Page 69 of Lies Like Love

“No.”

“Exactly.”

He dips down to steal a kiss, but he takes so much more than my lips. His mouth on mine sends my blood racing through my veins, and my heart jumps straight from my chest and into his hands like it belongs there.

Jude’s fingers tangle in my hair, as he pulls me tighter to him.

Rough, unforgivable.Inescapable.

He picks me up into his arms, and there’s no place more dangerous.No place I feel saferas I wrap myself around him.

He carries me to the couch and throws us onto it, not breaking our kiss as he lays over me. And I can’t help but explore him through his clothes. The ridges of his muscles beneath his shirt, hard and laced in demonic ink. He draws my tongue into his mouth and sucks on it, before releasing it and sinking his teeth hard into my lower lip.

Why do I thrive on his pain?

He wraps his fingers around my throat, breaking the kiss and lifting enough to pin me to the couch. His pupils blow wide at the sight of me losing all breath and good sense for him. Slowly, his other hand skates up my leg, into the slit of my dress, and along my inner thigh.

My eyes flutter at the sensation, and my head tips back on instinct, but Jude slides his hand into the hair at the back of my head and forces me to look at him.

“Don’t you dare look away from me when I’m touching you, Felicity.” He leans in to graze his lips over mine in a taunt. “I want you to watch every wicked thing you let me do to you. Deny it all you want; we both know you’ve always dreamed of being my bad girl.”

He drags his lips down my jaw, my neck, and sinks his teeth into the tender flesh at the base of my throat. I’m sure he feels my heart racing. If he sunk his teeth in just a little farther, he’d taste how my blood runs hot only for him.

“Say it,” he says, his breath on my neck as he rakes his teeth over me.

“What?” My heart is racing.

“You know what.”

I do, and it makes me hate him even more. “I want to be your bad girl.”

He sinks his teeth in again, this time so hard my back arches. I know what he’s doing, he’s leaving his mark on me. He’s claiming what’s his. His teeth bite into my skin so hard there will be marks where anyone can see them, and I’m sure that’s what he wants.

“I want to be yours.” This whisper is different, but I don’t take it back because I mean it whether I want to or not.

He sits back on his heels, releasing me. I didn’t realize my body was chasing him until I slump back and have to catch myself on my elbows.

“You aremine.” His fingers work the buttons on his shirt, and he watches me as he pops each one. Slowly stripping it off so I’m faced with his bare chest.

My eyes sweep his tattoos, and unlike in the dim light of his room last night, in here, I see each one clearly. Demons, blood, skeletons, roses. Until my gaze lands on one in particular buried in the mess.

“Wait, what is this?” My hand flies to the peacock feather hidden in the greater design as my eyes find his.

“You know what it is.”

I swallow, feeling the question burning my tongue, but not asking. Still, he answers what’s unspoken with his dark green eyes.

He put this here for me.

Something he branded himself with. A symbol that used to feel like hope. A secret we shared. And all these years he’s carried it around with him.

I want to know why. I want him to explain how he could have walked away from me and still found it necessary to etch me into his skin. But he grips my wrist and moves it lower before I have the chance.

My palm flattens as he presses it against his rippling stomach, dragging it lower until I’m cupping the hard bulge beneath his zipper. The contact makes him twitch.

I love that I do that to him. That he can deny with his words all he wants, and he can lie to me every chance he gets. But his body tells me the truth the same way mine does him.

He wants us to burn in hell side by side.

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