I should tell James, really.

At some point.

Now that I can trust him. Probably not while he’s balls deep in me for the first time.

The head of his cock drags against that spot, and I make a sound against his palm that has him thrusting harder. The Stewarts continue their conversation in the corridor and have absolutely no idea that two Death Council members are railing each other metres away. God, the filthiness of what we’re doing has me on the edge, and I grind my hips further to steal friction against my clit.

The footsteps eventually continue down the corridor.

James keeps his hand over my mouth for another thirty seconds after the sound disappears, then slowly removes it. I pull in a ragged breath. And the pressure that has been building through all the jealousy, and recent weeks of teasing, and the Stewarts, and his hand, and the years of longing and denial, crests.

We come together in a sea of broken moans and ragged whimpers, our sweat-slicked skin slapping together.