Read Revenge for Free Online Page B

seeking comfort and so much more. Can you feel safe in the throes of passion?
    I want to find out.
    “ You,” he says, pulling back, eyes hooded and looking at my skin, “are so exquisite.” He trails a finger from my collarbone down the hollow of my skin, reaching the top of my breast. I’m buzzing and on fire, chilled and exploding. I breathe in like it takes a hundred years, and breathe out like it’s a blink of an eye.  
    I forget to breathe sometimes. I feel it, the air caught in the back of my throat. Mark takes his time. He moves slowly. The way he touches me is purposeful. Determined. Casual and sultry. I can feel the callouses on his hands, right below his fingers. He has the hands of a man who uses them to do hard work.
    I remember how he looked, holding the gun the other night when he broke into my trailer. My screams brought him. What was he expect ing ? As he plants a kiss on my ribcage and I shiver, I wonder:
    What makes a man break down a door to rescue a woman? What drove Mark to do that? Was it pure instinct? Duty?
    Love?
    “I told you, three years ago, that I loved you, Carrie,” he murmurs against the soft skin he’s kissing. I inhale sharply. A line from his mouth to my core tightens, then turns to a warm wetness I know all too well.
    I know it well because I felt it so often around him.
    Before.
    “ And I never got the chance to show you. You left.”  
    T he line tugs suddenly. Hard, like a yank.
    “You left and I found you, but I didn’t chase you. I gave you room. You took it.” With each sentence, he kisses me. “ I knew I had to give you all the space you needed.” Kiss . “I knew that if I followed you, if I gave in to impulse and appeared one day and tried to convince you to come back, that I’d lose you forever.”  
    Kiss.
    Every cell in my body fills with a regretful warmth, like my blood can cry.
    “So I waited. I hoped you’d come back.”
    Kiss.
    “But I didn’t know.” His voice is thick with sadness and truth. “I didn’t know, and that’s the part that broke my heart, Carrie. The not knowing.”
    Kiss.
    His lips brush against my belly, the touch maddening.
    “Oh, Mark.” I sit up and pull him to me, needing to feel those lips on mine. I need to assure him. R eassure him. “I’m here.”
    Kiss.
    This time, the kiss is hungry. More urgent, with a kind of madness that comes from the insanity of spending so much time not knowing. Mark’s honesty is tearing my heart in two at the same time that it’s healing me. So many paradoxes swirl in the air between us.
    That’s love, right? Two different truths can live together if there’s enough love to fuel them both.
    I’m kissing him the only way I know how, with my hands stroking his back, my fingers digging in to the hard muscle under his ribs. Our mouths press and our tongues explore, the movements fevered and eager. We’re making up for lost time.
    His hands slide to the waistband of my pants and instead of pausing, all I can think is, Please .
    He reads my mind and in a few seconds I am completely naked, resting on my back as he rises up to unbutton his own pants. His gaze is filled with a kind of rabid lust that is contagious. O ne touch, and I’ll have it, too.
    One thousand touches, and I’ll never want to live without it.
    “You are...God, Carrie. Words are escaping me. All I can think is how beautiful you are. And it’s pretty much the only thing my brain can say.”
    “I don’t mind.” My grin makes him laugh. A s he slips out of his pants I gasp. He’s so perfect. Not in a model-perfect kind of way. His body is worn. A warrior’s build. He carries himself in skin with scars and imperfections. He has no tattoos of any kind. A part of me wants to ask how he could be a war vet and not have them.  
    Before the words can come out he’s on top of me. The blanket of his hot, vibrant body reduces my ability to think to nothing. Zero.
    I am incapable of anything but sensation.
    Ah. Finally. This is