Page 48 of The Steel Rogue

“I thought you were unconscious.”

“I wasn’t. I could only see out of one eye for the beating I took that day, and at that, barely.” His look drifted off of her to the windows as he paused. He had to force his gaze back to her. “But your eyes. The girl with the golden green eyes telling me to rot in hell. I dream that on most nights. Your voice. The gold sparks in your eyes sharpened with so much hatred they struck more viciously than the hardest blow of a sword. ‘Rot in hell, you bastard.’ Those words—your voice—a constant echo in my head. The loathing in them. I’ve never been able to escape the sound—how you looked at me. Like you knew everything I was inside—every demon and every deed that had stained me for all of time.”

She exhaled, her shoulders dropping, her body curling up on itself as her gaze fell to the floor between them.

With a heave of a breath, her shoulders pulled back, her face lifting and her look cutting into him. “I meant the words at the time. Make no mistake.”

“I never did.”

“But now…” She let the sheet in front of her drop and she moved out of the bed, dipping to the floor and crawling the short distance to him. She stopped just before him, pulling upright to balance on her knees and toes, her body long and naked in front of him. “Now I don’t mean them. Not now. You need to strike them from your mind, from your memory.”

“You know as well as I that memories define us, Tor. It’s not as easy as that.”

“It should be.” She crawled over his upturned knees, pulling open the trousers he had slid on in the middle of the night. His cock instantly alive the second she let the sheet slide off her body, the air hit it and it jutted hard into his lower abdomen.

She slid down his thighs and set her folds full along on his engorged member. “Whatever the darkness of yours is, I’ve had the same in me, Roe. And I don’t know what’s right to do here.”

Her mouth descended on his, her lips gentle at first touch and in the next instant, parting, hungry for the taste of him. She pulled up. “But I want you, Roe. Whatever it is when our bodies meet, it is right. That is the only thing I can trust right now. That this…” She lifted herself and slid her body onto his straining cock, taking him fully inside of her. She exhaled as her eyes closed, the pleasure reaching deep within her rolling across her face.

Her eyelids parted, her golden green eyes filled with nothing but raw hunger as she set her hands alongside his face. “This is right. How our bodies fit together. I don’t want this to be over—I don’t want to give this up at the altar of darkness that should be long in the past.”

All resistance leaving him, his hand moved up into her hair, dragging her down to his mouth to stave off the torture of keeping his lips, his tongue off her body.

The cool touch of her ever-freezing hands spread across his shoulders, sating the heat on his skin, the same as her body would sate the raging fire he’d discovered could only by quelled by his shaft deep in her core.

She lifted herself, sliding down long and slow on his cock.

His control nearly lost the moment she’d crawled over his lap, he steeled his chest, holding off on exploding in her.

Damn, she made it a Herculean feat. Sliding up and down, the murmurs from deep in her chest catching in her throat, her nipples brushing along his jaw, slipping into his mouth as she lifted herself to the very tip of him, then plunged downward.

His hand moved along her inner thigh, his thumb holding fast to her nubbin as she sent her body faster. Harder.

Hold. Just hold.

Her head tossed back, a scream catching in her throat as the depths of her clenched around his cock, coming and drawing him deeper into her, wave after torturous wave.

Every last vestige of control deserted him and for the life of him, he wanted her wrapped fully about him, her body drawing every bit of him into her.

Not fair.

Not fair to her. Not with who he was.

He yanked out of her just as his seed came hard and fast, a stifled yell in his chest.

She collapsed against him, her body still tensing into quivers in even intervals, the pleasure that had commandeered his body reflected in hers.

Roe buried his face along her shoulder, his breath lost in her dark hair.

He’d tried, tried to do the honorable thing.

Tried to end it when all reason and righteous virtue demanded he do so.

The darkness that sprung from him—a well that burrowed straight up from hell—was only going to destroy her. It had destroyed him long ago, made him nothing but a wretch to any woman with a light burning within her. And in those moments that she was on top of him, under him, her lips parted, gasping for air, her body vibrating in pleasure, she possessed the brightest light of all.

Light he wanted to capture, hold deep within him forever. Light he knew he didn’t deserve.

Light he knew would be taken over by his darkness.