Page 101 of Forget Me Not

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Oh, princess,” he chuckles, voice so dark it sends a shiver up my spine. My phone rings again, filling the clearing with a sounds way too chipper for the moment, but I ignore it, again. “I know you a lot better than you think.”

My phone rings, again, and this time I growl, pulling it out of my pocket, only for it to be tugged away from me in the blink of an eye.

Mouth hanging open, I watch as Reid tosses it right over the cliff . . .

And into the Atlantic Ocean.

The air around us seems to buzz with electricity as I wrack my mind for some kind of explanation for what just happened.

“Five fucking minutes of your time, Nova.”

“You asshole!” I snap, shoving at his chest with everything I have. I actually manage to make him stumble back a solitary step, but he catches me when I try to do it again.

Everything comes rushing to the surface. And I mean everything.

All those fights with Jack, all those years pretending I was content with my life of solitude. All the times I let everyone praise him for what a good husband he had been when all I wanted to do was shout to the world that he broken his promise to me, first.

All of it rushes to the surface in a tidal wave.

I’ve had enough. Enough of hiding from the world. Enough of being afraid to live because someone else didn’t. Out of the two of us who crashed into the Mississippi, I survived. The weak, innocent, and sweet Nova survived.

Reid sees me faltering and takes my hands, holding them between us and pressing me against him.

“Are you done?” he bites, voice gruff as both of us pant. His cock is hard against my stomach and the final act of my deranged mental breakdown is the need that burns right between my thighs.

I want him, even if I hate him right now.

“This is the Nova I see.” He pulls me even closer, until you couldn’t fit a single piece of paper between us. “This is the what’s been hiding behind that cheery smile. That magnetic force that I can’t fucking escape.”

God, that makes two of us.

I struggle against his hold, but he just kneels in the tall, wet grass, holding me with one hand under my ass and the other winding in the soaking wet ends of my hair and tugging my head back until he’s the only thing I can see.

“Tell me you hate me, little bird.”

I want to. I want to scream it at him until he leaves, but I can’t.

I don’t hate him anymore than he hates me.

Both our chests heave and I can feel the rapid beat of his heart against mine.

“You’re an asshole,” I remind him, my flesh burning where he touches the bare skin of my ass, even in the icy downpour. “You’re an asshole.”

My hands wind in the material of his shirt, not pulling him closer. Not really pushing him away.

“And you’re a brat,” he rasps, voice husky with the same blazing need I feel. His hand kneads the flesh of my ass, traveling lower over the smooth skin until he’s running the thin strap of my panties through his fingers.

“What do you want from me?”

His eyes fill with heat and spur something dark and caustic inside me. Something deadly that I’m not sure either one of us is ready to face head-on.

“I want to make you come, little bird,” he rasps, leaning forward to nip the skin of my jaw. I whimper when his tongue slips along my skin, catching a water drop as it slips down my neck. “I want to show you how I’ll punish you with my tongue, instead of my fists. I want to hear you moaning my name, feel you soaking my fingers.” His hand slips lower on my ass, cupping me through the lace of my panties. Heat winds through me from the simple, barely conceivable touch, and I desperately squirm against him. “I want your fire,” he murmurs, nipping the shell of my ear. “I want to break you.”

A shiver rolls though me at the bite of his voice in my ear and the roughness of his stubble against my skin.

Still . . . I’m not who he thinks I am. I’m not that sweet innocent girl.

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