Page 22 of Wraith
“Gage agreed to it. Ami was under our protection, we promised your father we’d keep you all safe. Someone has to pay.”
“But- but I’m sure he didn’t do it. Ami- she’s… well- she likes drama. She’s the reason that my father wanted to be rid of all of us. She was wild since she was a kid. Her mom never knew how to handle her, and my father couldn’t be bothered. He viewed Steph as the same kind of problem, even though she wasn’t at all like Ami. He saw an easy way to wash his hands of all his daughters and he took it. He hated us from birth, just for not being sons.”
Wraith’s perfect lips turn up in a sneer. “Fucking idiot then. You’re beautiful. Smart. Compassionate. How could he have looked at you and found you wanting in any way?”
My face heats at the compliment and the vehemence of his words. “I- I just- I’m not calling Ami a liar, but something didn’t feel right. She couldn’t look at me for more than a few seconds and she’s never had trouble being confident enough for eye contact. She likes attention, generally. Maybe she didn’t want me to look at her after what she’d been through, but I- it didn’t feel right. Something is off. I don’t know why she’d lie though. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“She didn’t want the marriage. Maybe she thinks she’ll be able to get out of it this way.”
“I don’t know. Honestly. I thought about it the whole time I was sitting with her. I want to talk to Steph. She knows Ami better than I do. She’s pretty good at reading people. Maybe if I talked to her…”
“You’d do that?”
“Of course. I don’t know if it would make any difference. My father will decide what he’ll decide. Our opinions never meant anything to him. I- I just hate the thought of Gage being hurt because of her lies. He doesn’t deserve that. I wouldn’t like the idea of it if it was my sister or brother who I thought was innocent. I know you’re brothers by your club.”
Wraith’s throat bobs again. “Yeah,” he grinds out. “You’re very perceptive. You have a good heart.” He studies me again, the flames in his eyes roaring. “How did I get so lucky? Of all the women I was forced into marriage with, I’m glad it was you.”
I’m about to laugh, because I see humor dancing at the edges of his mouth, but he moves fast, a lethal strike, like a snake uncoiling to launch itself at its prey. His eyes are wild, searching mine right before his hand reaches out and grips my throat. I freeze, the action so aggressive that it steals my breath. Wraith’s long, rough fingers work their way to the back of my neck as his other hand grips my hip and carts me up against him.
This time all the breath that I’ve been struggling for rushes out. His hand tangles in my hair and he uses it like reins to pull my head back. I stare up into those black velvet depths, burning with the torn up emotion of the morning and something else. Something feral and dangerous. Something that sends a shiver of wicked heat dancing potently between my legs.
“I have to,” he rasps harshly before he bends his head and his perfect, sensual mouth, claims mine.
His lips are so soft. So much softer than I ever would have believed a man’s could be. They burn against mine, plunder my mouth with urgency and red hot fury. His tongue thrusts through the seam of my lips when I try to pant for air. The sinuous glide undoes the knots in my stomach and ties a thousand more. My legs turn to water, and I brace myself against his hard chest, his leather jacket like a fiery second skin, alive under my fingertips.
Then, just because I can, because he’s so close, his tongue gliding over mine, his teeth nipping my bottom lip in an agonizing dance of sensual pleasure, I slide my hand up from his chest, up to his sinewy neck. The corded muscles there strain beneath my fingertips and then I find what I want. His pulse, hammering hard beneath the satin veneer of his skin. I love the feel of it, the life pumping through his veins, the wild beat. It gives me a heady rush of power to realize that I’m doing that to him. I’m making his heart race the same way he makes mine cant so unevenly against my ribs.
Wraith’s tongue sweeps over my top lip and I forget how to think. I curl my hand at his neck, digging my nails into the junction between the sinewy column and the broad width of his broad shoulder. When he bites down into my bottom lip hard enough that copper blooms like a flower unfurling in my mouth, I make a sound that is more animal than human.
Shockingly, Wraith’s big hand travels the length of my body. It scrapes down from my neck, travels over my breasts, over my stomach and the curl of my hip, down. He flattens his palm and cups me in the most private place, between my legs. It doesn’t matter that there’s the thicker barrier of my jeans andmy cotton underwear between us, I feel the terrifying power of his palm like I’m completely bare.
“So wet,” he groans against my lips. “You’ve soaked through your jeans.”
My entire body flushes with a different kind of heat. The heat of shame. I drop my eyes, but Wraith’s warm, strong hand sweeps under my chin and tilts it back up. What I see burning in his eyes isn’t disgust. It’s the furthest thing from it.
“You know what I hate?” he asks me in his thick, passion strained tone. “I hate those jeans. I hate that they cup your pretty, round ass just right. That they’re faded and worn in like a second skin, that I want to peel you out of them and light them on fire too, so that they won’t ever stand between me and what I really want, ever again.”
I have no idea what I’m doing when my hands fly to the button of my jeans. I fumble and flick it open and tear the zipper down so fast that the gasp of it opening actually echoes in the room between us. I’ve never had a man stand this close to me, touch me like this, kiss me until I can’t remember my own name. I’ve never had anyone look at me that way, like I’m some kind of flawless, valuable treasure. I want to give him what he wants, this man whose hands touch me with such reverence. I want him to show me. To teach me. To touch me.
It sends icy tendrils of fear through my bloodstream, to think of doing this, of baring myself to someone for the first time, but, as I peel my jeans down my thighs and I watch the hunger light up Wraith’s face like an animal about to devour his prey, the raw need in me responds greedily. I want this. I don’t exactly know what it means, but I want it and I want it with him.
I’m nineteen years old. I’m probably the oldest virgin on the planet. It doesn’t matter that we just met. This man is my husband and he makes me feel. He makes me feel everything, everything in a life where I’m so used to pushing my emotions back down into the bleeding, aching depths of my heart. In just a few seconds, he’s succeeded in springing it all free, undoing me completely, shattering those walls and flaying me wide open, and my god, I’ve never felt anything so astoundinglyrightin my life.
“Wraith,” I pant, and he gets it. His hands take over, furiously stripping my jeans away. He tugs them down to my ankles, then rips off my little black flats to strip them the rest of the way off.
I stare down at his dark head, bent before me, and the muscles in my legs tremble. He looks up and our eyes meet for a second before I glance back down at my white cotton panties. What he said was true. I’m soaked there, so wet that the middle is nearly translucent.
Wraith groans, a terrifying sound ripped from the depths of his throat, and his hands come up to steady me at my hip, the other curling over my panties, his finger tracing over the wet spot. I’d be completely mortified if I didn’t catch the tension that floods his bent back, the muscles bunching under his jacket. He touches me with reverence, like I’m fragile and he could break me.
When he hooks his fingers under the waistband of my panties, I don’t push his hands away. I let him peel them down my legs, exposing me completely. A cool rush of air meets my overheated skin, and I let out a shuddering breath.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Wraith curses irreverently. “You’re so beautiful.”
His hands close around my hips and he lifts me suddenly, violently, thrusting me onto the counter. My bottom hits the cold, hard granite, but Wraith’s scalding hands are already on me, spreading my legs lewdly. I want to slam them closed, but his eyes meet mine, smoking black coals burning like obsidian and the raw need for me, forme, banishes any shame and embarrassment and plants a seed of something else.
The air snaps with electricity so hot and violent it makes my breath come in pants.
And then Wraith dips his crown of glorious dark hair between my spread thighs. I’ve always had thick, dark hair, not just on my head, but everywhere. Since I was fourteen, I’ve been embarrassed by it, but it was also uncomfortable. I didn’t like it, and I shaved it off. I’ve never been so thankful, because shaving makes all the nerve endings that much more sensitive, as smooth and slick as my skin.
