Page 123 of Hold Me Until Morning

I’d thought he’d retreat from it.

Deny it.

Only instead of pushing me away, he gathered my hand and pressed my palm flat over the tattoo.

His eyes swam in affliction.

“It’s not sorrow, Hailey. It’s choosing a path, wrong or right, and following it because you know it’s the only thing you can do. It’s making a choice for someone else. Giving them peace or joy or maybe time, even when it might mean the loss of yours.”

My spirit tugged in anguish for him, at the loneliness that was suddenly staring back.

I wanted to ask him what he’d meant, but he kept gliding my palm downward, over the rippling muscles of his abdomen.

My breath went shallow as I glanced down at where he was heading—toward his cock that was outlined by his sweats, pressed up high, so fat and thick.

Only the thin fabric separated us when he set my hand over his hard, steely length. Flames licked up my arm, and he moaned a seductive sound as I fisted my hand around him.

Greed banged against the walls, rebounding and reverberating, sending the heat soaring again, though his voice curled with that easiness. “Careful, darlin’, or you’re going to make me embarrass myself.”

“I don’t think there’s a thing you have to be embarrassed about.” I pumped his massive cock over his sweats.

Lust radiated from his flesh, and he fiddled with a lock of my hair as he looked across at me with eyes that no longer were just molten but flamed.

“How’s it possible you are right here in front of me?” The words were ragged rasps. “Meant it when I said it should be impossible for someone like you to exist. There shouldn’t be a treasure so great. A beauty so abstract. You had me the second I stumbled on you in that trailer, Hailey. The way my guts curled with lust at the sight of you. I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind since.”

That’s what this was, wasn’t it?

Lust?

Except there was something bigger suspended in the air. Something that beat profound and whipped around us, a gravity that I knew better than to slip into.

Only I was getting drawn there, careening his direction.

I angled up high on my knees, letting my chest brush against his as I continued to stroke him.

“I’ve wanted you since that summer. You’re the first man who ever made me desire.”

I should keep my mouth shut.

Tie the admissions where they bubbled on my tongue.

But I didn’t know how to stop the confession from bleeding free.

He winced again, and a grimness clouded his expression. “When I was with her.”

He didn’t form it a question. He already knew. And my heart was twisting, and I knew I was in the wrong, that this was a betrayal, and it was going to hurt.

Because everything I felt went so much deeper than this could ever be, knitting up in mayhem, and I should have been smart enough to know how it was going to end.

I was setting myself up to get shredded.

My stupid heart smashed.

But in that moment, I didn’t care.

I wanted it.

I wanted it all.

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