Her lips tingled, the memory of the last time she’d asked him for a kiss throbbing between them. She knew if she asked this time, it would change things. They had gone for months without seeing each other, without speaking to each other, living their lives. He had no right to come barging into hers, only to walk away as he pleased. She wouldn’t let herself be a pushover, not for the whim of a man, even if he was the one for her.
Taking a step away from him, Amara threw off her jacket, her temperature too hot. “You don’t have the right to demand anything, Dante. I’m not yours. You gave me up, remember?”
He was in her space before she had spoken the last word, his hands spearing into her hair, tilting her face up, his mouth breaths away from hers.
“You and I, Amara, we will never be anyone else’s,” he murmured, his words ghosting over her lips. “We could fuck a hundred other people but this, this will never go away. Do you feel it pulsing between us?”
Her heart was thundering by the time he finished speaking, his chest an inch away from her heaving breasts. She did feel it, much stronger than it had ever been before. Amara looked up at his lips, the mouth she had tasted on hers in so many different ways, just a command away.
“Are you going to fight for us?” she whispered, the wound of his words still bleeding in her chest.
“I am, Amara,” he told her, his eyes burning, taking in her face. “But I can’t give you more than that right now. I tried staying away, letting you live your life. Fuck, I’ve tried-” he pressed his forehead to hers. “I can’t, Amara. You’re the beat to my fucking heart.”
And he was hers.
Amara felt her eyes burning, remembering the feeling of love and safety she’d felt him, the deep pain of loneliness that had become her constant over the last few months, her nose twitching.
She believed him. For whatever reason, her heart had known even when breaking that he’d not done it out of disregard. And watching him, the anguish on his face, she believed him.
But she didn’t know if this meant anything, or what tomorrow would bring. But she knew she wanted him, wanted everything with this man.
Swallowing down her nerves, her face still cupped in his large, warm palms, Amara stood up on her toes, her nose brushing hers, and spoke the words out.
“Kiss me.”
His lips crashed on hers before she had finished speaking, swallowing the last of her word.
Finally.
Her body trembled.
Amara stretched higher on her toes, the pressure of his mouth making a shiver run down her spine. He tilted her head to the side, slashing his lips more firmly across hers, and licked at the seams of her closed mouth, the taste of him – smoke and wine and him – filling the gnawing hunger inside her. She felt her lips part on a soft moan, and he took the invitation, swooping in, tangling his tongue with hers.
Dante’s kiss was fire through her veins, not the kind that burned her down to cinders and ashes, but the kind that warmed her from the inside out in places she hadn’t known she’d been cold and shivering. It lit up the corners in her being that had been shrouded in darkness, forcing everything malefic to the shadows as she basked in the warmth.
He guided her mouth and she followed, this dance of a different kind, one they’d danced so many times before.
He pulled back, and she opened her eyes, taking in his lips, painted the shade of hers, wet from her mouth. It sent a tendril of something possessive dispersing inside her, watching him wear the evidence of herself on his flesh. She wanted him to be marked with her, just as he had marked her on the inside.
He moved his thumb over her lips, the touch rough.
Before she knew what she was doing, she opened her mouth and sucked it in.
His eyes darkened. “You need to stop if you don’t want to be fucked, Amara.”
Heat snaked inside her body, coiling low in her belly, melting her insides.
She wanted to be fucked. She wanted to be fucked by him. But she didn’t want to panic in the middle of it.
She bit down on his thumb, keeping her eyes steady on his. “Go slow, please.”
His eyes flared and suddenly, she was flat on her back on the bed, her legs dangling over the edge, Dante kneeling between them, his gaze on hers, his mouth a heartbeat away from her panties.
“Do you want me to stop?”
She shook her head mutely, her heart hammering in a way that sent wetness pooling between her legs.
He took a hold of her panties, pulling them down her legs and throwing them on the bed, his fingers finding her folds. “Fuck, you’re drenched.”