Chapter 1
“Every breath and every heartbeat and every minute of every day was spent waiting for you,” Reyna whispered against his skin.
His perfect skin. The hard-muscled chest, the cold feel to him, the awareness of his body pressed against hers. She had waited so long for this. So very long.
“Becks,” she said. She ran her hands against his jaw and forced him to look down at her. A bottomless sea of onyx enveloped her. “Say something.”
“I love you,” he said like a prayer.
Her breath caught. She’d waited to hear that for so long. At her low points, she even tricked herself into believing Beckham had never said those words. That maybe he had never admitted to being part of the rebel group Elle. Maybe Beckham had never put all of his trust in her hands only for her to rip it away in one horrifying flight of dizzy terror.
But he had said those words. And she had run out of his penthouse after he had bitten her. And then she had been kidnapped by Visage.
This was her reality.
One she had survived with all this time.
She’d ruined everything.
But now he was here and saying those words to her. The words she’d so longed for. And she couldn’t stop herself from relishing in it.
“I love you too.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close. She wanted to feel him, solid and unmovable. To know that she couldn’t shake him—that nothing could tear him away from her again.
A tear slipped out of her eye and down her cheek. He pulled back and brushed it aside with his thumb. “Shh, Little One.”
“I can’t believe you’re really here.”
“You never have reason to doubt me.”
His thumb moved to brush across her lips as she read hot desire in his eyes. It had been so long since she’d had his hands on her. Since she’d seen that look cross his face. Her body heated from head to toe and a flush suffused her face.
She said the words she’d been dying to say: “I never should have run that night.”
“I know, but you’re here now.”
And after that there was no talking.
Beckham pushed her backward and onto the bed. It creaked beneath her slight weight and she feared that it would break entirely with the both of them. But she didn’t care.
Her heart was in her throat. Her hands reaching out for him.
He ignored her and took the threadbare dress she’d been wearing in his hands and ripped it straight down the middle. She was naked underneath save for a pair of cotton panties, but he looked at her as if she were encased in silk lingerie. And she had been once. It felt like a million years ago.
A primal growl escaped his lips at the sight of her. He shucked his black shirt to the ground and stepped out of the black slacks. He was bulging through his boxer briefs. All she wanted to do was reach out to him. To feel him inside of her again.
But Beckham was in control. She’d once quaked under his gaze and immense size. Now she was shaking for entirely different reasons.
His lips closed over her nipple, sucking it into his mouth and causing her back to arch off of the bed. His hand kneaded the other breast as his hips held her in place. His fangs grazed her nipple and she nearly fell apart right there.
The separation slid away and she was once again lost to this man.
“Becks,” she moaned as he moved to give the same treatment to her other nipple.
She was already soaking through the cotton panties. They needed to be gone. They needed to be gone now.
As if he had read her mind, his hands slipped under the material to find her already wet. A feral sound breached his lips. He took the thin fabric in his hands and yanked it down her legs.
“Please.” She wasn’t above begging. “I’ve waited so long.”
“I won’t bite you,” he said, his face sliding down between her legs. A fang nipped at the sensitive artery in her inner thigh. “But I bloody well want to.”
Did she even care if he bit her? It would be a relief after what she’d endured. A relief to feel that connection so acutely. But she wouldn’t press him this time. She remembered how they’d gotten carried away. He’d taken too much, drank too deeply, and she could have died. They needed to take it slow.
The blood. Not the sex. She needed that right now.
His finger slicked through her wetness and began to massage her clit. She vibrated from the sensation. She didn’t know if she’d be able to hold out before he was inside of her.
Then his eyes found hers again. His boxers disappeared and then his cock was in his hand. He massaged the length of himself as he watched her walk on a tightrope. Any second she was going to fall off and into oblivion. Nothing and no one had ever made her feel so good. No. No one had ever made her feel.