Page 24 of Brutal Crown
I shake my head to get rid of any emotion I feel toward him. He reaches out to touch me.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he says softly, pulling a strand of hair behind my ear.
“You already did.”
“Let me make it up to you.”
A shaky breath escapes my lips as his hands slide down to my waist.
“Don’t,” I say in a whisper. “You don’t get to touch me like that.”
“I shouldn’t have done it,” he says even more softly now. “Any of it.”
His eyes flicker to my mouth, and I hate the way it makes wet heat pool at the bottom of my stomach.
“No,” I say, gripping his wrists and pushing his hands off me. “I’m not some game you pick up when you’re bored. You don’t get to humiliate me one minute and touch me the next.”
“I know,” he says. “I know I’m cruel, evil, and heartless. I’m a monster.” He leans down until his breath ghosts my face. “But I’m not a liar, and I’m telling you the truth right now when I say that I haven’t stopped thinking about you. Not once. Not in the past two years.”
Silence.
I hate how much that sentence hits me. I hate how my heart skips at his words, how it makes me feel hopeful, like something can ever exist between us.
But I mostly hate much I wanted him to say it.
“You don’t get to say things like that,” I whisper.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s cruel and unfair to your fiancée.”
He clenches his jaw. “I never said I wasn’t cruel. And I never forgot that night,” he says. “For the first time, you looked at me like you didn’t hate me.”
Something in his face twists, and it makes my heart bleed. I should tell him to get out. I should slam the door behind him. But I don’t. He won’t listen anyway.
He’s still standing close, even though he’s not touching me anymore. My skin buzzes, and I realize I want him to touch me. When his hand comes up to rest against the wall behind me, I raise my head to look into his eyes.
“Tell me you weren’t thinking about me too,” he says, caging me between his body and the wall. “Tell me you don’t feel anything between us, and I’ll leave.”
I open my mouth.
But no sound comes out.
His hand brushes the side of my face—slow, reverent, almost shaking.
“Tell me you want me to leave,” he whispers. “Lie to me. Just once. So I can walk away.”
When I speak again, my voice comes out in a shaky whisper. “I don’t want you to leave.”
And then his mouth crashes into mine like he’s been holding back for years. He kisses me like he’s starving. Like I’m the only thing keeping him alive.
I melt completely against him and let him kiss me, devour me. Unravel me.
He grabs my waist again, pushing me up against the wall and pressing his body flush to mine.
I melt into him as his greedy hands, so desperately, shake with restraint.
