Page 126 of Cruel Lies

"This ugly mug?" I laughed, brushing off her brazen claims. A part of me wanted them to be true, but a part of me wanted her to take it back. To hate my face like I did. "There are better things to look at when you’re coming around my dick."

"I want to look you in the eyes when I finally get what I’ve wanted for years."

I blinked in confusion.Surely she couldn’t mean me."Oh? And what is it you’ve wanted so long?"

She swallowed thickly, and then, wincing the whole time, she scooted to the end of the bed and wrapped her legs around my waist, locking me in place. Her words sent a chill down my spine.

"You."

FIFTY-ONE

HARPER

I’d wantedNash for so long, I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t wanthim to notice me more, talk to me more, pay attention to me more than those hoes he fucked around with in school. Hell, half the time I ran around after we graduated, I wore things I knew he liked.

Short skirts with pleats. Tops with strings to untie. String bikinis I intentionally asked him to tighten the top of just to feel his fingers on my skin.

Nash liked to unwrap things, and I wanted to be his present.

And now, I finally had him, and he was so different I didn’t know whether to mourn the man he used to be, or celebrate the monster he’d become.

I wasn’t the same girl I used to be. I wasn’t the girl who played coy to win his affection and the little attention he paid me in between women in his bed.

I was a woman who knew what she wanted. And if I was going to be out here, breaking all my own rules, then I might as well go all the way.

"Fuck me, Nashville Blackwood," I demanded, my hand shooting out to grab him by the front of his shirt so I could yank him down to meet my lips. "Make mefeelthings."

I’d been so afraid to feel for so long. So afraid to love, afraid of connections, afraid that somewhere down the line, I’d lose myself and end up more hurt than the time they betrayed me on that bridge.

Now, I was afraid ofnotfeeling the very thing I’d been running from this whole time. I wanted to relish whatever time I had with them. I almost died. I could die any day. Time wasn’t guaranteed.

"Please," I begged, hating myself for being weak for him. "Please, Nash."

His hands made short work of the zipper on his pants, and the fucker didn’t even bother pulling them off before henotched the head of his dick at my entrance and grabbed my hips, fingers digging into my ass as he slid home like he belonged there.

Inside me.

The two of us, one.

"Shit," he breathed, gritting his teeth as inch after glorious inch of his cock disappeared inside my tight heat, stretching me, filling me, too much and yet just enough in the same breath. "Shit, Harpie girl, you’re strangling me."

"Not quite," I mused, my fingers tangled in the sheets. "But I could, if you’re into that."

"Maybe later," he growled, his hands shaking as he lifted me slightly off the bed for better access. In one move, he slid home inside me, down to the hilt of his shaft, bottoming out in me as I groaned through the sensations.

Fuck, he was so big.

Angel was bigger, though.

I hadn’t had my hands around it, but fuck if I didn’t know he was packing from the way it pressed against me when I woke up first. Or when he’d had me pinned to the car, our tongues down each others’ throats, that collar around my neck like?—

Okay, I should definitely not be thinking about his brother while I was in bed with him.

There was something wrong with me. Something broken. I supposed that was why I fit in so well with these warped versions of the boys I’d grown up with. Because at our cores, we were all a little twisted up inside.Broken.

"Fuck me," I pleaded, "I need you to move inside me, Nash."

"Say less," he breathed, sliding himself out almost all the way to the tip.

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