Page 25 of Her Cruel Bodyguard

She wants me.

The words swim around my mind like a halo, illuminating every darkness in me.

“You are it,” I breathe out, my voice losing its tight edge. “You are everything,” and she is. A little too much for me. More than enough for me.

I pin my lips to hers, and as she rasps, parting her lips slightly, body thrumming with a pulsing need mimicking mine, I dive into it. I push my tongue deep into her mouth, her warm breath like fire licking up every cold spot and igniting it with blazing desire.

My hands can’t stay still beside me, so I let them explore for a short while. I allow myself this heaven before I spin us back into hell. One hand goes to push her lower to back to press her to me so she feels not just my screaming erection but my pounding heart. So she feels the effect of her existence on me.

My other hand goes around her neck, and I swallow her mouth, her moan, and her fire.

I kiss her hard and breathlessly. I kiss her like it’s the first time. I kiss her like I have been exposed to drought all my life and I have been tossed into a stream of pure ecstasy.

I kiss her, suck on her tongue, and let mine lead hers in a dance of pleasure.

I want to rip her dress apart. I want to let my hand explore more than just the curve of her back. I want to hear her moan my name. I want to pleasure her here and now. Taste her, feel her, devour her. I want it all.

But there is no going back if I let myself eat the forbidden fruit.

I could barely cope after just one kiss on her eighteenth birthday. How much more after now and even worse, after I taste her in the ways I have been dreaming of?

“Hmm,” I breathe in and slow the kiss down. I rip my hands away from her like she burns, and I stumble back. My Innocent devil. “I want to marry you, Eva,” I gulp. “But I can’t.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

EVA

Isaw his rejection coming.

“You can’t or you won’t?” I sound like some desperate college girl and, in truth, I am one. A girl who desperately wants the man she needs to want her back.

No, not quite.

He does want me. He just doesn’t want me enough to take me.

“I can’t,” he says as he takes a step back. His lips are swollen from our kiss, his face is flushed from arousal, and his eyes aredilated to a darker green, that nearly seems black.

I would have chewed on those lips if I knew they’d utter such stupid words next.

“Why?” I push my luck. I watch it bounce against the fortified walls where he keeps all his secrets, “You better tell me why, Fabio, and don’t you dare go silent on me,” I stab my forefinger at him.

“We should leave,” he turns but doesn’t walk away, “After you, Eva,” he gestures with his head, and I chuckle.

“It’s easy for you, isn’t it?” I strut to him, my eyes catching my damaged camera on the floor, and the sight depicts a visual representation of my heart, “You think I wanted this?” And by this, I mean to be in love with him.

No one chooses these things. They just happen.

Nobody asked me if I wanted to be in this situation—to be helplessly in love with Fabio, knowing there were so many restraints. And the most painful part about all of this is that, if I were allowed to choose for myself, I still would have chosen him a thousand times over.

I would have chosen him because every other person would have felt wrong. Every other person feels wrong.

I move until I am in front of him, balling my fists and tampering with the itch to punch him.

“Do it,” he quirks an eyebrow and I hate that he knows me well and accepts me the way he does. He makes it hard for me to hate him as I wish I could. Hate him for all his rejections that cut so deep they left scars that I, someday, hope to wear as a warrior’s spoils when he finally allows us to happen.

“Do what?” I dig my fingers into my palm.

My brain halts as a thought hits me. But can he take it if I hurt myself?

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