Beautiful Ruins – Iris T Cannon

I could feel him before he touched me. The heat of him. The way the air settled when he moved behind me. I reached for his mug at the same moment he did. His arm came around me, reaching past my shoulder for the cup. Too close. My breath caught. His chest brushed my back. Not intentionally. Close proximity. It sent a current through me that made my pulse spike. He didn’t step away. His hand closed around the mug, but instead of retreating, he stayed there.

One arm braced on the counter beside me. The other holding the cup. Caging me in. My heart stuttered. I was trapped. Exactly where I wanted to be. I could feel the solid line of him at my back. The steady rise and fall of his chest. The tension humming just beneath his skin. He lowered his head slightly, breath ghosting near my ear. And then he stopped. He made no further move. He just… waited. I realized something in that stillness. He wasn’t going to take from me.

If anything happened next, it would be because I chose it. My pulse roared in my ears. He’d been so careful. Even in his bedroom this morning, he’d kept a distance I hadn’t requested but understood. But I didn’t want distance. I turned slowly in the space he’d created.

We were impossibly close now. My back was to the counter. His body angled toward mine. His hand still braced beside me. His eyes searched my face. Questioning. Always asking without words. My mouth felt dry. He wouldn’t move first. He needed to know. So it was up to me. I rose onto my toes and closed the space between us. My lips brushed his.

For a split second, he didn’t move. Then he did. His mouth softened against mine, warm and deliberate. Unrushed. Not hungry. His lips were softer than I expected. Pillowy, slow, tasting faintly of mint and something distinctly him. The world narrowed to that single point of contact. Butterflies exploded in my stomach, wild and electric. A slow heat coiled low in my belly, unfamiliar and thrilling and terrifying all at once. He kissed like he meant it. Like every movement of his mouth carried weight.

One of his hands came up, fingers threading into my hair. He held me there, not forcing, just anchoring. I melted. I didn’t know any other word for it. I melted into him. My hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt. I pressed closer without meaning to. A soft sound slipped from my throat into his mouth before I could stop it.

He deepened the kiss in response, slow and languid, exploring without devouring. It was the most exquisite thing I’d ever known. Not frantic. Not desperate. Just… feeling. I had never been kissed like that. Like I mattered. Like I was something worth taking time with. My knees weakened.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. 1kitap1.com/en CONTENTS Content Warnings 1. Raze 2. Izzy 3. Raze 4. Izzy 5. Raze 6. Izzy 7. Raze 8. Izzy 9. Raze 10. Izzy 11. Raze 12.

Izzy 13. Raze 14. Izzy 15. Raze 16. Raze 17. Raze 18. Izzy 19. Raze 20. Izzy 21. Raze 22. Izzy 23. Raze 24. Izzy 25. Raze 26. Izzy 27. Raze 28. Izzy 29. Raze 30. Izzy 31. Izzy 32. Raze 33. Raze 34. Raze 35. Izzy 36. Raze 37.

Raze 38. Raze 39. Epilogue – Izzy 40. Epilogue – Raze Also by Iris T Cannon 1kitap1.com/en CONTENT WARNINGS Beautiful Ruins is a dark mafia romance which contains elements which may be distressing to some readers. Please read only what you can handle. Violence Blood and gore Murder Kidnapping Forced proximity Assault Explosives Trauma Abuse 1kitap1.com/en W 1 RAZE ater dripped somewhere in the dark, slow and steady, like the building itself was bleeding out.

The concrete floor was uneven, cracked in places, slick with damp that had no business existing this far underground. I took one careful step, then another, watching my boots more than the men waiting for me. Italian leather didn’t deserve this kind of abuse. If I scuffed them for this deal, someone was going to lose a kneecap.

The space had once been part of an old factory—manufacturing something harmless; buttons, if my memory serves me. Now it was stripped down to bare bones and shadows, with rusted support beams and crates stacked haphazardly like they’d been dropped and forgotten. The men across from me were Bratva. Five of them, packed into thick coats that didn’t quite hide the guns beneath them.

Their thick accents weighed down every word, and their eyes never stopped moving as they surveyed their surroundings for threats. Paranoid bastards. I would be too, if I were meeting with me. They were armed, badly trained, and sweating through their collars. It felt like this meeting mattered more to them than it did to me.

Which meant it probably did. “You bring what you promised?” The leader inquired. The scar through his eyebrow gave his face a permanent scowl, and his hand hovered at his gun like it needed reassurance. With fingers that jittery, he’d probably put a bullet in his own thigh before I gave him a reason to use it. I nodded once. The case snapped open at my feet.

Inside was order in a place that rarely deserved it—compact charges fitted snugly, the wiring color-coded and fancy, detonators secured and ready. Clean. Beautiful in a way only precision could be. Art. The Bratva leader leaned closer, eyes lighting up despite himself. “Military grade?” he probed.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 65b66fbc14157ad7
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,484,209 bytes (1.415 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 304
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 328.61 minutes
• Total Words: 65,721
• Total Characters: 379,250
• Average Words per Page: 216.19
• Average Characters per Page: 1247.53

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