Page 66 of The Hallows Queen

He puts a hand on the doorframe. “You said that already.”

My mouth opens, but no words come out. I just stand there like a fish, blubbering and confused.

He takes a small step forward. “Can I come in? I feel like a salesman.”

I shake my head, snapping back to reality and finding the clarity I need. “No! What are you doing here?!”

His eyes find the floor, and then they snap back to me. His voice is tight, hesitant. “I don’t know.”

The answer catches me off guard, but it isn’t the words that have me stepping to the side and letting him come in, it’s the tone of his voice. Somehow, the sentence sounds small and compact, like he was afraid to say it out loud, like those three words were him ripping down some wall that’s been between us all day.

They weren’t cocky and arrogant, confident and smug. He sounded fucking scared.

I close the door once he’s walked past me, turning to put my back to it to look at him. “What are you doing here?”

He turns around when he’s about ten feet from me and yells, “I don’t know, P!”

I shake my head and sigh. “You can’t just show up at my home. How do you even know where I live?”

He walks toward me, shaking his head as well. “It’s a long story.”

When he’s right in front of me, he stops. He doesn’t touch me, doesn’t say anything, he just stares at me with those dark eyes – and I get lost. I stop breathing, every muscle in my body grows taut, and I almost reach out for him. There’s something behind his features that makes me feel at home, safe.

I blow out a breath. “What are you doing here, Hayden?”

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he whispers, his eyes dropping closed like he’s embarrassed of what he’s saying. “This has never happened to me before, but I needed to see you.”

I don’t want to admit I can’t stop thinking about him either, but I also don’t want to lie, so I don’t say anything back. We stand in silence for a moment, Hayden with his eyes closed and my attention focused on his eyelids that are twitching in thought.

“Hayden,” I say softly, making his eyes open slowly. “You can’t be here.”

“Why not?” He slams a hand on the door behind me, and I jump. “I want you. I can’t get you out of my fucking head.”

I blow out a breath slowly, tucking my hair behind my ears and finding his eyes. There’s something so delicate and tortured in his gaze, something that feels wrong coming from someone who generally radiates control.

Gone is the arrogant guy that pinned me against my car earlier. Now, he’s different. He’s opening up, showing me a color of himself I didn’t know was there. Where he’s normally a deep ebony, right now, he’s a dull blue. Still dark, but with a touch of fear and vulnerability.

Something inside of me cracks for him. The resolve I’ve been holding on to slips just an inch, making me reach out to touch him. I trace the pads of my fingers up his arms, across the black tattoos that scar his skin, and he sucks in a breath.

He’s warmth and freezing cold at once, making my head spin so much that I want to fall over.

“I can’t stop thinking about you, either,” I whisper, the words feeling so right but so wrong.

He leans forward, almost tentatively, his hand joining the other above my head on the door. Time stands still around us, and I watch as he contemplates what to do next. His lips drop open, and he continues to move closer, so torturously slow that I can’t breathe.

My hands freeze on the backs of his muscular arms, and I press my nails into his skin lightly, urging him to kiss me, to break through the last barrier between us and claim me. Take me for his own.

He licks his lips, then leans forward the last few inches to put his lips on mine. His kiss is soft, so fucking light that I barely feel it, and he groans in the back of his throat at the tease of our connection.

“Tell me you want this,” he says, his voice husky and pained. It makes butterflies attack parts of my stomach I didn’t know existed.

I suck down a breath in a panic, feeling desperate and scared and excited all at once.

“I want this,” I say, finding his eyes burning into mine. “I wantyou.”

His body falls forward at the same time his mouth slams against mine, every inch of him touching every inch of me. We both groan in relief, and I squeeze his arms with my fingers, kissing him so deeply that it feels like we’re absorbing each other through our mouths.

Hayden keeps his hands flat on the door above my head, using his body to deepen our connection instead. His hips roll into mine as his teeth bite at my lips, his chest pressing against me as his tongue flicks inside my mouth, his thigh threading between my legs to put pressure against my clit, and I find myself grinding against him.

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