Page 67 of Jagged Line Paradise

I’m starting to remember why.

He balances me. He brings out my frantic, my chaotic, my playful, and I want him. I wantallof him.

He reaches around me, gripping the steering wheel with his left hand while he grasps and tugs my hair from the back of my head with his right. He leans me sideways, just enough so he can see around me, but he doesn’t urge me to go back to my seat. My face is buried in his neck, lips spattering kisses up and down the side. It’s only when he starts driving that I feel the adrenaline kick in—my pulse thrums, my heart throbs, my pussy clenches.

I freeze. “Andrés…”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared now. You’re the one who climbed onto my lap. “

I wrap my arms around him, hugging myself close. All I want to do is hang onto him and ride this most spectacular high together. I don’t know what’s happening to me. This is crazy. I know I should move back to my seat when I realize he’s in the merge lane to pull onto the freeway. As soon as my brain thinks,Get back into your seat,my body tightens and I grip him harder.

I need him.

I need to cling to him.

I need to hold him and claim him in this madness because I’m afraid I’ll lose him. I’m afraid he’ll leave this moment if I don’t keep him with me, and I don’t think I can go through losing him again.

He presses a single, brief kiss to the crook of my neck as the car speeds up, merging onto the freeway, and he groans—I can feel his cock twitch beneath me, and I sink into him deeper.

“Fuck. You’re going to get us both killed.”

“Would it be worth it if I did?” I’m surprised by the low, sultry tone of my voice as I whisper against his ear.

He sighs.

There’s a pause, but it doesn’t feel like hesitation.

He says, “Yes,” and I gulp at the sincerity in his tone.

WouldI be worth dying for?

I know that I’m not, but the truth in that single syllable simultaneously makes butterflies flap their wings in my belly and my heart take flight.

“I need you,” I whisper.

I’m met with a passing moment of silence—silence except for the engine revving and the sound of the tires rolling over the road at high speed.

“I need you, too, sunshine.” He forces out a breath with a begrudging groan behind it. “That’s why I need you in your seat, buckled up.”

I nod against his shoulder and slowly, carefully, climb off his lap. He keeps his right hand right there on the back of my head as I sit back in my seat and pull my seatbelt back on. I roll my head to look at him, and though I feel that some of the urgency has diminished, I’m surprised to find that I’m still here—fully present with him in the moment—and I wish I knew how or why. I wish I knew how to replicate this strange thing where the physical urgency can dim without the emotional ache creeping its way back in.

I’ve never felt this before.

But I’m afraid of losing the fire all the same.

As if he knows what I’m thinking, he glances over at me with a smile. “It’s only another mile to the hotel.”

“When we get there, I want you to know…I’ll take whatever you give me. Anything. I’m not the innocent teenager you remember.”

His brow line furrows as his eyes narrow, staring intently out at the road. “That’s a given. You already agreed. Once that door closes, you belong to me.”

My breath hitches, excitement building again at his words alone, and how truly incredible that feeling is to me.

I know I should be wary.

He’s got his ghosts, just like I have mine, but his are darker and much more dangerous. I’ve always known that about him. And maybe people would think I’m a lunatic for going anywhere with him knowing who his father is, what he did to me, to those other girls.

Maybe Iama lunatic.

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