Page 68 of Jagged Line Paradise

I’ve certainly had my fair share of days where I’ve felt that to be true.

But his kind of darkness doesn’t scare me—I know from experience that my body can withstand impossible pain and trauma and survive it. Logically, I can overcome pain and move forward from it. And say he did lose his mind in the grips of passion, some awful, mutated gene passed down from his despicable father activating once we’re behind closed doors—the prospect of death wouldn’t scare me as much now as it did when I was a naïve teenager.

If he left me again, though, it would be worse than any physical pain, torture, or death. I’d rather die than mourn the loss of him again. And I feel breathless at the realization.

I turn my head forward, gazing out down the highway just as we approach the exit. He veers off, dropping speed as we approach a stoplight.

My voice is quiet. “Will you let me stay over tonight?”

He looks at me and I feel his eyes like daggers, probably judging me for the desperate question, maybe losing interest.

“Lonnie,” he says, his voice dropping into that commanding tone that makes my thighs twitch, “it was never a choice for you to leave tonight.”

Chapter 18

Andrés

AVALON BRIAR HASruined all other women for me and she doesn’t even know the effect she has. I’ve tried to deny it, but I have lusted after this woman, fantasized about her, longed to hold her, kiss her, fuck her, for ten lonely fucking years.

I tried to pretend she wasn’t the reason why I never had an actual relationship with a woman. Julia is the closest I ever came to that—and all that ever was or ever could be, was a quick fuck and fair-weather friendship.

Lonnie has been the missing piece I’ve been denying. But I didn’t have a choice. She never gave me the time of day when I tried to reach out to her all those times. After this, after tonight, though, things will never be the same. I don’t want them to be. I have a decade’s worth of anger and bitterness and repressed love to work out on this woman, and I’m gonna let her fucking have it tonight.

She’d better letme have it, too.

She’s an inferno walking beside me from the car into the hotel lobby. I watch her, keeping a small distance between us because otherwise, I might throw her to the ground and fuck her right here on the sidewalk. I don’t think either of us want to attract that sort of attention.

She’s incessantly twirling a strand of hair around her finger, a habit she always had that always drove me crazy. When we were younger, say ten or eleven, and we’d only just met, the twirling annoyed me. As we grew through our pre-teens, it became amusing. As teens, when I started to see her as more than just the girl in the trailer next to mine and my best friend, when I started to see her as a girl I desperately wanted but didn’t deserve, it turned me on. Now it makes my cock hard. I want to twirl it in my hand, wrap my grip around it, and pull until it hurts.

“Stop it,” I tell her as the automatic doors at the hotel entrance slide open.

“What?” Her head snaps sideways to look at me, dramatic as ever, with the rest of her hair whipping forward over her shoulder. She still holds the twisted strand with her finger.

“Twirling your hair.” I make an obvious glance at her lips and lick mine in response, making it crystal-clear why I’m asking her to stop.

Her freckled cheeks flush and a grin tugs at the corners of her wide lips.

Fuck me.

There is no other face that comes close to the raw beauty of her perfect imperfections. I could stare at her for hours and never get enough.

She finally releases the strand as we walk past the front desk of the Hilton I’m staying at, heading for the elevator bank just beyond. I press the button to call it, take a deep breath—the smell of chlorine ripe from the pool just behind the elevators—and let my eyes take her in fully while we have this moment where I can’t physically touch her. I know if I touch her, I’ll throw her in the pool and fuck her in front of all the people splashing around in there.

Head to toe, she is perfect to me. She’s the Lonnie I remember—the girl I fell in love with, the girl I left behind and ruined. She’s almost locked in time, in a sense. Nothing much has changed about her aside from her age. Same long, ginger-orange hair. Still wearing flowy tank tops and denim shorts, despite the scars on her legs—which only serve to remind me how her bravery blows my mind. Same freckles. Same curves, though they’re even better now with the extra bits of flesh that naturally come with growing into womanhood.

“You okay?” she asks, breaking me from my trance.

I give her a smile and a nod. “You know I’m not going to kiss you on the elevator.”

She bites her lip through her sideways smile. “What?”

“It’s cliché.”

“I don’t mind cliché.” She flicks her gaze at me. “You’re a little cliché.”

“What?” I feign offense. “How amIcliché?”

She sighs, looking at the elevator doors. “Oh, you know. Leaving your small-town life behind to make it big. Coming back once you have to show off in your fancy suit and tie. All broody and moody and commanding.”

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