Page 185 of Of Blood and Banes
The only thing filling the silence is his heavy breathing. And the pounding of my heart. The realization settles over me. He hates the way I make himfeel.
He slams two fingers against his heart, so hard that my own chest hurts, and his voice cracks. “And yet, I can’t fucking hate you. No matter how…fucking…hard…I try. You’ll destroy my life, and everything I’ve worked for, and…for some godsforsaken reason…I would let you?—”
I swallow up the last bit of space between us and crush myself against him, pressing my lips to his. We turn into a tangle of greedy hands and melting mouths.
I just want him to touch me.
Have his lips on mine.
Every second he isn’t touching me is unbearable.
His hands grip the back of my skull hard enough to make my scalp scream. His own desire is feverish as he claims my mouth, holding me to him like he’s scared to let me go.
My hands frantically pull at his shirt, untying the top of it with a messy, frenzied speed in case he changes his mind. He gasps surprise into my mouth, and jerkily begins to rip his jacket off, shrugging the material off his shoulders as his lips are locked onto mine. We break apart as I unlace my own top, and rather impatiently, he brushes my hands aside. Quickly, he removes the article of clothing at three times the speed I would have been able to. He tosses my shirt off carelessly, followed by all theother articles of clothing separating us. Once we are both naked, I push back into him with a kiss until we fall onto the bed.
I land on top of him, my hair swinging forward and curtaining the both of us in this experience far different from what it has been before. He might have wanted me all the times before, but now? Now heneedsme. He tucks my hair behind my ear, and I can see it in his eyes. How he holds my gaze. And kisses me.
Gone is his usual bravado and arrogance. His expression is deadly serious, like this means something to him. Like this isn’t just some silly fantasy way to pass the time or form of manipulation.
I kiss him with everything he’s supposed to hate about me. Fueled by every desire to shove those things he hates in his face. Giving him every reminder of why we wouldn’t work. Why this is just sex.
I bite his bottom lip and tug at it, hoping to convey what this is supposed to mean for both of us. This is just sex. It doesn’t need to be more.
He groans, then holds the back of my head in one hand and braces his other hand against my lower back before he rolls himself on top of me. But as he hovers over me, his muscled arms on either side of my head and his brown locks sweeping down toward me over those soft green eyes…
Face to face.
It shouldn’t be this tempting, but…the way he looks at me stirs something within my chest. It makes me completely forget what I just tried to convince him we were doing here.
He pushes up away from me to kneel, then grabs behind my bent knee. Pulling it across my body to roll me onto my hands and knees. Our silent agreement. Just. Sex.
I catch his forearm, removing his grasp from my leg and sliding my hip back open. “Not tonight,” I whisper. “I want you to see me.”
A wave of shock and hesitation washes over his features, and before he can argue with me, I pull him into another kiss. Every muscle in him relaxes, bit by bit, as if he’s surrendering himself to me. I swipe his lips open with my tongue, and we turn into a slow spiral of heat. Without breaking our kiss, I reach down between us and grab his hardened cock and pull him to me. Arching my hips up in a silent plea, he obliges, dipping low to sink himself inside of me. I wrap my legs around his waist, locking my ankles.
Rather than fucking me with unmatched vigor and carnal need, he breaks our kiss and rolls his hips into me. Slowly. Burrowing each inch deeper inside of me with every staggered breath we share. He moans as he fills me to the brim, until our bodies are completely flush with one another.
He hangs his head before pulling out slowly and gliding into me again. I snake my fingers into his hair as he adopts a steady motion. He must feel my legs trembling around his waist because he flicks his attention to me and shifts up to grab my ankles. Gently, he directs me to bend my knees to my chest. He arches over me again and is back to rolling himself inside of me.
And oh, Gods, does it do something to me. At a depth and angle I’ve never experienced, I come undone around him. My cries drip from my lips as stars cloud my vision, and wave after wave of ecstasy rolls over me.
His face tenses, his jaw nearly wired shut as he squeezes his eyes closed. As if he’s close to his own climax. I slide my legs out from between our chests to bracket his hips once more, locking my ankles again at his lower back. He groans at the new position, his head hanging low and avoiding my eye contact.
“Hey…” I breathe, my heart racing, the words fumbling out before I can stop myself as I grab his face in my hands. “I want to see you, too…”
He flicks his eyes up to me, locking into my stare. Pinning me with his eye contact, where it feels wrong to move. Wrong to evenbreathe. Not that I wanted to.
I nod, understanding just how close he is. “It’s okay,” I whisper.
His forehead bumps mine as he gently rests his head against me, his hips still rocking slowly. His mouth parts into something fragile. Every angled, angry line of tension etched into his face from the hardened years melts as his eyes blink slowly. And yet, he doesn’t look away.
He doesn’t look away.
He looks atme.
All at once, I see him. Everything he’s tried to hide, every corridor of horrific secrets and monstrous flaws. A chasm of pain masked by violence and sarcasm and sex. Every distant flicker of happiness, every shimmer of hope and longing, all swept into one abyss of green. The green of new beginnings. Of the forest. Of the trees I once called home, and of the one place that made me feel safe.
Yet, here he is.
