Page 55 of Jagged Line Paradise

“Stop it, Avalon.”

“Letgoof me!”

“Stop.”

His finger and thumb squeeze around the sides of my throat and I gasp, instantly going still. He leans impossibly closer, his face so close to mine that the tips of our noses touch.

All thought is lost.

All I can do is breathe and watch him and feel him against me. He opens his mouth to speak and my lips part, ready to protest, but he doesn’t say a word. He sucks in a sharp breath and then he kisses me.

He kisses me in the rough way that I always imagined he wanted to—the same way I imagined him kissing all those girls he fooled around with when we were young and hadn’t truly discovered our heat for each other yet.

This kiss is passion and heat and sinful delight.

And I kiss him back.

Why do I kiss him back?

I lift my head from where it landed against the car at my back to push against his lips, to battle his tongue with mine and to feed him the hatred and anger I feel toward him right now.

He bites my bottom lip hard enough to make me bleed, forcing the metallic taste of it to swirl between our lashing tongues. His hand clamps around my throat and he shoves my head back against the car again, kissing me so forcefully that I can’t move, can’t think, can’t breathe.

He steals my breath, but it doesn’t scare me.

It only heats me, fanning the flame of my desire, my passion, but more urgently, my anger.

When he lets go of my wrist and my throat to grab my face in his hands, I put my palms up on his chest and shove. He’s an immovable wall, a concrete barrier that refuses to let me go. And after only a few brief moments I give up. I give in.

My fingers find his stupid necktie and grab hold. I pull him closer, and he groans against my lips as I hold him to me.

Holy wow.

I want more.

I want more, I want more.

I feel him deep within me, rebuilding a need for his touch that I’d given up on long ago. His body is heavy against mine, pushing me so hard against the car that it’s as though he’s laying down on top of me.

I want him laying down on top of me.

He breaks the kiss, but doesn’t let up, his lips covering every inch of bare skin on my face. “I want you, Lonnie. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else.”

“Andrés.” I don’t know what else to say to him, especially as he lets one hand travel down my body in between the both of us, intentionally grazing over the mound of my breast, before hooking two of his fingers into the top of my denim shorts. The feel of his knuckles digging into my belly, so low, so close to my sex threatens to undo my rage entirely.

His hips press forward, and I moan when I feel his cock harden against me. His lips find my jaw, kissing a line up to my ear lobe. His voice is low and insistent, his mouth warm against the shell of my ear. “Listen to me very carefully, sunshine.” He grinds against me. “You and I should never be alone behind a closed door.”

As soon as he says it, I feel it. I feel the sincerity of such a warning, the danger of it that he alludes to, but it also makes me want exactly that. I want him behind a closed door and I don’t know why. He’s just done something awful to me, something that made me furious with him, something unforgivable...

What was it again?

What magic isthis that he so easily makes me forget?

Holy wow.

“Never,” he emphasizes. “You make me lose control and I can never lose control with you. Don’t ever let me get you alone.” With a sharp pull that seems to take all his strength, he drags his face away from mine. My eyes narrow at the expression on his face. It’s dark and lust-filled and it makes me want him so, so much. “Do you understand me?” His eyes are hard, insistent, fearful.

Somehow, I manage to nod.

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