Page 83 of Cold Hard Truth

“Lyla.” I reach up, cupping her cheek, and she flinches, before blinking up at me. “I’m sorry.”

“No.” She plants her hand over mine when I try to pull away. “I trust you, Sage.”

She rubs her hand over mine, pressing her shoulder blades to the brick wall and shifting her hips forward.

“I’ve always trusted you.” Lifting off the wall, she raises onto her toes and brings her mouth to my ear. “The rain makes me feel good, and I want to feel good.”

I swallow hard as her body presses close. Her hands run down my chest, and rain falls all around us in a rhythmic hum. Skating her palms down my sides, I feel every graze of her fingers through my wet T-shirt, sticking to my skin.

Gripping her jaw, I turn her face to mine. “You make me feel good.”

Her body slumps against the brick wall, and I step closer, pinning her to it. Every heavy breath has my sanity snapping.

“We can’t do this again, Lyla.” I grip her cheeks harder, and she blinks up at me. “I’m not that same guy you remember.”

I’m haunted.

Broken.

There’s blood on my hands and a body count that should terrify her.

“Are you scared?” She taunts me.

Bringing my face directly over hers, rain drips from my mouth to her lips. “You’re trying to push me.”

“Maybe.”

“Always making me fuck everything up.”

“Only because you know you want to.”

“And what do you want, Lyla?” I press my body to hers, swelling against the heat of her core as she widens her stance.

“You,” she whispers.

“You shouldn’t.”

Tipping her mouth up, she grazes her lips to mine. “Why not?”

I sink my teeth into her lower lip and tug. And the moan that drags out of her shakes my bones. “Because if we do this now, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to let you go.”

26

Lyla

Sage pins me tothe wall.

He plants his lips on mine and steals the air from my chest.

His fingers grip my jaw, and I’m desperate to release the pressure. Shaking with the need for him to take me.

If I’ve been floating for years, Sage draws me back to myself. Back to him. To the only place that has ever made sense to me, even when it hurt too much to feel it. Until this moment, I had forgotten the comfort of belonging.

I hitch my leg up to wrap it around his hips. He grabs it, then the other, lifting me up and pressing himself between my legs. My skirt parts and I’m exposed as his hard length grinds against me.

It’s been so long that I’d forgotten how it feels to come alive forsomeone.

He carries me across the alley, and when I tighten my legs around him and search for friction, he slams me against the other wall.

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