Page 86 of They Break Beauty

I closed my eyes, savoring her taste, her lips on mine, her finally wanting me without any convincing on my part, actually truly connecting with me.

When I went to ease away because I felt myself getting worked up, the urge to escalate things when that wasn’t what this was about in this moment, she chased my lips.

I grinned and grasped her hips, holding her at bay.

“Lock up your car, I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Yeah,” she rasped, still caught in the moment. “Take me home.”

Christ.

I hadn’t wanted the ride to end.

It had barely been ten minutes having her on my bike, her chest plastered against my back, her arms linked tightly around my waist, as her sweet coconut scent wafted over me and her heat had rolled through me. Halfway through she’d even tightened her hold around me, and then I’d felt her cheek pressing against me as she’d drawn ever closer, like she hadn’t wanted the ride to end either.

Something had fallen into place between us in that campus parking lot, something that hadn’t been possible before because of so much resistance and fear on her end.

But now that had shifted in her—or at least begun to.

It was just a shame that it had taken Hex coming at her to jar that into being for her.

The idea of anyone coming at her made me sick to my stomach and infected me with a rage so pure the whole fucking world should cower at the mere sight of me.

The fact that it was Mason behind it caused a complication that didn’t compute with my automatic protocol to decimate in the face of such an offense.

It posed a barrier.

I didn’t care for barriers. I mowed them the fuck down.

And I was a vengeful fucker by nature. My years-long crusade being a testament to that.

If someone came at me, I struck back tenfold and razed the threat to the goddamn ground.

No matter the consequences.

Something Mason hated with every part of his hollow vacuum of a soul.

Yet, him being who he was to me, he’d forced me into a state of inaction—at least the immediate kind. He’d forced me to tone down an immediate brutal response, and to finagle another way to go about delivering punishment for the offense and, more importantly, protection for my girl from anything further being levied upon her.

I swallowed down the rage, placing it into a box for the time being. Because what mattered right now was her. This connection I’d felt snap into place between us earlier.

I couldn’t allow anything to mar that or take precedence.

I’d waited too fucking long.

It wasn’t just Hex inadvertently pushing her to embrace that which she’d denied for so long. It was also my absence giving her time to come to terms with things I’d brought back to life and thrust right into the forefront for her. Who knew the act of essentially doing nothing—giving her space—would actually prove such a powerful aid?

I pulled into the rear lot of her apartment building.

Her apartment was on the fourth floor facing toward this particular lot, and the forest flanking it.

As I dismounted my Harley, I went to reach out to help Brianna down, but she swung her leg over like a pro and did it herself.

I watched enraptured as she pulled off my helmet and shook out her long silky black hair like something out of a shampoo commercial.

She passed it to me and I stowed it in one of my saddlebags.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a ride.”

---