guttural groan scrapes my raw throat. She arches in my embrace, the back of her head colliding with my chest. As if hoping I’ll crack under the pressure, she slips her palm over the back of my hand, intent on bringing me back to her clit.
The frayed edges of my control hold strong.
With my left arm banded across her chest like a barbed-wire fence, I drag my teeth over the curve of her shoulder and shift my hand to grip the flesh of her inner thigh. “Another wish,” I growl.
“To love,” comes her husky voice, “and be loved.”
Yes.
My body moves before my brain even registers the motion. Molars grinding against the pain, I lower us to the stone floor. My hands drag her shirt above her head, exposing the healing skin along her collarbone and stomach. Cheeks flushing, she lifts a hand to cover the blisters over her belly, but I intercept her quickly.
“You’ve lived when the w-world expected you to fail,” I husk, sitting back on my heels to pull her joggers down the length of her legs. “You’ve stood tall when a weaker soul would have crept back into the shadows. Every scar you bear is a battle that you’ve fought and won. Wear them proudly and apologize for nothing.”
“I choose you, Damien Godwin.” Her smile is slow and sweet and so fucking beautiful that I feel it like a fist clamping tight around my heart. “I choose you today,” she says, sitting up to help me ditch my trousers, “and I choose you tomorrow, and I choose you for all the days that come after.”
Her vow is all I need to settle myself between her legs, bring my mouth down on hers, and thrust deep inside her.
We groan together.
Letting my head hang over hers, I move my hips in a slow and easy rhythm that drives her chin north as a breathy whimper crosses her lips. “I wanted to live,” I rasp, fisting my hand above her head as I hold her gaze, “but never could I have predicted you.”
“Damien—”
“I wanted happiness and you drove away the darkness.”
With every forward drive, I angle my cock to glide against her clit. She cries out beneath me, her breasts brushing my bare chest, her lids fluttering shut at the sensation of me bare within her. Intent on fanning the flames that have turned her skin a rosy pink, I tilt my hips upward and thrust, hard.
Her nails claw ruthlessly down my spine.
Then she wraps a leg around my waist, securing me to her, and I fall even deeper.
I set the pace to the rhythm of her moans. With every rasped pant that leaves her, I grit my teeth and plunge forward like I’ll never have her again. And when she sinks her nails into my ass, her lips parting on my name, I slow it all down to a tortuous, sensual grind. I make her writhe beneath me and I make her cry out, and she is so fucking beautiful that it almost hurts to look at her. Only I do, letting my gaze mark the brightness in her gaze and the way she bites down on her lower lip to keep from screaming.
This woman owns me, heart and soul.
“Please,” she begs, bowing her back and raking her foot down the length of my left calf, “give me another wish.”
I shield her body with my own. “Tell me.”
Her violet eyes are soft and hopeful and so damned perceptive that I feel stripped down. “Never let me go,” she whispers, “please just never let me go.”
“Love is carnage.” The words are rasped against her lips but felt to the depth of my marrow. “Love is ruin. And I’m yours through the wreckage.”
She gasps, nails digging into my sides, and I feel her tighten around my cock.
As I promised, I don’t let go.
I hold her as she comes with a cry, and I drive in deep, head thrown back, as my own orgasm tears through me. I hold her as I draw her limp body over mine, the sunshine dancing across our naked skin. And I hold her as I bring my mouth to her ear and kiss the hollow of her throat.
Her fingers ease over Odin’s raven with soft reverence. Then, quietly, “I love you forevermore.”
I meet her gaze while I catch her wrist.
I give her a smile, one that’s true and pure, when I press a kiss to the center of her palm.
And then I roll myself back on