Page 321 of Coal Hearts

He was vulnerable—pretty much as defenceless as a man could get, yet...it was his gaze that ensnared me.

Cold but unguarded.

Distrustful but hopeful.

Angry and brutal and full of sadistic power but beneath all of that...lonely.

Even now.

Lonely.

I wasn’t his greatest weakness.

It was that.

The two L words.

Love and loneliness.

Two intangible, important things that had the power to destroy him...if only I knew how to wield them.

“Ily...” he breathed as I dropped my lips to his crown. He smelled of sparkling fresh water from his swim and earthy with lust.

I let that lust fill me with newfound hope.

I tucked away the knowledge of what my name truly meant and what he said to me each time he used it.

He wanted a wife who could patch up that loneliness and make him whole?

Well then...

My mouth enveloped his cock.

He jerked as if I’d electrified him.

His hands came up to gather my hair, fisting it in a ponytail so he could watch.

My scalp tingled.

My ass stung.

One delivered with cruelty, the other with caresses.

He was a paradox.

An enigma.

I swallowed him as deep as I could manage.

I’d never liked giving blowjobs.

Even when Samuel and I were happy, it’d been something I did for him, not for me.

But this?

As Henri jolted and groaned, utterly transfixed as my head bobbed up and down and my hand corkscrewed around his length, I felt the first flutterings of power.

True power.