NOVEL NEXT Chapter 235: Amanda Wells (R-18)
My palm glided up her ribs, counting each one under my touch, feeling the frantic flutter beneath her skin. When my thumb brushed the underside of her breast, barely grazing the sensitive curve, her knees buckled.
I held her steady, my strength effortless, my gaze locked on hers—dilated pupils, lips parted, completely lost.
"Eros," she gasped again, the name a broken confession on her lips.
I brought both hands to the single delicate tie at her hip. The silk knot seemed to whisper as my fingers worked it loose. With agonizing slowness, I peeled the negligee down over her hips, letting it glide over her thighs, pooling at her feet like liquid shadow.
The moments of losing her lingerie underneath were memories Amanda never remembered...
She stood before me, bathed in the golden light of Harold's perfect suite—naked except for the glittering diamond on her finger.
Vulnerable. Exposed. Radiant.
My hands resumed their worshipful pilgrimage. They traced the elegant line of her collarbone, drifted down the smooth plane of her stomach, circled her navel. Each touch ignited a new wave of sensation, each caress drew another moan, each sigh of my name was a testament to her awakening.
My lips followed, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses against her throat, the valley between her breasts, the soft skin of her abdomen. I tasted salt, arousal, and freedom.
When my hands finally cupped her breasts, weighing them, thumbs sweeping over the already hardened peaks, her cry was sharp, electric. She arched into my hands, her head falling back, offering herself completely.
"Eros! Yes… please…"
My gaze dropped to her left hand, resting on my shoulder. The diamond ring gleamed—a symbol of a cage, a life suffocating her. I lowered my head, never breaking eye contact. My lips brushed her knuckles, a ghost of touch.
Then, with deliberate purpose, I kissed the cool metal band of the ring. Not the finger, but the object itself.
Amanda stilled, her breath catching in a silent hitch. Her eyes widened, understanding flooding them as the implication crashed down. I pressed my lips firmly against the ring, a seal, a claim.
This is shed. This is mine.
I lifted my head slightly, my voice a low rumble that resonated through her, through the room, through the very foundations of her old world. "You wear his stone..." My fingers traced the circle of metal. "But you are mine now, Amanda."
She stared transfixed at the ring, then back at me. The fear, the guilt, the hesitation—all dissolved, burned away by the fire in my eyes and the truth of my touch. A slow, radiant smile spread across her face, pure possession and relief.
"Yours," she breathed, the word definitive, a surrender and a conquest. "Only yours."
Her hand, the one bearing the ring, slid from my shoulder to tangle in my hair, pulling me down for a kiss that was all fire, all future, all mine. The diamond caught the light as her fingers clenched, a forgotten relic under the suite's unforgiving glow, belonging to a life that ended the moment my hands touched her skin.
***
Eros moved with the lethal patience of an apex predator dissecting prey, though Amanda felt less like a victim and more like a sacred unveiling. His hands, those instruments of otherworldly precision, slid from her waist upwards, thumbs brushing the sensitive wings of her shoulder blades.
She shuddered, a full-body ripple that made the diamond on her finger catch the light like a stray tear.
His mouth found the slender column of her neck, but not the pounding pulse point where lesser men might have bitten. No. His lips sealed over the suprasternal notch—that hollow dip at the base of her throat, an ancient acupuncture point linked straight to the core of feminine surrender.
He didn't kiss; he inhaled. A slow, deep pull of air that felt like he was drawing the very tension from her bones. Her moan was thick, liquid—a sound pulled from depths she hadn't known existed.
"E-Eros…" It was a plea, a benediction, a broken sound.
His hands mapped her with terrifying intimacy. Palms flat, they glided over the sharp slopes of her collarbones—so prominent, so fragile under his touch. His thumbs traced the delicate chain of muscle along her upper chest, millimeters below the swell of her breasts, skirting the forbidden territory with maddening deliberation.
Heat bloomed wherever his skin met hers, a trail of fire aimed directly at the core he studiously ignored.
He knew what he was doing. Knew that ignoring the obvious, the expected, was the most exquisite form of torture. Knew that the hypersensitive skin along her ribs, the curve just beneath her armpit, the soft flesh over her hipbones—these were the uncharted territories most men never explored.
He became a cartographer of her desire.
His mouth journeyed lower, blazing a path down her sternum. He paused, lips brushing the very top of the soft valley between her breasts. He breathed out—slow, warm, damp air directly onto the skin he refused to touch.
The effect was electric.
Her back arched violently off the silk sheets, offering herself, begging without words. A choked sob escaped her, raw with need.
"Shhh~~," the sound was a dark rumble against her ribs. "Feel Amanda~"
His hands were everywhere except where she ached most. One slid possessively around her waist, anchoring her. The other traced the intricate line of her ribcage, each bump a new note in the symphony he was composing.
When his fingertips found the hypersensitive spot just below her left breast, the one that sent lightning straight to her clit, she gasped, her hips rocking instinctively against empty air.
He smiled against her skin—a slow, predatory curve.
"Here," he murmured, his voice the vibration of a cello string plucked low. He pressed his lips firmly to that spot, sucking gently, just shy of pain, then soothing with the flat of his tongue.
"Ahhhh~~" Amanda cried out, her body trembling uncontrollably.
"And here…" His hand slid down, fingers splaying wide over her lower abdomen, just above the mound of her sex. Pressure. Possession without invasion. The heel of his ground with excruciating lightness against her pubic bone.
A fresh wave of wetness flooded her thighs, undeniable proof of his mastery.
He watched her face—flushed, eyes squeezed shut, lips parted in silent wonder. He saw the desperation, the surrender, the sheer awe at her own body's response. This wasn't about breasts or the obvious path to climax.
This was about rewiring her nervous system.
Teaching her that pleasure wasn't a destination; it was the entire landscape, and he knew every hidden trail.
His hands slid down further, strong and sure, gripping her hips. His thumbs dug into the hollows where her thighs met her pelvis—another neural superhighway. He pressed, massaging in deep, slow circles. Amanda's entire body lifted off the bed, a bow drawn taut.
A high, breathy keen escaped her, unlike any sound she'd ever made. It was the sound of pleasure reshaping her.
"Your body," he rasped, his mouth hovering over the frantic pulse in her neck again, his words hot against her damp skin. "It's an instrument, Amanda. And I play it perfectly." He punctuated the claim with another slow, deep inhalation over her collarbone, pulling another tremor from her.
She was a mass of exposed nerve endings, raw and glorious. The ring on her finger felt cold, distant, a relic from another lifetime. Her world had shrunk to the heat of his hands, the mastery of his mouth, and the devastating, deliberate absence of his touch where she craved it most.
He hadn't touched her breasts. Hadn't come close to her slick, weeping core. Yet she felt more claimed, more ruined, more utterly known than if he'd taken her roughly against the window overlooking Harold's precious Miami skyline.
He was a dark lord mapping her soul through the vessel of her body, and she was discovering that true worship wasn't in the obvious symbols—it was in the masterful, devastating control.
He wasn't just making her feel pleasure; he was revealing her own capacity for it, a dormant volcano awakened by his impossible skill.
And as his teeth scraped gently over the delicate skin of her inner elbow—a place she'd never considered sensitive—she realized: this was only the overture.
The symphony her body was about to unleash would shatter every last piece of the woman who had agreed to marry Harold.