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His fingers wound into fists in my hair, begging me to make it true.

“I’ve always been,” I rasped into the dizzying kisses. “Always.”

He groaned and pressed his massive body against mine. Intensity blazed between us, our kiss uncontrolled.

Meshing and clashing.

On a heady exhalation, he peeled me from the wall, kissing me and kissing me as he spun me around.

Backing me around the couch and down the short hall and into my room.

He only broke the kiss to peel my dress over my head.

Cool air brushed my overheated flesh, and I inhaled a shattered breath. Realizing the direction we were headed.

“You’re hurt,” I mumbled against his lips.

“Not being with you hurts a thousand times worse.”

“Trevan.” It was almost a reprimand. Thready restraint. Because I never wanted to hurt him. I wanted to hold him the way he’d always held me.

Protect him, too.

Stand in front of him. Stand for him. Show him that he was every bit as important as me.

He only grunted and reached back to the neckline of his tee, grabbing it and peeling it up.

“Nothing is going to stop me from having you, Elena Mercer.”

He tossed his shirt to the floor next to my dress.

And he was all hulking, tattooed flesh, rippling strength and intimidating muscle.

Obscenely wide shoulders and packed, cut abdomen. His wound inflamed and angry on his side.

I’d seen his torso bare before.

But now it was mine.

I shuddered with the realization.

He dove back in, unable to keep his hands off me.

“You want me, Elena?” The question was peppered between frenzied kisses. “You want me the way that I want you?”

I almost laughed through the delirium. “You’re the only thing I want. The only one I want. I’ve been imagining this for four years.”

Probably longer if I was being honest.

“What it’d be like with you. To get to feel you. For you to see me the way I saw you.”

“You’re gonna feel me, baby.” He grunted it. “Promise that you’re going to feel me everywhere, and you’re never going to forget.”

Shivers raced across my skin.

He chased them with his nose, moving to drag the tip down the slope of my neck and across my collarbone.

“Going to score myself so deep on you that there will be no mistaking who you belong to.”