Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,164

a stream. Up ahead, a Palladian building with a domed roof and ornate columns dominates the landscape. A flash of navy catches my eye, and I spot Rowena disappearing around the backend of the old temple.

There you are.

I chase her with slow, measured steps.

Stalk her with hope in my blood and love in my heart.

She, the she-wolf. She, the phoenix rising.

A woman no longer broken or ruined but still mine.

I find her tucked away behind the temple with one arm slung casually around a stone column, her body facing a thick grove of trees that separates Holly Village from its neighbors. She doesn’t turn at the sound of my approach and I take full advantage, bringing my hands to her hips and my lips to the back of her neck.

An involuntary shiver ripples down her spine.

“Looks like you’ve nowhere to run,” I murmur against her skin, my voice dredged in gravel, “and no one to come and s-save you.”

Rowena’s head falls forward with a small sigh, and the arm she’s loosely wrapped around the column becomes a firm hand that she plants against its grooved surface. Then her ass thrusts backward, right into my groin, and a smothered hiss hits the back of my clenched teeth. That cunning smile flashes when she peers back at me over one shoulder. “I don’t know, Damien, maybe I intend to let the world hear me scream.”

My cock hardens.

Pulse races.

“Maybe,” I allow, slipping my hand over her throat as I guide her backward to my chest, “I’ll find a way to keep that pretty mouth of yours full.”

Her hands clutch my forearm, nails unforgiving talons, even as her head tilts to the left in open invitation. “Back to being the B-grade villain again, are we?”

“Would you h-have it any other way?”

“No,” she breathes, as my lips hit the slope of her shoulder, “no, I’ll have you just as you are—oh, God, Damien.”

I spin her around, clasping her wrists in one hand, and press them to the column above her head. Her back hits stone. My heart pounds ruthlessly against my ribcage, the sound so loud in my ears that it drowns out the birds and the quiet lapping of a nearby stream. In this tiny corner of London, there is no war or death or bloodshed.

There is only us.

Only this.

“A wish, love,” I manage, fighting both the pain in my thigh and the grip on my vocal cords, “make a wish.”

Understanding dawns in her expression. Her chest expands with a sharp, sudden inhale, and her hands strain against my inflexible grip. A moment later, she bites down on her bottom lip and I nearly come undone. The pressure leaves her mouth pink, swollen. Then, softly, “I want you to kiss me.”

“Close your eyes.”

Rowena’s lids flutter shut obediently. Her chin notches north, lips pursed in expectation. But I don’t submit to the request. Instead, I trace my fingers over the delicate lines of her face, the way she did to me at the Palace. She ruined me that night. Showed me all the ways a man harboring so much hate, so much rage, could bend to the will of a gentle touch.

I don’t want her to bend. I only want her to feel as I did then.

Wanted. Craved. Treasured.

She squirms in my grip, her breath coming faster against my throat with every pass of my fingers over her soft skin. I dance them down over the slope of her nose, follow the natural hollow of her cheekbones. When I skim my fingers along her jawline, her lips part and her fragile eyelids tremble.

She’s beautiful. Otherworldly.

A woman who has fought for life, both mine and her own, and survived to show the world that she will never kneel at their feet. A queen, even if she wears no crown. Awe for her gathers as a knot in my throat. Deliberately, I let my thumb pause over her full mouth. Deliberately, I tug down on the plump flesh.

Her breath catches.

Pupils remain dilated when her lids slide open, the violet irises nearly swallowed by black. She whispers my name, her voice low and husky, and a sweep of color stains her cheeks pink with lust, love, the same desperate, damnable need that’s driven me to the brink of madness ever since she fell into my life.

“Tell me again.”

“Kiss me,” she begs, touching her tongue to the rough pad of my thumb, “please just kiss—”

I seal my mouth over hers.

Any hope I had of restraint, of maintaining some semblance