NOVEL NEXT Chapter 234: The Bride Last Night 2
The kiss started gentle, a brush of lips that carried champagne and desperation, rebellion and promise. But Amanda had been starving for real passion for so long that gentle lasted maybe three seconds before she was clinging to me with the urgency of someone who'd just rediscovered oxygen.
"Fuck," she gasped against my mouth, fisting the front of my shirt with surprising strength. "I'd forgotten it could feel like this."
"Like what?"
"Like my entire body is on fire and the only thing that can save me is more."
I guided her backward, step by step, toward the bedroom Harold had decorated like a catalogue version of romance. Rose petals on silk sheets, candles arranged with pathetic precision—a desperate man's idea of seduction. Amanda didn't even notice. Her focus was entirely on me.
"Are you sure about this?" I asked, giving her the last chance to stop before we crossed the line that would obliterate her old life.
Underneath, Amanda wasn't bare—she was strategically armed. Midnight-blue lingerie clung to her body with devastating precision: a lace bra that framed her breasts like art on display, sheer panels leaving just enough to imagination, and matching panties that traced the curve of her hips with cruel elegance.
She stood there in nothing, but the negligee silk, lace, and the engagement ring Harold had slipped on her finger. The diamond caught the candlelight like a cheap bribe, sparkling desperately against skin that promised more than Harold could ever afford.
Amanda didn't cover herself. Didn't hesitate. She offered herself up like a goddess dressed for war, every inch of lace a reminder that she hadn't come here to be worshiped—she'd come to be claimed.
Amanda didn't flinch. Didn't cover herself. Didn't retreat. She looked like a goddess who'd finally remembered her own power.
"I've never been more sure of anything in my life," she said, her voice steady despite the shaking of her hands. Her eyes burned with desperate clarity. "Show me what I've been missing."
I let my enhanced form fully manifest—six-foot-three of supernatural perfection, every line of my body radiating power that made Amanda's breath stutter in her throat.
Her eyes widened, pupils blown wide with awe and raw anticipation. "My God…" she whispered, reaching out to trace the definition of my chest through my shirt as if confirming I was real. "You're even more incredible than I imagined."
"You've been imagining?"
Amanda's laugh was a low, hungry thing. "Ever since Margaret introduced us, I haven't been able to think about anything else. Do you know what it's like to finally meet someone who makes you remember what desire feels like?"
I shed my Tom Ford jacket, each discarded layer pulling Amanda's gaze tighter, syncing her breathing to mine like she was tethered to my pulse.
"Tell me," I said, my enhanced voice carrying the kind of command that turned confession into compulsion.
Her hands roamed the cut of my physique with reverent fascination. "It's like waking up from a dream you thought was happiness, only to realize you were just sleepwalking through your own life. Harold touches me like I'm porcelain treasure he'll use to gain favors from my family... nothing more than a ticket to a Miami's powerful family, breakable. But you…" She swallowed, voice trembling with hunger. "You look at me like I'm something to be conquered."
"You are."
The words hit her like impact—her entire body shivering as if I'd lit a fuse beneath her skin. Years of being treated like a display piece had taught Amanda to expect gentleness wrapped in neglect. And here she was, finally realizing that surrendering to the right predator felt like freedom.
Even her engagement ring seemed complicit, catching candlelight like it was mocking Harold for mistaking ownership for desire.
"The bed Harold prepared for us," I said, nodding toward the rose petals and silk sheets, "seems like the perfect stage to show you exactly what he can't give you."
Amanda's answering smile was rebellion wrapped in arousal. "I love the irony."
He spent so much money trying to manufacture romance, and instead he handed us the perfect battlefield."
She led me toward the bed, her negligee-clad body moving with the confidence of someone who had just remembered her own power. The Miami skyline blazed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, a glittering witness to Harold's ruin and Amanda's awakening.
"Eros," she said, reclining on the silk sheets like a queen daring her conqueror closer, "make me forget I was ever going to settle for less than this."
Looking down at her—beautiful, desperate, finally ready to be claimed—I realized Amanda Wells wasn't just breaking vows tonight. She was rewriting the rules of her existence.
Her last night as a bride-to-be was about to become her first night as a goddess.
And Harold's "romantic weekend" was about to become the most expensive humiliation in Miami history.
The silk of her midnight negligee clung like a second skin, shimmering under the suite's warm, recessed lighting. My gaze swept over her, mapping the landscape of her hunger—the slight tremor in her thighs, the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the flush spreading like wildfire over pale skin.
My otherworldly eyes saw it all: the heightened pulse in her throat, the gooseflesh prickling her arms, the heat radiating from her core.
Slowly, deliberately, I raised a hand. Not touching, yet. Letting her feel the proximity, the charge in the air. My knuckles brushed the curve of her waist where the silk met bare skin. A sharp intake of breath. Good.
Then, contact. My fingertips, impossibly warm and precise, traced the delicate strap over her shoulder. The friction was minimal, the effect seismic. A shiver wracked her, followed by a low, breathy moan that vibrated against my lips as I leaned in to kiss the sensitive hollow above her collarbone.
"Eros..." The sound was half-gasp, half-prayer.
I followed the strap down, my touch tracing the neckline's plunge over the swell of her breast. Each millimeter of fabric I moved revealed more of her to the light, more of her to my eyes. My other hand came to rest on the small of her back, pressing her forward slightly, arching her into my exploration.
My thumb skimmed the dip of her spine, another tremor, another moan—deeper this time, more wanton.