Page 14 of Jagged Line Paradise

“Then how?”

Letting out a groan, I roll flat onto my back and put my hands beneath my head. “Do you really wanna hear this stuff?”

She’s still and quiet for a minute. I look over at her and I see that she’s looking at the poster again, as if it’s the first time she’s seeing it, though we both know it’s not.

“I honestly don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if I should be as afraid of you as everyone else is.”

Shit.

I stretch out my arm and run my fingers through the dangling ends of her hair. “Everyone else should be afraid of me, but you don’t need to be. I wouldn’t ever do anything like that to you.”

Her hair whips another flash fire across the pillow beneath her as she turns her head sharply to meet my eyes. “Never?”

“Never.”

“Even if I asked you to?” She regards me with a curious expression. It’s so adorable that it makes me want to kiss her and bite her fucking lip.

“You would never ask me to.”

“How would you know? Maybe I would.”

I laugh. “No, you wouldn’t.”

Her forehead wrinkles, her eyes narrowing at me as if she’s offended. Maybe she is, but I’m not wrong. My pure, innocent little sunshine girl couldn’t possibly be into that.

“Avalon,” I start, gripping the back of her head and yanking her down close to look me in the eye, “ask me to do that to you. Ask me right now.”

It’s a dare and I fully expect her to turn me down.

Her lips part, but no words come out. She breathes in, then out. “I might…want…”

Oh. Damn.

Is she going to ask me todo that to her?

My dick is instantly hard.

Her wide smile splits across her face. “Yeah, I can’t.” She laughs. “I wouldn’t ask you to do that to me. Not today, anyway.”

Half of me is disappointed.

Half of me is glad.

I’d be afraid of hurting her. Or really, truly scaring her away for good when she sees how unhinged I can be. I love that she sees all of me—the deepest parts of me that I hide from everyone else—but it also worries me how she chooses to ignore the scary bits.

Two lights halo into the room through the blinds on my window, sweeping across the ceiling and down the walls as the familiar rumble of my dad’s old pickup truck vibrates the whole trailer.

“Time for me to go,” she says, but I’ve still got a hold of the back of her head.

“I don’t want you to.”

Something flickers through her features, something like confusion fading into bewilderment, swiftly changing to happiness. The flush of pink shyness across her cheeks reminds me again how inexperienced she is compared to me. It reminds me that every step of this is new for her. I want to protect her from all the bad things and keep her pure.

I shouldn’t let her be with me.

She deserves a nice guy.

She bends and kisses me. It’s soft and sweet and everything I love about her. I wrap my arms around her and pull her on top of me to finish this last, delicious kiss for tonight.

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