Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138169 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138169 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Anger flares, quicker than an asthma attack.
“Because you think I’m fragile?” My eyes slit. “You think I can’t handle this.”
“What? No, I—”
“I don’t want to hear it!” I snap. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand that even Micah Ainsley sees me as this broken little girl who can’t do anything, who has to be sheltered for her own good. I shove at him, scowling. “I can handle the Jacobins. I can handle Xavier flipping Arrendell. What I can’t handle is you patronizing me—”
The only warning I get is Micah’s lips thinning.
His eyes flashing.
His feral grip on my arms.
Then he seizes my mouth and shuts me up with one brutal kiss.
For a single breath, I freeze.
I don’t know how to process what’s happening.
I remember his lips on mine that day in the square, remember how my mouth tingled, but it was nothing like this.
Nothing like this force of a man’s naked desire, all fire, his mouth hot and firm on mine, coaxing my lips apart.
The heat sears me in the space of one breath.
I’m melting.
My entire body turns into hot honey, leaving me clutching him to keep standing as I stretch on my toes and lean into him.
I’m so greedy it scares me, taking that kiss I’ve wanted for what feels like a lifetime, as his tongue flicks against my mouth.
Holy shit!
When I was a girl, I used to daydream about falling in love. In those dreams, kissing was always this nebulous thing with a vague sense of forbidden pleasure, but the reality?
Pure inferno.
And Micah baptizes me with flames, dragging me in roughly, growling heat into my mouth.
I’m deliciously crushed against his body until I feel every inch of him.
I’m too aware of him, from the hot texture of his lips to the wetness of our mouths gliding together to the roughness of his tongue.
His powerful height.
His arm, as hard as steel across my back.
His fingers, strong and controlling as they fist my hair.
My head falls back in surrender.
There’s a demand in the way he seeks deep inside me with slow taunts, sweet plunging caresses, searching strokes.
God.
I’m about to spontaneously combust.
“Micah,” I moan against his lips, and he groans.
There’s a faint clatter past the haze of my perception—my inhaler hitting the floor, I think—and suddenly Micah’s fingers touch the small of my back with nothing between us.
His palm feels so hot it’s like I’m already naked. Even my shirt can’t buffer the burn of his touch.
“Say it again. Say my name again, Talia, and I can’t turn back,” he breathes raggedly.
The thought of what can’t turn back means hits like a lightning bolt.
I curl my hands against his arms, pulling back enough to look up at him, breathing so hard I’m shaking.
Yet instead of my lungs hurting, it feels good, this sweet rush electrifying nerves I never knew I had.
“So don’t?” I whisper. “Do whatever you want with me.”
He stares at me with his eyes boiling, all liquid mercury. “Talia, you don’t want to be with me.”
“You don’t get to decide what I want.” I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m being reckless, being wild, and I don’t care.
I lean into him, pressing my body to his, shivering as I savor his hard muscle molding against me.
“Talia—fuck!” His cock grazes my leg through his pants.
I almost die right there.
“You… you only get to tell me what you want,” I whisper. “Do you want to be with me? Would you regret it?”
Micah searches my face.
I wish I could read him more easily.
There’s something there.
Something vulnerable behind the wolfish hunger.
Something almost afraid yet so brave and certain.
“I thought you were shy,” he rasps.
“I am.” I smile shakily but don’t pull away. “Honestly, I’m scared out of my wits, but I still want it. I want you. Even if it means getting hurt when you say no.”
“I don’t fucking want to say no.” His voice comes even rougher than his touch when he presses the pad of his thumb to my lower lip, his gaze fused to my mouth. “But, woman, I don’t want you to regret saying yes. I’m no good for you—no fucking good for anybody—and I don’t want you figuring that out after I’ve hurt you.”
I swallow thickly.
“You’ve been nothing but good. Micah. I wish you could see it…”
He strokes his thumb to the corner of my mouth and his lips curl faintly. “And how do you see me?”
No words.
I don’t have words to tell him how every time I see him, my world gets just a little bit brighter.
How I feel alive.
How protected I feel, how I trust him to watch over me, to shelter me.
How I know that no matter how he struggles, he’s guided by a moral compass made of steel, a righteous sense of justice so strong it could drive him to do terrible things for the innocent.