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My blood drummed erratically.

He reached out a big hand and set his palm on my cheek, and his thumb softly stroked along the hollow of my eye.

“It’s your face and your mind and your heart. It’s your body and your hands and your breath. It’s all of you, Elena. It’s you. It’s you. This exists because you are my existence.”

I sucked for air as my hands curled into his shirt.

The barest hesitation filled him as his eyes flicked all over my face. “The only shame I hold is that I have no right to touch upon your beauty. On who you are.”

My head shook. “You’re wrong. You’re the only one I choose to have the right to, and I need to know, am I worth it? Am I worth the risk? Am I worth breaking whatever faulty promise you made to Silas?”

The sound that came out of him was pain.

Surrender.

“You’re worth everything, Elena. Fucking everything. I love you. Am mad for you. Gone for you. There’s nothing else.”

The fingers of the hand he had on my cheek suddenly drove into my hair, and he gripped me by the back of the neck as he jerked me toward him.

A desperate crush of his lips against mine.

And Trevan and I?

We lit.

FIFTY-EIGHT

ELENA

Trevan Niles was kissing me.

Kissing me like a starved man who’d been locked in isolation and had crawled his way out into the breaking day.

One who’d found refuge.

Mercy.

And he was starved.

Ravenous and greedy.

Gripping and moaning as he angled his head back and forth, lips sweeping in a passionate, mind-bending dance.

He spun me, pressed me to the wall, and stroked his hot tongue over the seam of my lips. I opened with a gasp, my head tipping back as he dipped in and scorched me with his heat.

Our tongues were as desperate as our hands. Mine were shaking, nearly frantic as I ran them over his shoulders and up his thick neck.

Flames licked and lapped, and the energy became chaotic. Every bit as disorienting and demanding as the strobing of lights.

“Lena,” he rumbled into my lips. My name vibrated through me like a fever dream.

Like a hallucination.

Was this really happening?

Had he really admitted it?

“Tell me that you’re mine.” Maybe he was having a hard time believing it was real, too.