Page 168 of Mud

Fuck, I was dying.

“Get off me,” I said through gritted teeth, trying but failing to push him off.

“Stop moving first,” Taland said.

“No! You don’t get to throw me around like this, damn it! Get the hell off me!”

“Calm down, and I will.”

Fuck that.I continued to demand he let me go, and he continued to tell me to calm down, and we went at it like that for at least five minutes.

By the end of it, I really was exhausted and in need of some rest. I just…gave up. I stopped talking. Stopped moving, stopped trying to push him off.

He stopped, too.

My eyes were closed and I was breathing heavily. My hair stuck to my forehead from sweat. Every inch of Taland’s body was pressed against every inch of mine, and my heart was beating everywhere, in my chest and gut and throat and ears.

Fuck,I’d missed the feel of his body on mine so much. He had his hands on my wrists, pinning my arms to themattress, and his legs were over mine still, even though I’d stopped fighting. He wasn’t getting off me.

By Iris, I didn’t want him to, even though a million things were spinning in my head.

“I almost killed a man because of you,” I whispered because I still couldn’t think straight because of it.

“He’ll be just fine,” he muttered under his breath.

My eyes squeezed shut and I turned my head to the side, and he didn’t hesitate to rest his forehead to my temple.

“What the hell were you thinking, Taland? You can’t just do that to me without me even knowing about it.” I was too exhausted to be pissed off right now, but I was having trouble believing that he’dreallydone that.

“I can’t fucking stand the idea of another man’s hands on you. Of your lips on someone else’s. I can’t stand it.” He pressed himself to me harder, and it was a miracle I stopped the moan when he moved his head and pressed his lips on my jawline. “Never.”

“You have no right—” I started, though there really was no part of me willing to fight at this point. Not anymore.

The way he felt stripped me ofeverything.

“I have whatever right I want to have,” the asshole cut me off. “I told you that you could only ever be mine the first time we were together, sweetness. I meant it. It’s not my fault if you didn’t believe me.”

Fuck, he was so frustrating—and he planted kisses all the way up to my earlobe as he spoke.

Stupid,stupidme didn’t move away still.

“You’re not even sorry,” I whispered, more to myself than to him, as my body continued to relax while he kissed my cheek lazily, slowly, as if I wasn’t in charge of it at all anymore. All that anger was gone. All of it—disappeared.

He chuckled, then raised his head a bit. Impossible not to open my eyes and look at him.

“Not for a second.”

“You—”

He slammed his lips to mine and kissed me.

This was the part where I should have forced myself to try for one last time to get him off me. Save some dignity. Just do the thing I knew was right and get myself as far away from this guy who’d put a fucking magical chastity belt on me, and I had never even realized it.

He wasn’t sorry about it. He wasn’t sorry that I’d almost killed a guy by kissing him. He simply couldn’t care less.

And nowIcouldn’t care less, either, because he was kissing me, and it was everything a kiss was supposed to be. It was fireworks and colors and magic inside my body, the stuff fairytales were made of.

So, I caved. So pathetically easy, I caved, and I kissed him back. I needed him too much to resist anymore. I wanted him with every fiber of my being.

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