Page 40 of Obliterated
But it’s stronger this time, blended with less tobacco, enough to make him drift, enough to quiet the beast under his skin. I can see it in the way his shoulders uncoil, the way his eyes stop scanning every shadow for something to kill.
He doesn’t offer any. Don’t ask if I mind. He just smokes and watches the horizon like it’s personally offended him.
And I watch him like I’ve never seen someone breathe before.
Max inhales with fingernails still stained a dark red from the Pit. It crackles as he inhales; the smoke curling around his jaw like it wants to kiss him.
Just like I fucking want.
“Want some, pretty?” he finally asks, voice low, already expecting my answer. But I nod my head instead, flustered at the nickname.
He smirks. “Really? Didn’t think you’d be up for it.”
“Just never did it before.” My voice comes out rougher than I meant to and I regret it instantly. I sound like a kid admitting weakness.
His eyes flicker, sharp and calculating, as he shifts close enough I can feel the heat radiating off him, close enough for his big thigh to press against mine. I turn with him, toward him, caught in the gravity of those endless star-specked eyes.
“C’mere, Kee.”
The words are more command than invitation, and then those fingers find their place on my throat. Light pressure, not choking, just guiding. Tilting my head back like I’m his to position as he pleases, like I’m his to break.
And I’d fucking let him.
My head swims, not from the smoke but from him, from being this close.
My lips part on instinct, a gasp slipping out the way it always does when he’s near. Gods, he’s alluring, addictive, absolute.
He inhales again, gaze locked to mine, and then leans in. His mouth almost brushing mine as he exhales, Smoke spills past his lips into mine. The burn is sharp, the taste bitter-sweet, but the intimacy of it? It fuckingshattersme.
It isn’t a kiss. Not really. But it feels like one, like the promise of something that could ruin me.
I inhale on instinct, the tinted smoke burning down my throat, flooding my lungs, and I can’t stop the little cough that tears out of me.
“Easy now,” he murmurs, voice low and steady, his focus fixed entirely on my mouth. “Let it fill you. Feel it. Then slowly exhale.”
I do as he says. The Ashleaf threaded through the tobacco hits me fast, sharp and heady, like it’s rewiring my blood. When I exhale, when the smoke curls back out and drifts across his face, that gorgeous face, all sharp angles and sculpted like some cruel god.
The corner of his mouth pulls up. “You like it?”
All I can do is nod, dazed, shoulders loosening as the tension in me leaks out with the smoke.
He does it again, inhales deeper this time, holds it… and then leans closer. Too close. That fucking thumb of his tracing lazily over the pulse in my throat, back and forth, back and forth, keeping in time with the frantic beat.
And when he exhales, when I drink it in greedily like it’s air, his lips brush mine. Just a whisper of contact. Barely noticeable. But it’s there.
It’s enough to set me the fuck on fire.
I want more. More. More, more,more.
But just as I’m ready to give in, a split second before I lean forward, he pulls back.
That last piece of my heart, the one shred I still had hidden away, shatters. And I know he sees it in my eyes, knows exactly what he just broke.
A sigh tears out of me, smoke spilling with it. Spilling like the ghost of a confession I’ll never dare to speak.
“I’m no good for you, Kee,” he mutters almost like an apology, while that fucking hand is still on me.
I frown, throat raw. “What?”
