Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,86

who ought to take one look at me and run the other way. The woman who’s rapidly destroying what’s left of my tattered heart.

She asked me to burn with her and I’m going to do just that. Nothing held back. No desire left untended. Either we survive this together or not at all.

I twist around, reaching for the hem of my shirt to pull it over my head. The material lands on the floor, abandoned. Forgotten. I’m already rounding the sofa, my gaze latching onto Isla’s, as though we’ve always been fated to land here in this crossroads together.

The devil in disguise.

A fallen angel with broken wings.

The two of us—ruined, untamed, and desperate to feel alive.

I sit on the sofa, spread my legs wide, and cut my gaze to hers. “Come here.”

She doesn’t need to be told twice. With an elegant sweep of her feet onto the carpet, she approaches. Her fingers dance along the collar of her shirt, contemplation furrowing her brows as she visually traces my naked chest for the first time. The raised scars she felt beneath her fingers. The tattoo over my left shoulder: inked swirls of blue and green, abstract in perception—a maze of my own life, with no way to escape. Stuck. Cornered. Saxon Godwin never made his way out.

Licking her lips, as though she’s desperate for a taste, Isla drops to her knees before me at the same time that she draws the shirt over her head and throws it aside, exposing small breasts and dusky-rose nipples that beg to be worshipped.

Perfection. Fucking perfection.

Her hands land on my thighs.

“No,” I grunt, gripping her upper arm, “not there.”

Head jerking up, her mouth parts. “No? I thought—”

“I made you a promise.” Still holding her, I pull her off the floor. Frame her hips with my hands and turn her around, so that her ass is all I see. And that fading handprint. Christ, knowing that I’ve marked her—however temporarily—calls to something inside me that I’ve never allowed to crest the surface.

Possession.

Hope.

Right now, Isla Quinn belongs only to me. Mine to pleasure, mine to take, and mine to ruin.

Manhunt be damned. Holyrood be damned. The queen be fucking damned.

Keeping my legs spread, I drag her onto my lap. A small gasp flies from her mouth when her rear collides with my rock-hard erection, but I don’t let her get comfortable. Sweeping my hands down the length of her smooth legs, I tug them sharply outward, so that she’s forced to loop them over the backs of mine.

She’s splayed wide, vulnerable.

Just the way I want her.

“Saxon?” comes her hesitant whisper.

“Fulfilling my promise,” I return, just as softly, while circling her wrists with my fingers and tugging her arms backward. I crisscross her wrists behind her, at the base of her spine. I can only imagine the visual that she must paint—breasts thrust out, lean body arching, her clit throbbing while her legs tremble atop mine. I keep one hand fisted around her wrists, restraining her, while brushing the other along the outer swell of her breast. “To own every one of your cries. To steal the taste of you right off your cunt. To make you remember who it is that does this to you.”

My fingers make direct contact with her peaked nipple, pinching the sensitive nub, and she moans, low and throaty. Squirming in my lap, she yanks at my ironclad hold. I drop my mouth to her shoulder blade. “You can’t run, Isla. Not until I’m done with you.”

Her answering whimper emboldens me.

This is the first time a woman has ever begged for my touch and I’ll be damned if I rush the moment. No. I plan to sample every bit of her, to memorize what makes her grind her hips, seeking my cock. What makes her scream and come back for more. And then, masochist that I am, I’ll do it all over again.

She’s made an addict out of me.

Flicking her nipple one last time, I flatten my hand and skim the length of her stomach. I follow the shallow grooves of her abdominal muscles then the curved flare of her waist. Her desperate gasp is my only soundtrack when I bypass her pussy and trail my fingers down the inner slope of her thigh instead.

I smirk against her back when she releases a frustrated groan, her muscles flexing within my grasp.

“Isn’t this what you craved?” I murmur, tracing my fingers up, up, up, so close to where we both want them, before veering