Page 74 of Heart of a Rebel

Her lips part, but my fingers tightening through her hair stops whatever was on the tip of her tongue, about to slip out. I draw my other hand up and over her jaw, cupping it in my palm and watching the stars in her eyes sparkle like the sun breaking through a stormy horizon.

“I’m fine being quiet about this if that’s what you want.” I brush my fingers through her hair, loosening my grip and brushing a rogue strand behind her ear. “I’m also fine with telling the whole fucking world. Whatever you’re comfortable with. I’ve never needed much from this life. But you, El, are everything. Hide me away or burn my life to the ground in a display that tells the world I’m yours. It doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere.”

She blinks, her eyes dipping to my mouth, to the breath I know is fighting to break out because it’s impossible to keep steady with her this close and my heart pounding like corruption in my chest.

Raising her hand, Eloise traces the line of my jaw with her fingers. I’m not sure what decision she’s making, but her eyes, dark as the night sometimes, are lit with something that feels a lot like a match striking.

“Tell me it’ll all be okay, Adrian.”

Her words are so quiet that even this close I barely hear them. Either that or the sledgehammer of blood against my temples makes it impossible. And for a woman who is usually difficult to read, I watch her face bloom like a flower before me, showing me all the fear she hides from the rest of the world. Pain that streaks her eyes, worry that stains her cheeks.

Holding her face in my hands she feels so small. She might be the strongest woman I’ve ever known, never backing down or revealing her weakness. But in this moment, she’s so breakable it’s frightening. Because her fear isn’t unfounded. There are forces bigger than her and me in this world waiting to rip it all apart, thinking they have a right to take more than they deserve.

And for the first time in the past year, I see why she’s been slowly curling in on herself, refusing to make plans after this album. She’s scared.

“I’ll never let anything happen to you.” I brush my thumb over her bottom lip.

It’s a promise I’m determined to keep, no matter the price.

Eloise slides into my lap with one leg on either side of me. Delicate and beautiful. A butterfly.Mybutterfly.

Her lips tease mine, raking me with her breaths. I want to hold her a centimeter away as much as I want to close the distance. Because feeling her lifeforce and feeling her body are one in the same. I’ll dip myself in both and drown there.

Eloise takes away my decision when she plants her mouth over mine. Her tongue slips into my mouth, and I feel the vines spreading. Crawling through every inch of me.

Skating my hands down her neck and shoulders, I move all the way to the hem of her shirt and strip it overhead. The rush of air pebbles her nipples as I draw her chest to my face and pull her sweet breasts to my mouth. I bury myself between their fullness as I tug at the peaks.

Eloise rocks her hips, and I can feel the warmth between her legs through our clothes.

This fucking woman is a grenade, threatening to tear me into bits there’s no putting back together. I can’t help but draw my hand down and cup her pussy, desperate to watch her shatter.

She grinds against my hand as I find her mouth again with my own. Drinking her moans and loving that I’m the one to cause them.

There’s something inexplicable that opens inside me as her body begs for mine from my lap. The fact that she’s spent years in her cocoon, comfortable and closed off. The fact that I’m the man she opened up to. She let me hold her, touch her. It makes me want to take care of every shard she reveals and put her back together again.

A responsibility she hands me with every pant of her breath. To be the man she trusts. When she opened her palms, she handed me her heart, her safety, her body. She decided I’m worthy of something I can’t quite understand.

Gripping onto the backs of her thighs I lift her and carry her to the bedroom in the back of the bus. After spending more than enough time trying to sleep on that cramped couch, I’ve no desire to fuck her there.

And as she wraps my body like a koala and her hips grind against mine, that’s what I plan to do—fuck her until neither of us can see straight.

Until there are no secrets left between us.

Until I rip us both open and there’s no option for her to run.

Falling onto the bed, I stop myself from crushing her by catching myself with a hand by her head. But she doesn’t let me go. If anything, her legs grip tighter.

I’m desperate for her need. I want to be everything to a woman who refuses to depend on anyone but herself. I want to be her warmth, her air, her soil, her sunshine.

Lifting up, I strip off her baggy sweats in one move, her underwear with them.

Fuck, she’s beautiful.

More so than people even realize. While they obsess over the woman plastered on the cover of magazines and place her on a social scale of standards that mean nothing, she’s immeasurable. Especially like this—stripped naked before me on the bed, she’s a goddess carved just for me. Not a flicker of hesitation in her eyes as I drag my hands between her thighs and peel them open to witness what I do to her.

“That look…” she says, drawing my attention.

I lift my stare to hers and notice a smile tugging on the corner of her mouth.

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