Page 14 of Stealing Cinder

My second orgasm crests without warning. I shatter around him, my walls clenching tight, dragging him deeper as I cry out against his neck. He groans through gritted teeth and follows me over, his cock pulsing hot inside me as his hips jerk and still.

He collapses over me, catching his weight on one arm. His chest heaves against mine. My heart pounds so hard I can hear it over the crackle of the fire.

He rolls to his side, taking me with him, tucking me against his chest. One large hand splays across my lower back. The other pushes damp hair from my face with a tenderness that cracks a deep longing wide open inside my heart.

"Are you okay, princess?"

"Mmm. More than okay." I trace the torn-flesh tattoo along his ribs, following the ink with my fingertip. His muscles twitch under the light touch.

He shifts, gathering my hair and pushing it over one shoulder. His fingers stop on my left shoulder blade. I can feel the exact moment he finds the raven.

"What is this?"

He traces the unfurled wings, the script beneath and then he finds the falling feathers drifting down my ribs. His callused fingers caress lightly over my skin and cause goosebumps to break out across my body.

"A raven I got last year.”

His lips follow his fingers, pressing warm kisses over each falling feather.

"It's beautiful." His mouth moves against my skin as he speaks. "What does the raven mean?"

"To be wise. To let intuition guide me."

He finds the spot where the last feather curls near the curve of my waist and leaves a kiss that lingers long enough for me to close my eyes.

"And has that worked for you?"

"Not yet." I turn in his arms and lift my chin. Those dark eyes hold steady on mine, firelight catching the silver at his temples. "I'm still waiting for other people's bad choices to stop impacting my life. That’s why I had the words added. To remind me that there’s always hope."

“A dream is a wish from the heart.” He traces each letter as he reads.

His thumb grazes my cheekbone. For a long breath, neither of us speaks. Snow falls outside the large glass windows while the fire burns low.

I close my eyes and press my face against the warm wall of his chest.

I gave my body to a man whose reputation runs on violence. Scarred knuckles rest against my bare hip. His heart beats steady and strong under my ear.

The terrifying part is not the danger. It is how safe I feel in his arms.

CHAPTER 4

CINDER

My body is wrecked. Every muscle is loose and humming.

The bed shifts as Samuel eases away from me. Cold air fills the space his body leaves behind, and I shiver, pulling the sheet higher over my bare chest. He rises and my gaze follows him across the suite. The fire’s glow paints the hard planes of his back, catching the torn-flesh tattoos that travel down his ribs and lats. Every muscle rolls beneath inked skin as he walks, unhurried and completely at ease in his nakedness, to the bathroom. The water turns on, then off. Before long, he returns with a cloth, the steam curling between his fingers.

Samuel drags the cloth slowly over my tender, swollen flesh, cleaning me with the same deliberate patience he used to take me apart. He bends his head and presses his lips where the cloth just passed. The kiss is soft. Intimate in a way that tightens my throat more than everything that came before it.

I close my eyes and let my head sink deeper into the pillows. The sheets smell like him and our lovemaking. Snow still falls past floor-to-ceiling glass, fat white flakes caught in the warm glow of the dying fire. Chicago's skyline blurs beneath the weather, distant and irrelevant.

It’s the perfect cozy evening if I can only force the grief and pain to stay on the fringes for a while longer.

Samuel tosses the cloth aside and stretches out beside me, pulling me into the hard wall of his body. One arm hooks around my waist. My back settles against his chest and the heat of him is instant and utterly consuming. His chin rests on top of my head, and for a handful of breaths I let myself pretend this is real.

Safe. Protected. Held by someone who wants me.

But it's an illusion. A beautiful one. The kind of dream I sink into knowing the alarm is about to go off. This man is not my future. He is my escape hatch, and in a few minutes I need to peel myself from his arms and do the walk of shame back through the Gilded Key Society in my wrinkled funeral dress.