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“I need…”

“No.”

“Please…” I become frantic, needing to feel something. Needing to remember something, even if it’s this very moment. “Make me remember. Make me feel something. Make me believe that this isn’t the end of my story.”

“Adelaide,” he warns, but I don’t care. I need something, anything, to be real.

“I know you feel this.” I reach for his face. “Tell me you don’t.”

And his mouth closes over mine in a kiss that sets my soul on fire and burns my brokenness to the ground.

Chapter 19

Adelaide

Riven brands me with a possessive kiss, sending shock waves of pleasure straight to my core. My heart is beating right out of my chest as I watch him watch me.

He towers over me as we stand in the steamy water that laps and teases my breasts but barely covers his waist. He trails his mouth across my collarbone, licking droplets of water from my flushed skin, working his way up to another side of my neck and cheek, fluttering softly against my mouth and drinking in my sighs of pleasure.

His hands take their time exploring my skin, and his patience is nearly my undoing as he drags his wet palms over my breasts, his eyes never leaving mine.

This rogue of a man, with his dark hair braided back and clean-shaven on the sides, looks like a warrior standing before me with no weapons except his love.

He doesn’t say it, but I feel it, the same way I feel him hard against me.

My fingertips graze over his large shoulders and tease down his chest, following the perfect V cut of his chiseled body. He hisses at the contact. I stop when I reach his trousers and tug the laces open. His moan urges me on, but the material is too wet, too stuck.

Riven pulls me to him, and I feel weightless as he lifts me into his arms. My legs instinctively wrap around his waist. Our bodies are slick with enchanted waters as it runs off us in rivets when he climbs from the water. He slowly slides me down his front, and I feel every ripple of his muscles, feel the tension of him holding back. My bare feet slip on the wet stone, and he steadies me, his large hands gripping my waist.

Riven sits back on his heels, wearing only his leather trousers. “Have you ever? Are you sure—?”

“You’re not the first to touch me.” I see the jealousy flash in his eyes before his pupils dilate, the grey nearly fading to black. “But you’re the first to matter.”

My gaze drops, scanning sculpted arms and chest, a true testament to his strength.

I swallow down the rest of what I want to say. Because I don’t understand—I’m enraptured by a man I should hate. But deep down, I know the opposite is true. And the overwhelming desire is clouding my feelings.

He removes the rest of his clothes and lays me back, already naked from removing my clothes to bathe in the enchanted waters. The warm, wet stones are a welcoming heat at my back. His palm slowly drags down my sternum, his fingers barely caressing my breasts as he moves between them lower toward my waist.

My knees fall open as he leans closer between me and drags his fingertips tortuously slow to my core before running one in a teasing swipe against my sensitive skin.

He teases at my entrance, and my hips voluntarily buck forward, desperate for him to finally make me his, but he withdraws his rigid cock. I tense with my hands on his shoulders.

“Look at me, Adelaide. Tell me to stop. Tell me you don’t want this. That this thing between us is just my imagination. Tell me that you don’t want to be tainted with my darkness.”

But I don’t tell him to. I don’t say any of those things because I don’t want him to stop. I open my eyes and look into his. Wrapping my legs around his back, I pull him to me, and he starts to move.

“If we do this, there is no going back; once I have you, you’ll be mine. Are you ready for that?” His question burns down deep into my soul because I want that, to be his and for him to be mine.

Because I love him. I always have.

Using his hand, he guides himself into me. Inch by glorious inch, he fills me, and just when I think I can’t take any more, his restraint snaps. He wraps his palms around the back of my knees and pulls me to him and pushes himself to the hilt.

He withdraws and drives into me, again and again, the smooth stone dragging along my skin as he fills me over and over. We ride out the tidal wave of ecstasy that crashes through us simultaneously.

His grey eyes burn almost silver as he stares down at me with a look that claims me. I shiver as the flush of heat slowly fades, and Riven rests his forehead against mine.

I spent my whole life missing something I didn’t even know I’d lost. Until he found me.