Chapter Eleven
Carter Thorne is kissing me.
Holding me.
Touching me.
He’s finally,finallytouching me, and I can breathe again for the first time in weeks. He’s touching me, and my whole world starts spinning again.
I didn’t even realize it had stopped.
His hands delve into my hair as his tongue slides into my mouth. I have no conscious awareness of moving, but suddenly my back is pressed against one of the stone turret walls and he’s pressed up against me, bringing our bodies flush together. I loop my hands around his back to pull him closer, as close as physically possible, desperate to feel the heat of his chiseled body on mine.
His hands fist in my hair, yanking my head back for better access to my mouth. This kiss is hard, hot, demanding. Less a kiss than the staking of a claim, long overdue. I’m being possessed, owned, taken over one tongue-stroke at a time, and I don’t object. If anything, I spur him on.
My hands slide beneath his thick sweater, seeking bare skin and smooth muscle. I skim my fingers up the strong planes of his back, reveling in the way he shudders when he feels my touch.
Maybe I’m claiming him, too.
For a long, long while, we get lost in each other — forgetting where we are, forgettingwhowe are. We are one intertwined tangle of limbs. We are roaming hands and devouring mouths, completely caught up in a stolen moment. Not paying attention to the passage of time or the freezing temperature or the fact that what we’re doing here is probably the worst idea in the history of mankind.
My shaky hands eventually find their way around to Carter’s front side, tracing the indentations of his washboard abs, toying with the elastic waist of his sweatpants, following the trail of hair I find there down, down, down, until I’m inching beneath the fabric. When he processes where I’m headed, Carter jerks abruptly away, tearing his mouth from mine in the process.
My arms fall to my sides and my brows skyrocket. “What’s wrong? Why did you stop?”
He stares at me with swollen lips, his eyes bright with lust. His breaths are ragged. I can see how much he wants me — hell, I couldfeelhow much he wants me from my cursory graze of his sweatpants. So I know how much it’s killing him to pull away, right now. He’s not the only one; it’s killing me, too.
I don’t know why he’s stopped. If I’m being totally honest, I’m desperate enough not to care.
“Kiss me,” I plead, arching my face toward his. But he doesn’t. Instead, with a groan, he drops his head into the crook of my neck. His rapid exhales are hot against my skin.
“Carter? What’s wrong?”
“We have to slow down a bit.”
“But I don’t want to slow down.”
I want to keep going until I forget all the reasons we’re supposed to stay away from each other. Until I forget all the disastrous repercussions of the last time we caved in to this same impulse, in a moonlit greenhouse on a dark autumn evening…
“Christ, Emilia.” He laughs, but the sound is pained. “You’re killing me.”
“You’ll feel better if you kiss me, I swear…”
He lifts his head to meet my eyes. And for the first time, beneath the lust, I see something else. Something more than just physical chemistry or sexual attraction. Something deeply serious.
Seeing it there makes the breath catch in my throat.
Seeing it there scares me half to death.
Carter’s forehead comes down to rest against mine, so we’re eye to eye, nose to nose.
“The last time we did this, we did it wrong,” he murmurs, so close I can feel each word on my lips. “This time, I don’t want us to mess it up.”
My shoulders tense. “Carter—”
“I’m not going to risk this by rushing it with sex again. It’s too important.” He pauses. “You’re too important.”
My heart squeezes painfully inside my chest. I can feel my blood pressure spiking with each doomed word he says. Tears start leaking from the corners of my eyes, and I know he can feel them wet against his cheeks.