Chapter 20: Now I Choose

Ansel's POV

For seven years there had been a weight on the back of my neck.

I had never noticed it as a weight, because it had been there since I was twenty-four.

Now it was gone, and the room was so large that I could hear every grain of silver dust landing on the floor.

I had my hands on Dara's face.

I could feel her pulse in her jaw, quick and steady.

Nothing in me was telling me what to do next.

It was the loneliest and the most wonderful feeling I have ever had.

"Say it again," she said. "What you just said."

"Now I choose."

"Then choose out loud."

I kissed her.

It was not the way I had ever kissed her before, careful and asking.

I kissed her hungry, with nothing held back.

She made a sound against my mouth and fisted both hands in my shirt.

"We have an hour," she said, breathless.

"I said maybe an hour."

"Then stop talking," she said, and I felt her smile.

I picked her up.

She wrapped her legs around my waist, and I turned and put her back against the stone wall.

The black cuff on her wrist cracked against the rock and flared.

I caught that hand and pinned it beside her head.

"I'm not on a leash anymore," I said against her throat. "Every inch of this is my choice."

"Then don't hold back."

She yanked at my belt with her free hand.

"I want you to take me. I want you to want it so much you don't know what to do with your hands."

"I know exactly what to do with my hands."

I tore her shirt open down the front, and the buttons went across the floor.

Her breasts were bare in the pale light from the vent.

I put my mouth on one, hungry, and she arched into it and swore.