Page 110 of A Sweet Destruction

Ford had looked like he was seconds away from killing someone ever since that first arrow flew past us. I had probably looked similar, my blood still coursing with a panicked energy at the thought of him hurt.

His expression had only darkened as the seconds went on and nearly snapped with Elijah pestering us with questions. For a moment there, I’d genuinely thought he was going to take a swing at him.

It was a good thing that we were getting away from everyone. Especially when someone tried to stop us on the street to inquire about the blood on Ford’s hand and a completely inhuman sound of warning left his throat.

It was a good thing, considering the Bond seemed to wrench the control out of Ford’s hands the second we were alone.

The door had barely closed behind us before he had me in his arms again, breathing hard against the skin of my neck. I was pretty sure he was murmuring my name.

It was several minutes before he came back to himself. By the time he did, I’d let him push me down to the floor and fold himself entirely on top of me. I could have stopped him if I wanted to, but that was just the thing. I didn’t want to.

I was feeling as insane as he was, just a little more present in my body.

“Esme,” he said, a little clearer than all the previous times, mumbled incoherently against my shoulder. Then again, a little more panicked when he realized that he was settled between my legs.

“It’s okay.”

Ford launched himself off me, falling back on his ass several feet away. Several feet too far, if you asked me. “It is not okay. I basically attacked you.”

I lifted an eyebrow. That was all it took for him to clarify.

“Okay, well, I guess you could have knocked my ass out. Still not okay.”

“We had quite the fright just now. We needed to—”

Ford was on top of me a second later, this time fusing our mouths together. He kissed me with his entire body, moving in a slow wave that started with his hips pressing up into me and ended with his tongue sliding against mine so deeply my entire head tilted back.

Our movements quickly descended into desperate gropes, spurred on by our racing hearts. I could feel his beating against the skin of my chest.

An indiscriminate number of minutes later—at least long enough that my stomach had started to wind painfully tight from the pressure of Ford’s zipper on my center—Ford flew back again.

“What is it this time?” I cried, blushing and breathless.

“Esme.” Ford said my name with an intensity that made that blush spread down my chest. He cursed, looking down at the floor. After a particularly heavy breath, he lifted his head. “I’ll find somewhere else to decompress. I’ll just—”

Ford got no further than a crouch before I launched myself at him.

He caught me halfway, rising to stand with me in his arms as I wrapped my legs around his waist.

“Please,” I said against his mouth. “We both need this.”

Ford’s hand tightened in my hair, and I knew I had him.

He kissed me again, and my body jolted with a shock of pleasure so intense I was distantly worried I’d been electrocuted.

The Bond barely knew what to do with itself. I didn’t know how it was reacting on Ford’s end, but my version of the Bond had been told this was never going to happen for three years, then shoved into a coma for another five. It was oscillating between total disbelief and outright joy.

The Bond eventually settled into a buzzing warmth, one that made every place Ford touched me, whether an outright grip of his hands or the slide of his chest against mine, feel all the more sensitive.

I really didn’t know how that was possible, seeing how I already felt him down to my bones. The thought had me gripping his hair tighter, hiking myself up on his hips higher.

The sound that left his throat was like a siren’s call, my mouth immediately changing direction to trail kisses across the bump at the front of his throat and around to the muscles on the side of his neck.

I felt so dizzy, so mindless that I didn’t even notice Ford had started moving until he bent to place me on the foot of the bed.

In another life, I would have been embarrassed by the protest that escaped me when he went to pull away or by the sound of utter relief I let out when he bent back down to place an open-mouthed, suctioning kiss on my lips.

This time, he kept his hands on me as he pulled away, moving much slower. Ford knelt down in front of me, his eyes a blazing green that I’d never seen before.