Page 72 of The Darkness is Calling

One whisper, and my world stops.

Hope, desire, perhaps longing too, all of it lives on the lips of the woman I have dreamed of for so many months. My body is controlled by her voice, and my heart beats harder as I approach the bed where she sits, watching my every move.

Ours.

We want her.

She must belong to us.

Yes. She will be ours.

With one knee on the edge of the mattress, I lean toward Katya and wrap my hand around the front of her throat, pulling her to me.

My lips are almost touching hers when I manage to cling to a single thread of consciousness and whisper roughly. “What spell did you cast on me, that made me unable to stay away from you?”

“If I knew how to do something like that, I would have made a voodoo doll.”

I almost smile, because there is no belief in her words. They are hoarse and filled with a heated shade that lures me closer.

“If it had made me stop wanting to touch you, I would’ve driven the needle into her myself.”

She sighs, and warm air slips between her parted lips, caressing my own.

“Why?” Katya asks, more and more lost in the way my finger touches the vein on her throat.

“Because I promised myself I would not touch you again. But look at me, with my fingers pressed into the bruises still marking your skin. A Pakhan doesn’t break his promise.”

“And yet, you are doing it now.”

I brush my mouth over her lower lip, light as a snowflake that only wants to taste her warmth before melting completely. But I move back a few inches to whisper in a broken voice she can barely hear.

“Do you want me to leave?”

If she says yes, I’m going to die.

Her warm, uneven breathing keeps wrecking my ability to think straight, blending with the delicate scent of jasmine shower gel, a fragrance that will haunt my dreams until the day I die.

“It’s wrong,” she answers, her voice tormented, heavy with desire and agony. “We’re not allowed...”

“Ekaterina.” My tone is harsh, drawing ever closer to ruin, my eyes fixed on her warm gaze. “Do. You. Want. Me. To. Leave?”

“No,” she says softly, but with determination. “I don’t want you to leave.”

Heaven.

I crush my lips against hers, the touch a blend of my hungry madness and her delicate softness. It is not a fight, but a dance full of passion, in which her hands join around my neck, and I wrap my arms around her waist, to bring every inch of her body against mine.

With my tongue, I taste every sound that slips between her sensual lips, while she savors the growl rumbling from my throat when she presses her breasts against me, making me feel every curve of her body begging to be worshipped.

In all my life, I have never experienced such a need to feel a woman's body as I do now. Voices scream their fulfillment from a corner of my mind, letting me hear every sigh of the one who has irremediably bewitched me.

In one movement, I twist her so that she’s straddling my lap as I sit down on the bed.

She's wearing a fucking nightgown that rides up over her hips, giving me the opportunity to squeeze her bare buttocks as both hands descend on her supple body.

Her small palms cup my face, a delicate touch that tempers my desperate pace of tearing from her. She silently tells me that I need to savor her slowly, despite the need that compel me to mark her mine as quickly as possible.

I want her.