Chapter 47

• Killian POV
• I have never seen anything more beautiful than the woman before me, stretched out beneath my hands, trusting and unguarded, the pale spill of her hair tangled on my pillow, her skin flushed with anticipation and heat. For a moment I just let myself look, memorizing every line and curve as if the sight of her might burn away the ache of every year I spent doing what was expected, every cold night beside a woman I never truly touched. This—Aurora—is mine. Fate’s cruelest, sweetest trick, and my only salvation.
• My hands move over her body with a hunger I no longer bother to hide, but there’s a worship in it too, a reverence I have never given anyone else. I want to brand every inch of her with my devotion, to make her understand that she is perfect, that she is mine and always will be. My thumbs draw slow circles over her hips, my palms mapping the shape of her waist and the softness of her stomach, relearning her the way a starving man learns the shape of bread.