Page 40 of Unmask
Her light blue eyes narrowed. “For how long?”
Before I could answer, the television behind us flickered with static, the screen’s blue glow washing over the room like cold moonlight. A polished news anchor materialized through the interference, her red suit crisp against the sterile backdrop of the studio. The headline crawled across the bottom of the screen in bold white letters:Teen Girl Still Missing—Authorities Search for Leads.
A photo of the girl flashed across the screen, and Kaylor’s entire body went rigid beside me, every muscle locking up.
“You know her?” I asked, my attention shifting from the screen to study the profile of her face.
She shook her head. “No.” But her eyes remained glued to the television screen, pupils dilated with emotion dangerously similar to panic. Not until the segment ended and cut to a commercial for car insurance did she finally blink, finally breathe.
When she turned back toward me, she found me closer than I’d been before, close enough that I could count the flecks of silver in her blue eyes, close enough to catch the faint tremor in her exhale. Our knees brushed, denim against bare skin, and the contact sent electricity shooting up my spine. I couldn’t stop staring at her, couldn’t tear my gaze away from the way her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat.
“What are you doing?” Her cheeks flushed, wariness darkening her eyes.
A slow release of air breezed through my nose as my fingers flexed against my thigh, as I fought the overwhelming urge to reach out and touch her. “I don’t know.” The confession scraped my throat raw, honest in a way that made me feel exposed. “I can’t stop fucking thinking about you. You’re in my mind twenty-four-seven, and I never get jealous, but now it feels as if I’m in a constant state of jealousy. I want to kill everyone who touches you.”
Her lips parted in shock, a small sound escaping that might have been my name.
I shifted my weight, draping one arm behind her along the back of the couch with deliberate casualness. The leather was warm under my forearm as I angled my body toward her, creating a cage of muscle and bone that blocked out the rest of the world. “You might not be ready to accept it, but I’m not relinquishing my claim on you. You’re mine, little raven. No one else will touch you.”
“You can’t just claim me.” Fire blazed in her eyes. “I’m not a possession.”
I smirked. “It’s already done. Unless you find someone brave and stupid enough to go against the Crew.”
“Does it matter at all that I don’t want you?” Her mouth said one thing, but her eyes kept darting to my lips.
I leaned in, closing the distance between us until our faces were separated by nothing but heated air and stubborn pride. Her breath fluttered against my skin, and I caught the faint scent of lavender clinging to her hair. “Liar,” I whispered, dropping my voice to that low, rough register that I knew got under her skin. Whether she wanted to acknowledge it or not, I knew exactly how to get to her, knew which buttons to push and which walls to tear down. “Prove that you feel nothing for me.”
The challenge hung in the space between us, loaded with implications that made her pupils dilate. Indecision played out across her features, desire battling with anger, need wrestling with pride.
I hadn’t come here to seduce her, hadn’t planned on using desire as a weapon in whatever twisted game we were playing. But the way her body responded to my proximity, despite her words, and seeing her resolve crack under the strain of our shared history, I realized that seduction might be the only way to break through the walls she’d built around her heart.
Sex was a great way to stir up all those emotions she was so determined not to feel about me. Physical desire had a way of overriding rational thought, of making people forget why they were angry in the first place. I had to keep reminding her that she wanted me, had to chip away at her defenses until there was nothing left but the truth of what existed between us.
I’d take her anger, her pain, her desperate attempts to push me away. I’d take it all and transform it into something else entirely. Something that looked like forgiveness, tasted like redemption, felt like coming home after years of wandering in the dark.
I was coming to realize there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do for her and no line I wouldn’t cross to keep her in my life.
Except walk away.
Never again.
That wasn’t an option anymore, not when she was sitting close enough to touch, not when I could see the pulse hammering at her throat and feel the heat radiating from her skin. She could hate me, could fight me, could make my life a living hell, but I would never, ever let her go again.
She snorted. “That sounds like a ploy tactic.” She angled her head to the side, her eyes falling to my lips. “You want to play games,Kreed?” She intentionally purred my name.
Having her flirt back with me took me by surprise. I expected a snarky quip. “Are you toying with me?”
“How does it feel?” Her lips parted as her tongue darted out to touch her top lip.
If her plan was to torture me, it was working, but she should know better than to taunt me. I was used to taking what I wanted, and her eyes were daring me to try. What was the worst that could happen? She rejected me? I could deal with that. Maybe not gracefully, but what I couldn’t deal with was losing her without trying to earn her forgiveness.
Did I deserve a second chance?
Probably not, but it wouldn’t stop me from getting what I wanted, and I started to accept it was her I damn well wanted.
I didn’t wait for her to pull away and put space between us. I swooped in and kissed her. She didn’t shove me away, but she also didn’t kiss me back at first, and I fought to go slow, to give her a moment to accept what I offered. I was about to lean back when a soft moan escaped her, and then her mouth shifted under mine. That was it… I was fucking gone.
Her lips parted, and any thoughts on taking my time vanished. Our tongues met, tangling together, and the tension snapped like a pulled wire. My hand slid behind her neck, the other gripping her waist. When she climbed into my lap, straddling me, it was like a match striking dry tinder. Her fingers tunneled into my hair as she settled on top of me, consciously orunconsciously rubbing against the swollen bulge straining in my pants, and I groaned against her mouth, everything inside me coming unstitched.
