Page 80 of The Wrong Heart

“You smiled,” I remind him. “You laughed.”

His fingers dig into my hips, forehead dropping to the top of my head. The air around us crackles and shimmers with possibility as he drags his hands back up my body with a subdued groan. I teeter and sway, my balance stolen by the muck beneath my feet and the man touching me in a way no other man aside from Charlie has ever touched me before.

Parker lets out a hard breath into my hair. “This won’t end well.”

He lifts his hands higher until he’s palming my breasts through the lace of my bra, and a surge of white-hot heat sweeps through me, arousal pulsing in my core. I’m waist-deep in ice cold water, but I might as well be standing in an incinerator. “Parker…”

“Fuck,” he grits out, his thumbs dusting over my lace-sheathed nipples, taut and pebbled. “You’re fucking me all up inside.”

I arch back, squeezing his sodden shirt between my fists for leverage. “Parker,” I repeat through an achy moan, his thigh angling right between my legs. “Kiss me.”

—NINETEEN—

All this time, I’ve been wrong about her.

She’s not sunshine.

She’s glittering nightfall, pale moonlight, silver stars in midnight skies.

She’s that beacon of light when darkness threatens and consumes.

No, she’s not the sun…

Melody is the moon.

“Kiss me.”

She grinds herself against the front of my thigh with brazen disregard for anything else. Her skin is slick and wet beneath my fingertips as I palm her tits through gritted teeth, my cock rock-hard despite the cold water. I’m trying not to lose control because I know the moment this begins, there’s no stopping it. I’m in too fucking deep, and the only way out will hurt like hell.

Butgoddamn, all I want to do is wrap her legs around me and fuck her senseless in the middle of this dirty ass lake.

Melody moans again, pressing herself fully into me. “Please.”

Kiss her?

Jesus… no. I can’t do that.

I won’t.

She grips the back of my head and lifts her chin until we’re eye to eye, noses touching.

… Butfuck,I kind of want to.

I want to know if that smile that has haunted me for the last few months tastes as sweet as it looks.

A growl erupts in my chest, and I tug her hair back, just as a crack of thunder pierces the silent night. Melody stares up at me, chest heaving, eyes glazed with lust. Her perfectly pink lips part, beckoning me to sample them, and her bottom lip quivers as I inch closer until I’m a hair’s breadth away from her begging mouth.

I think I’m going to—I think I’m going to kiss her right here beneath lightly falling drizzle, my shoes sinking into sludge while my body sinks intoher.

But the moment shatters…just like that.

Melody’s hands dip beneath my wet t-shirt, her fingertips grazing along my hidden scars, and I don’t think she even notices because she’s too preoccupied waiting for my mouth to claim hers… but I fucking notice.

And I freeze, going ramrod still and releasing her like she’s my foe crossing over enemy lines.

Melody stumbles, hardly keeping her balance in the water, her eyes wide and wounded when she steadies herself and stares up at me. “Parker?”

“This is a fucking mistake,” I ground out, moving backwards, my shoes and soaked denim weighing me down. “Just… stay away.”

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