ARWEN WALKED OVER TO THE BED, SHOCKING ME—A MAN RARELY

surprised, if ever—by climbing onto the mattress and folding her legs underneath her. “Can I stay with you for a while?”

I squinted at her in the darkness. “Are you feeling well?” A small laugh. “I just can’t sleep.”

“If this is about . . . I’m sorry. For lashing out at you after—”

“Don’t be.” She wrapped the robe tighter around herself. “I shouldn’t have let him kiss me in the first place. Fedrik and I are just friends.”

“I meant what I said before, though. If it makes you happy, then that’s what I want for you.” A depressing thought blared through my mind, and I added, “But if this is . . . I’m afraid I can’t help you self-sabotage. Can’t give you another reason to hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.” She sighed through her nose. “And there’s nothing with Fedrik to sabotage. You’re so fixated on him.”

Then why . . . Oh.

Oh.

I was an idiot. I had done this my entire life, and yet somehow didn’t recognize Arwen’s need for release. A distraction from the horrors of her own mind. A quieting of the constant roar.

Cautiously, I lifted the cotton sheets up for her, like offering a sugar to a wild horse. More of an invitation than a challenge, but she still took in the open sliver of bed for an extended beat.

In the end, she crawled forward and slipped underneath with a shaky exhale.

And then Arwen was lying in my bed. Next to me.

Her body heat and honeysuckle hair overwhelming all my senses.

And in this moment—these peculiar, private witching hours, when Arwen was serene and soft, and starlit, her placid eyes appraising mine— her beauty was merciless. It was . . . beyond anything I could comprehend. After all these months and months of wanting her, the tether tied around my resolve had frayed to dust.

Relax, I told myself.

Still, my heart hammered, a near-fearsome pace against my ribs.

Perhaps she wants to flirt. To cuddle. To feel something, but she isn’t even sure what yet. Do not think about her body directly beside you. Barely covered by such thin silk. Her hair still a little damp from bathing—Gods, do not think about her bathing. About licking her sudsy wet breasts, sucking at the gentle skin of her neck, her smooth inner thighs . . .

My breathing had become rushed and shallow. I’d just test her out. Give her morsels and see what she did with them. Let her set the pace.

“Actually, bird,” I said, my voice now something lower, rougher, “it’s you I’ve been fixated on. Specifically, what’s beneath that little silk dress of yours.”

I braced for that fierce, scrunched nose. That preloaded insult—

But Arwen didn’t so much as scoff, and the silence warped into something charged and hungry around us. The room, bare of candlelight, was illuminated only by the nearly full moon beyond the lone windowsill. Arwen’s chest was rising and falling almost as fast as my own in a pool of watery moonlight.

The muscles in my lower stomach clenched. “Arwen, what did you come in here for?”

Her hesitant gaze, now fixed on the beams of the ceiling, was almost enough to stop me right there.

See, you’ve already gone too far. Pushed her too much. You’re deplorable. Out of control.

Arwen shifted, staying silent, biting that full, plump lip— “Ask me for it,” I nearly ground out.

Tell me to stop, or I won’t be able to. They’ll have to pry me from you. Arwen’s breath hitched. Finally, she said, “What are you offering?” “To have you moaning for me like a woman possessed.”

Her legs pinched together at my words. “And how might you do that?” “Let me taste you, and you’ll find out.”

“Fine,” she breathed, restless eyes finally landing on my own. “Kiss me, then.”

My fingers nearly ripped through the thin sheets surrounding us. “That’s not what I mean.”

Her brows pinched inward before rising in realization.

This was a mistake. I knew it was. Even though she was asking me to take her, she was vulnerable and acting out. If I was stronger—not so fucking useless around this woman—I would stand up and leave the room. Perhaps this manor entirely. The city. I’d need to put thousands of miles between us to keep myself from her. I’d walk and walk and never look back.

But I wasn’t stronger. I was weak. “Do you trust me?”

After everything, all I had done to her, it was the only question that mattered.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Always.” I could have devoured her.

Instead, I inched closer, slower than I thought my muscles could allow, hearing her breath suck in, brushing one stray hair from the spot where her slender neck met her shoulder and palming her hip through that slight, near- liquid silk. Like paper. I could have sheared it. Could already be feeling the white-hot heat of her body against my palm. But I didn’t want to scare her. And if she knew the things I wanted from her. The things I wanted to give . . . She would be scared.

I was scared.

Grunting quietly without meaning to, I brought my lips down to her breasts, her stomach, mouthing her through the thin material.

And I was hard.

Already unbearably hard, just being this close. The tie at her slender waist fell away with my hand, and I spread the robe open, exposing the short nightdress underneath.

“These little dresses of yours drive me fucking crazy,” I groaned, my mouth against her stomach, careful to avoid her healing injuries. Lifting up the satin, like unwrapping a gift, exposed her smooth thighs and . . . and the dainty white lace between them.

“Fuck.”

Arwen laughed breathlessly, her delicate fingers now in my hair, at my brow. “And you say I have a mouth like a sailor.”

I licked the skin of her thighs. Cream and honey. Like dessert.

I wasn’t going to make it through this—every inch of her was dizzying. Her hands gentle in my hair, scraping lightly along my scalp. Her breath hitching when I cupped her round ass in my hands to drag her closer. The memories that swamped me as I sucked indulgently, indolently, on her hip bone: Her too-loud laugh when she was genuinely, truly amused. How her yawns rewarded me with that dopey, satiated expression I sometimes dreamt of. The way her eyes grew dark and determined when she ran—fast and precise and graceful.

Arwen’s thighs fell open and a sigh slipped from her lips. She wanted

this.

I licked across her smooth lower stomach, just above that slip of fabric still covering her. Accepting her invitation, that silent ask for more. She twitched as my tongue skated over her skin.

Wrapping my hands around her hips, I pulled the undergarment down to her ankles and off, hearing the fine lace tear from the force of my grasp.

Arwen’s long hair was loose against the pillows, her white ribbon having come undone, her cheeks flushed, her wet lips parted . . . And those green eyes, as she held my gaze without a blink . . . such trust—

That look. I knew it was that look alone that had ruined me.

But then my eyes fell to her legs—casually, comfortably open. Relaxed. Wanting. And between them—wet and slick, pink and glistening and perfect.

My cock pulsed painfully. Near unbearable. Gods have mercy.

I tossed the lace to the floor and wrapped my hands back around her ass, bringing my mouth down to the inside of her thigh, right beside her warm center. Arwen squirmed and clawed at me, making my cock twitch again.

She was going to have to hold still. I splayed a hand across her stomach and pinned her down to drag my tongue across her without interruption. Arwen bucked, moaning, and I nearly came apart myself.

“You taste like my dreams.”

She mumbled something incoherent, and I laughed into her, making her writhe again.

I kissed against slick, sensitive skin, exploring every inch of her, drinking in her heat and honeyed scent. Every sigh, every arch of her hips, every time her fingers reached feverishly—I would taste her like this for hours. Days. Weeks. I would never feel full of her. I would always, always need more.

I ran a single finger through her soft, wet center and groaned in satisfaction. She was drenched. Pooling at her entrance, dripping down the inside of her own thighs. So wet that I knew she was aching. That she couldn’t bear much more.

It was enough to pull all the air from my lungs as I stroked my finger back and forth in her wetness, my tongue dragging over her but never that bud, that sensitive peak—teasing, taunting her, losing myself until she was practically panting.

She mewled plaintively.

The sound turned my limbs boneless. “Is there something you want?”

“Please,” she begged as I dipped my tongue inside of her this time. “Kane,” she said in a choked whisper.

When I finally pressed my tongue to the spot she’d been pleading for, she breathed out in a rush and dug her nails into my shoulders.

She tasted so sweet, her little noises so desperate, that as I slipped my finger inside her and felt her walls clench around me, I had to shift to relieve pressure from my cock against the bed. But she was wanton and breathless and gripping me wildly, squirming as I thrust my finger in time with my tongue, flicking back and forth across that spot at the apex of her thighs.

She began to tense and stiffen, at the precipice of her release, so I withdrew to kiss along her swollen lips lightly, running my fingers up her sides to graze the swell of her breasts.

Perfect. All of her. Too perfect to be real.

Arwen arched and let out a frustrated little whimper. “Kane.” Like she couldn’t bear another moment. Like this was agony.

I understood. I wanted her release almost as badly as she did. Had wanted to feel her come apart on my tongue and fingers since nearly the moment I met her.

I traced my tongue across her once more, lingering on that spot at the apex, but never staying for long. I could barely think past this very, present moment—what she was allowing me to do to her. What she wanted from me. The only other thought, like some far-off call in the distance, was the knowledge that soon I would stroke myself only to this single memory. The memory of tasting her soft skin, hearing her little hums of pleasure. The knowledge that nothing would ever feel as good as being trusted by her, and indulging in her like this.

When I peered up, Arwen’s eyes were screwed shut, her chest heaving with uneven breaths, her hands fisted, one in the sheets and one in my hair. When I swirled my tongue against her, she let out a low hiss.

“Open your eyes,” I murmured to her.

She sat up on her elbows, pupils huge and dark, breath panting out of her.

“Look what you’re doing to me.” I reached into my breaches to grip my cock, swollen and heavy, before licking long and slow up her center.

“Oh, Stones,” she hummed, throwing her head back, and I grasped myself harder at the sound of her voice.

When I sucked on the little bud, she cried out and squirmed almost violently. Letting go of my shaft, I ran my finger once more through her wetness before pushing inside. Pumping until my hand was drenched.

“More?” The grit in my voice made me sound like I had been choked. “Kane, please.”

I drove another digit inside, giving her time to stretch and pitch around the intrusion, stroking my fingers in and out, cupping them up toward her innermost wall. She writhed and keened against my mouth and fingers until I was forced to hold her down against the bed.

More suction, more pressure until—

Tensing, she cried out as she reached her peak. I thrust into her over and over and over, holding her open and sucking and licking through each pulse and contraction.

Once she was shivering with aftershocks, I stood from the bed to find the lace undergarment I had tossed away in my lust-addled fervor. “Here,” I said, voice gravelly even to my own ears. “Sorry I ripped them. I’ll buy you a hundred more.”

She assessed me, limp and dazed. “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” I could barely think past the pulsing, thrumming, liquid-hot need in my groin. It was impressive, frankly, that I was still standing upright.

She sat up, hair tangled like I had never seen it, before her bright, playful eyes fell to my tented breeches. “I think it’s your turn.”

My cock was harder than it had been in nearly two hundred years of living. My balls aching and heavy, and the woman I would kill for, would die for, was offering to make me come.

And I was the half-wit who said, “Don’t worry about me.” I really did need my head looked at.

“Why not?”

“Let’s call it an abundance of caution. Otherwise, trust me, I’d beg you for it.”

She frowned, sleepy and satiated, and my heart cracked open. “King Kane Ravenwood, begging me to touch him. That’s a sight I’d love to see.”

She really didn’t get it. I was moments away from getting to my knees and begging her to touch me every minute of every hour of every damn day.

She might have said more, but a yawn overtook her.

And I—I was learning a new, painful lesson. Not too old, then, I guessed, for that.

I wasn’t as strong as I had once thought. Or, I just wasn’t strong enough. To have her, but not have her. Not wholly. Or perhaps I was just too selfish. I wanted her too much.

Still, that knowledge didn’t stop me from climbing into the bed and smelling her sweet, honeysuckle hair as she tangled into me. Listening to her breathing become relaxed and steady, her head tucked underneath my chin, her heart beating in time on top of mine.

I had been right—I wouldn’t sleep tonight.

I wasn’t going to miss a single second of what it felt like to hold Arwen in my arms.