Page 25 of Never Die for a Sinner
Oh, I am so screwed.
“What’s the matter, little ghost?” he asks, his voice a heavy mixture of pure seduction and straight danger. The tenor slips through my bloodstream, and my thighs tighten over the aching sensation there. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“I wanted water.” I don’t know why I’m bothering to tell him. It’s not like he owns me.
He smirks, his gaze studying me. My skin sears from the eye contact.
“You think you’re safe in your secrets, little ghost?”
“Whatever game you’re playing, I don’t want any part of it,” I manage, even if my voice is slightly shaky. He picks up on it, of course, and raises his fingertips to brush them down my cheek.
My skin burns where he touches me, like the flames of hell have crawled up to seduce me to sin.
“And what game would that be, Ava?”
The game where he tries to prove what I already know. There’s something about Levi Cross and that devil-may-care smirk that does something for me.
I swallow over the lump in my throat at the way he says my name. My hands grip the countertop harder when his fingers glide across my jaw down to my throat. Gently, he wraps those fingers around my throat, not constricting, but like he’s reminding me that he could squeeze the life out of me at any moment.
“If you’re trying to scare me, it’s not going to happen,” I lie. My tongue darts out to lick my lips, and his gaze follows the movement, darkening like he’s deeply disturbed by something.
Leaning forward, the stubble on his cheek brushes against the skin of my neck when neither of us moves. My heart feels like it’s going to beat right out of my chest. My thighs are damp with need, and my mind is so scrambled, I’m having a hard time forming a coherent sentence.
It’s just a man, Ava. One who has made it perfectly clear from the moment you arrived that he wants nothing to do with you.
I freeze when his lips skate over my racing pulse, leaving a trail of fire in their wake. I grit my teeth to silence the sigh that threatens to leave me, my eyes fluttering closed when his fingers tighten around my throat, just enough to remind me they’re still there.
“Your body’s begging for me, sweetheart,” he murmurs, almost like he’s angry about it. I’m not even sure he realizes he’s said it out loud.
“I don’t want anything to do with you,” I whisper, though my core tightens with his words.
My heart hammers in my ears when he grabs my hand off the kitchen counter, slipping it between us and raising it to mythroat, before closing his on top of them. He squeezes lightly. Enough for me to feel my pulse racing.
“Feel that?” he breathes, barely above a whisper, and a shiver ghosts through me at the darkness in his gaze. “That’s all I need to know you’re lying.”
“Am I?” I challenge myself to meet his gaze head-on, though it feels like staring into a black hole and trying not to get sucked into its gravitational pull.
Something flashes across his features, and then his fist tightens. I glare back at him, refusing to back down. Fuck him. He doesn’t control me.
My heartbeat skitters under my fingertips. Levi notices, his lips tipping up at the corner in a devilish smirk that does something to my body that I’m powerless to stop.
Shame rushes in, my cheeks flaming. The ache between my thighs is embarrassing, reminding me that only two men have ever been there and that to Levi Cross, I probably am a prude. I may as well be naked underneath him right now, with how exposed I feel under that icy blue gaze.
Maybe that’s why I’m so excited by it. The idea that a man like Levi Cross could look at me the way he looks at other women. Like I’m something to be desired, not a pest or a puppet.
Not that it matters. Levi has never shown any interest in me. Least of all, sexually. Whatever he’s doing right now is a ruse to get me to get under my skin because I bruised his ego when I told him I’d never sleep with him, and I’ll be damned if I fall for it.
“What about your secrets, Levi?” I breathe, and he doesn’t move for a long moment, continuing to stare down at me with that dangerous black gleam in his eyes. Like he could rip me to shreds with his teeth, his lips pull back into a slight snarl, and if he weren’t already devilishly handsome, he would look monstrous.
“Run back to your bed while you can.” He releases me, that familiar coldness returning to his gaze. Finally, he looks away, and whatever spell he’d had me under is broken.
I don’t stick around to ask what that means. I’m not sure I want to. Instead, I grab my glass of water on unsteady legs and hurry past him toward the kitchen door.
“Oh, and Ava,” his voice rings out in the darkness behind me.
Begrudgingly, I turn and find him watching me, something demented in those eyes.
His lips tip up in a smirk.
