I’d purposefully placed them there so I’d see them every morning when I looked in the mirror.
A warning not to fall.
Love is the heart’s greatest deceit.
“Do you feel that?” she asked. So quiet. So unsure.
“What?” I growled, wrapping an arm around her waist to tuck her closer.
“This feelin’ like I know you in a way that I shouldn’t. Like we’re connected in some way that we can’t see. Like we’ve been tied somewhere in the past. I felt it that first night, and I’ve felt it every night since.”
Like the selfish fucker I was, I let my nose travel across her temple, inhaling her delicate scent.
Cherries and the sky.
“I think you’re searching for something that isn’t there.” It came off my tongue like a demand, hard and praying that she would think better of this and get the fuck out of there before I lost my mind.
Did more damage.
“And maybe what I’ve been lookin’ for is standing right here.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for, Precious,” I murmured at her ear. I trailed my lips across her skin, tracing down her neck and scrolling over her delicate shoulders.
Kissing across the soft, seductive flesh.
Emily whimpered and dropped her head back to grant me better access. “I think what I’m askin’ for is you. Can you hear it? The way my body is calling out for you? It shouldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t. But I can’t stop the way I’m feelin’. I couldn’t stop it then, and no matter how hard I’ve tried, there is no stopping it now.”
A little piece of me died right there.
Maybe it was one of the threads that hung onto her so fucking tight.
Snip, snip, snip.
Like maybe there was a chance of my getting free.
I shuttered my heart against the thought.
“I want you so fucking bad it hurts, sweet girl. You have me so spun up, I’m forgetting who I am.”
“Or maybe you are just discoverin’ something new.”
There she went with all that belief. Seeing something brilliant and good buried in the bad.
She should be terrified. But she was holding onto me like I might be able to offer her something better.
I hoisted her from her feet. She wrapped those sleek legs around my waist about as tightly as she wrapped her arms around my neck.
“I want to feel somethin’ good.” She whispered the words along the pulse point that thrummed in my neck, her lips so soft as she kissed along the flesh. “I need you to remind me that there is somethin’ good out there for me. I need to feel. To feel alive.”
Flames leapt, and my stomach fisted with need.
Greed taking me over.
“I’m the last person you want to show you that.”
“You’re wrong. You’re the only person I want to show me that.”
I’d left the sliding door open to my room, the lights completely cut, the only illumination coming from the bare lights that shone from the balcony wall that became a hazy mesh with the moon.
I carried her to the lounge chair that sat immediately inside, set her onto her feet, and swiveled her away from me just as fast.
There was a large mirror hanging from the wall right in front of her.
I needed her to see herself the way that I did.
A gasp raked from her throat, surprise and heat exploding in the atmosphere.
I bent her over so her hands were planted on the arm rests of the fabric chair.
The back of her neck was exposed to me, her firm ass angling toward me in its own plea.
Jade eyes glittered where they met mine in the shadowy reflection, and tendrils of blonde that had gotten loose brushed her shoulders, her chest heaving like a song that had gone out of sync.
I smoothed my hands over the curve of her ass, my cock jumping in my jeans, need winding me so tight I couldn’t breathe. “You are so fucking perfect, Emily Ramsey. This body.”
I nudged my painfully hard erection against her bottom.
She whimpered and pressed back, welcoming the heat, her eyes never leaving mine as pants jutted from her mouth.
The sound was like gasoline to the charged, dense air.
I eased her back, running my hands up the outside of her ribs until I was cupping the front of her neck in my hand, the other pressing down on her quaking, quivering belly.
Blood thundered beneath my palm, a blustering storm ravaging the night sky.
Frantic and erratic and freed.
No fear.
I wanted to get lost in the sensation. Drunk on something that was pure and right.
From behind, my mouth caressed up the angle of her jaw and moved across her cheek. “This face that is unlike anything or anyone else. Priceless. Precious.”
She leaned back into me, the caress of her body ravaging my senses, her head resting on my shoulder.
The girl fully entrusting herself to my hands.
Fuck. This little thing was more than I could handle. A bigger temptation than I could endure.
Hands spread wide, I rode them down her slender arms until I was threading my fingers with hers. “These fingers that paint art. A picture written in song.”
She shuddered, her exhale sharp. “Royce,” she begged.
Guilt streaked.
What am I doing?
What am I doing?
I knew better than this. I needed to put an end to this before it completely spun out of control.
Before I couldn’t take it back.
But there was no stopping this moment.
I gathered our weaved hands and pulled them to the trigger point of her heart, holding her close. “But this? This is so much more than all of that. Better than anything I’ve ever witnessed. You want to see something good, Emily? Look right here.”
I pressed tighter against the drumbeat of her heart, and my voice lowered to a grunt. “And I refuse to taint that. Refuse to mar it with depravity. I’ve fucked up in more ways than I could ever count, and I won’t fuck this up, too. You’re worth too much, and I’m not talking dollars and cents.”
“You think we’re not all made of mistakes?” she murmured into the night.
Slowly, she turned around to face me. Her eyes glimmered in the muted light. “You think all of our days aren’t missteps and accomplishments? Joys and sorrows? Victories and failures? Not one of us is perfect, Royce, not one. Either we choose to remain captives to our mistakes or we choose to rise above them. Learn from them and become better.”
I held her by one side of the face. “And is this you rising above them? Or is this you making a mistake you’re going to regret forever?”
It was nothing but a warning.
Desire flashed through her expression, and she raked her fingers across my chest.
Hooks in my soul.
Shit.
She fluttered them all the way down my abdomen, my muscles flexing and ticking and jumping in need.
“This is me deciding what I want.” Her words were coarse and real. “What I need. What feels right. That is, unless you don’t want it? Tell me you don’t want this.”
She eased down.
The girl a queen who’d gotten to her knees.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
This was bad. So fucking bad.
She planted her hands on the outside of my thighs.
My dick jumped.
“I don’t.” It was gravel.
Her voice turned vulnerable. “Don’t lie to me, Royce. It’s the one thing I’ll ask of you. The one thing that would break me.”
Goddamn it.
Cupping her face, I let my thumb trace along the defined angle of her cheek. “You want the truth? The real truth? It fucking pisses me off how goddamn bad I want you, Emily. Want you in a way that isn’t right.”
She exhaled a quivering breath, and her tongue darted out to wet her lips, nerves shaking her down. She flicked the button of my black jeans, her expression going shy
and sweet.
I fucking loved that, too, need coursing fast, riding high, threatening to consume.
I was worried about wrecking her, but I was pretty sure it was this girl who was going to wreck me.
Leave me undone.
Unhinged.
Because I raked out a sound of compulsion when she edged my pants down my thighs and my cock sprang free, need so intense I couldn’t see.
Blinded.
Completely shattered when she wrapped a trembling hand around my length.
“Fuck,” I grunted.
“I can’t believe how gorgeous you are. You make me shake, Royce. Most nights I can’t sleep . . . and I lie there tossin’. You want to know what’s given me comfort? Thinking about this. Touchin’ you and you touchin’ me.”
She stroked me once, from base to tip.
Tiny thunderbolts of pleasure streaked.
My hips jutted forward without permission.
My thumb stroked her plump lips, and she sucked it into her mouth, and everything shifted. My spirit and my heart and my dick lunged forward, like the girl had a cord harnessed to my soul.
Possession took over.
“You gonna suck me, sweet girl? Take me with that sweet, sweet mouth? Sing me like one of your songs?”
She bit down on my thumb, just enough for me to feel the pressure, and I pulled it free with a pop, smearing her saliva that I’d gathered across her lips. They shone in the glint of moonlight.
She pressed a kiss to the head of my cock.
I jerked.
Fuck.
Little mind-wrecker.
All purpose failed to make sense.
“So beautiful. Every part of you,” she whispered like praise, her expression severe and intense and awed. “I bet I could write a million songs about you.”
I understood the urge.
Then she stroked her tongue across the top, down the side, back up and down again.
Licking me into a frenzy.
By the time she wrapped her mouth around me, sucked me down deep, I was already ready to blow.
“Fuck, shit, yes,” I grunted as she took me whole, both of her hands wrapped tight at the base of my dick. Stroking in sync.
My hands fumbled to get ahold of her face. To guide this dangerous rhythm. Worried if I let her take control, she was going to own it forever.
“You’re wrong, Emily. Fucking wrong. You’re perfect. Fucking perfect.” It all fell in an incoherent ramble from my mouth as she fucked me with hers, those eyes never leaving mine, communicating something I didn’t want to read.
The girl pure and hopeful and brave.
My hips jutted, pressing deeper, taking more when I knew it never should have been mine. Guilt constricting, filling me up in the same second as pleasure was taking me over.
Her soft tongue drove me into a frenzy, her mouth working me over and her spirit stealing into the cracks. Making space where I didn’t have any.
She moaned.
Taking what I would give. The tip of my cock hitting the back of her throat, the girl doing her best not to gag, the vibration of it hitting me like a bomb.
My thighs shook and my balls tightened.
And I was splitting.
Shattering.
Overcome as she swallowed me down while I gasped and shuddered, my mind leaving the space, floating out somewhere where it had no right to be.
Somewhere where I experienced her like a new song that burst in my mind.
Came to life in the same second a piece of myself did, too.
Emily swallowed as I pulsed, her eyes closed like she was relishing in the feel. In the experience. Like she wanted this every goddamn bit as much as me.
“So fucking perfect. So fucking perfect.” I could barely get it out over the heaving of my breaths, shallow and short, my heart stampeding, beating a path outward, like the bastard thought it would be a fine idea to meet with hers.
Reckless.
So goddamn reckless.
I pulled out of her mouth, slumping forward a bit, and Emily pressed her thighs together where she remained kneeling. I reached down and swept her up, setting her in the chair as I dropped to my knees.
My own offering.
Wishing it could ever be enough.
I spread my hands up the outside of her thighs, and she arched back in the chair, that flimsy material concealing next to nothing and leaving everything to the imagination.
Imagination that was running wild.
Wondering what it might be like if I really got to have this. A connection that was real. Something good.
“Please,” she begged.
“I wish I could give you everything,” I murmured, kissing up the inside of one thigh as I pressed my hands under the thin material, gathering the panties that covered that delicious heat.
I edged back to peel them down, watched her pant and shiver and moan.
“What do you need, sweet girl?”
“You. Everything. Anything,” she said as those hands spread down her body.
Fuck.
She shouldn’t be saying things like that to me.
I tugged her to the edge of the fabric chair, and I spread her by the knees, perfect, pink pussy on display, just like the rest of her.
“Perfect,” I rumbled again before I was diving in for a taste.
Surprise jetted from her lungs. “Oh god.”
I devoured the girl.
Devine.
Delicious.
Everything.
Fingers found my hair, digging in and tugging tight as she murmured her madness into the air.
“Yes. Royce. God. I shouldn’t feel like this. It’s not possible. You feel so good. So right.”
I wanted to beg her to stop, but it only incited me further.
Drove me to a ledge where I was so close to jumping.
Tongue lapping at her clit, I let my fingers explore, riding down her thighs, brushing her ass, sweeping through her engorged lips.
She bucked. “Please.”
I pushed two inside her tight pussy.
I nearly went off again, mind running wild. Desperate to know what my cock would feel like to be taking my fingers’ place. To feel the clutch of her body. To fuck her into oblivion.
Right where she was driving me.
I sucked and licked at her clit, driving my fingers fast and deep and hard.
She writhed and jerked, and I could feel her winding up.
Pleasure gathering to a pinpoint.
My assault increased, and I was touching her everywhere, laving with my tongue, sucking her into my mouth and scraping with my teeth.
Two seconds later, she fractured, the girl a million pieces I held in the palms of my hands. She cried out my name. A prayer. Like I could make an impact that would build something rather than destroy.
And I wished and I wished and I wished that it could be. That I could have a fucking do-over.
I slowed, led her through the aftershocks, the little pinpricks that buzzed through her body.
I edged back, looked up at this gorgeous woman who was spread out for me.
Skin covered in sweat, the smell of her sex on my tongue, need filling our air.
Her nightgown had gotten pushed up high around her waist, and that’s when I saw the scar etched on her side.
A jagged X carved right over her hip.
That was all it took to make me feel like I was going to vomit.
Quickly, I tucked myself back into my jeans and scrambled to find her underwear that I’d tossed to the ground, averting my gaze as I helped her back into them.
Those eyes kept peeking at me.
Searching for me.
To latch back onto the connection.
“Royce?” Her voice quivered, and I knew I was the biggest bastard that had ever lived.
Thirteen
Emily
“Royce?” I asked again.
I could feel his heart shuttering. Shutting down in fear. Closing over in someth
ing that looked like terror.
Avoiding my eyes, he urged me to stand while the man remained kneeling as he helped me into my underwear.
There was something about it that felt so utterly intimate even though I could tell he was tryin’ with all his might not to be affected.
Not to feel what had taken us over.
But it was his firm yet trembling hands that gave him away. The soft surety of his movements. The care in his regard.
The man was crouched down with all that black hair flopping over to one side, the tattoos scrolled over his shoulders and down his muscled back exposed to me for the first time.
A huge fallen cross that lie broken on the side of a deserted hill, weeds and thorns growing up to cover it, words that I couldn’t make out scratched out in crooked lines on his side.
Fingers clawed out from a pit in the ground.
Clearly condemned.
Looking for a way to be saved.
Maybe I was crazy that I had the urge to do some of that saving, wondering if in turn, he could do a little of that saving, too.
That maybe, somehow, we were two fragmented pieces that fit together.
But it was the words I saw he had imprinted just under his collarbone that made my spirit ache in agony.
Love is the heart’s greatest deceit.
My stomach tangled in another rush of want.
And maybe, maybe, I was just a fool.
Keeping his head down, he eased the lacy fabric all the way up my legs. Shivers streaked across my flesh as his forearms disappeared under my nightgown.
My hands darted out, fingers digging into his shoulders for support.
To keep from falling.
Tripping headfirst right into this dangerous, mysterious man.
“Royce.” This time I was begging.
Praying he wouldn’t stamp out this little part of me that he had sparked to life.
Reluctantly, he lifted his gaze. Hammering me with all that intensity.
Potent and wicked, though it was the flickers of grief shimmering in those onyx eyes that threatened to annihilate.
Totally wipe me out.
He kept me pinned with that unwavering stare as he eased the fabric of my nightgown up a fraction, his thumb just caressing over the scar that had been left to devastate. One I wished he wouldn’t have noticed. One I was doing my best to ignore.
Catch Me When I Fall Page 13
