Page 121 of I Shouldn't Feel This Way

I stood very still, watching him slowly pull away. Our eyes met, and he held my gaze. I was transfixed by their dark mysticism. As much as I wanted to abandon my stubborn pride, it was a struggle.

Must … say … something.I tried to push myself.

“Yeah? Well, if you hate me that much, I can easily solve your problem.”

I took a step forward to make him back off, but he slid his hand down the wall and pushed my stomach so that my back bumped into the door. I was fixed in place. My heart was racing faster than my unraveling mind, and I wasn’t sure what he was going to do next. Even though we were having this horribly heated argument, I couldn’t deny the way he made me feel when he was standing so close to me, touching me.

“Tell me to kiss you, or get out,” he said.

“I shouldn’t have to tell you to ki—”

But before I could finish, his mouth crashed against mine, parting my lips and slipping his tongue inside. All my defenses came down as I stood there, motionless, feeling so many emotions at once. There were no barriers between us now; I was exposed once again. I could sense him willing me to submit and let go, and I did just that. His lips were moist as our tongues brushed against each other like it had been a lifetime that passed since we last shared such a passionate kiss. I was engulfed by the heat that exploded from his mouth. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled myself flush against him. I needed him all over me—his scent all over my body, claiming me. A soft moan escaped my lips when he wrapped one arm around my waist, making me arch my back for him before he slowly glided his palm down my bottom. I couldn’t stop, nor did I want to. I submitted and let him guide my right leg against his waist, supporting my thigh with his free hand. Every inch of my body was covered in land mines, and only his touch was able to detonate them and make my skin explode with pleasure.

He couldn’t have been all human. He must have been a hybrid of some sort. Half man, half … fallen angel? I was free falling once more, but I knew that he would catch me, shield me with his wings, and take me above the clouds to his hidden paradise. We would be safe from prying eyes and safe from persecution. I didn’t care if those wings were black or stained in blood. In my mind, Noah embodied everything that was good and loving. In a perfect world, he and I were not related.

I was so lost in him, surrendering to the sliding sensation of our lips floating together. I could have kissed a hundred of the world’s most attractive men, and not one of them would have been able to make me feel the way Noah did when he kissed me. He consumed me, body and soul. I couldn’t tear my lips away from his, and didn’t even want to. A soft whimper escaped me when he sucked back my bottom lip, then grazed his lips down my jawline. He kissed the side of my neck with a hunger that wouldn’t seem to be sated until I moaned for him.

“You’re mine, Aria,” Noah breathed between kisses.

“I’m yours,” I whispered, struggling to catch my breath and closing my eyes. My fingers tangled through his thick, brown hair as I got brave and pulled his head down harder into my neck, secretly hoping that he would leave a trace of a hickey on my skin. He was making me so hot. I needed him to put out the fire he had ignited inside of me—badly.

My hands brushed down the nape of his neck, over his sculpted shoulders and chest, before I began to undo the buttons of his shirt. I needed to touch his skin like I needed water to survive, and he didn’t stop me. He continued to kiss me with the magnificent art he had mastered through years of experience and practice. His passion for me was fervent and unrelenting. The most feral groan escaped from his lips when I slid my hand under his open shirt and placed my palm flat on his chest, right where the black phoenix had dug its talons into his heart. It was my favorite part of his body because he had tattooed my name there.

I was scared out of my mind. My stepmom could have come in looking for us, but a part of me truly did wish for discovery. I hated loving Noah in the shadows—it hurt. But right there in that moment, nothing else mattered: not my fears, nor my insecurities, nor my desolating thoughts of the future.

“Fuck, baby,” he growled against my lips and pulled back, breathing as hard as I was. “We have to stop—I’m not thinking clearly. We have guests over.”

This was months’ worth of pent-up sexual tension. I peeled his shirt back over his shoulders, then caressed the smooth surface of his chest with both hands. “I don’t want you to stop.” Leaning closer, I lightly grazed his lips and whispered, “I want you all to myself.”

“I could kiss you for hours.”

His admission sent my heart soaring as he initiated another kiss that only picked up momentum, growing more passionate and heated. I wasn’t sure if it was my skin that felt hot or if it was the scorching heat that radiated from his chest, infusing itself into the palm of my hand.

Just as we were about to lose ourselves once more, Noah withdrew from my greedy lips, leaving me disappointed.

“Do you want me?” I asked nervously.

“I do, so badly.” The honesty in his eyes was moving.

Fortunately for me, he hadn’t let go of my thigh yet. The hem of my dress had hiked up so tightly that I was afraid it would rip.

“I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” I expressed.

“I know you didn’t mean it.” Noah kissed me tenderly. “You don’t know half of what I can handle from you.”

I almost wanted to cry in disbelief that I was capable of being so heartless with my words. Affectionately, I slowly caressed the beautiful phoenix as if I were soothing an injured animal in pain. And that’s when it hit me: I was that mythological bird. He was mine, and I was the only one who had the power to completely destroy him … the only one who could make him bleed. It explained why the phoenix had its talons in his heart. I had burned and risen from my ashes, not as the daughter he had lost, but as the lover forbidden to him. That flaming phoenix was forged in fire, foreshadowing a prophecy that was so twistedly taboo, I don’t think Noah had ever been aware of its metaphorical meaning … until seventeen years later, when that bird found its human host: me. I was a woman transformed. Maybe that explained when we had met, I’d felt like a soul possessed.

He kissed my lips once more while I silently made a wish to the other half of myself that had been inked across his chest in symbolic spiritual form. I prayed for patience and understanding, so that I could take better care of his heart and not dig my claws any deeper than they already were.

“Noah, honey? Is everything okay in there?”

Crap, it’s Vanessa!I thought in panic.

Noah immediately pulled away from me and buttoned his shirt, while I tried to straighten my dress. We looked like two guilty lovers on the verge of being discovered—guilty of committing unspeakable sins. We may have been safe from the eyes of others, but we weren’t hidden from the eyes of God.

I noticed a flicker of concern in his eyes while I wiped the gloss off his lips, but he composed himself impressively and opened the door.

“Hey.” He smiled. “Everything’s fine. Aria just needed to talk to me.”

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