POV: Kesley

The silence afterward felt enormous.

Leo lifted his head. His eyes met mine, and there was something in them I hadn't seen before, not anger, not pity, but a kind of recognition, as if he understood the weight of a secret you've never spoken aloud.

"Good girl," he said, and then his mouth was on me.

I cried out. The relief was staggering, his tongue working in that relentless, knowing rhythm, his hands pinning my hips to the mattress when I tried to buck against him.

He brought me to the edge in what felt like seconds, the denied arousal of the past twenty-four hours flooding back all...