Page 189 of Heresy

“Don’t leave me again. I don’t care what’s going on. There can be guns to both of our heads or we can already be dead and floating off into whatever comes next, but you make damn sure that your hand is in mine the entire time. I can’t let go again.”

He blinks, dark brown lashes sweeping down and then up. I’m mesmerized by what looks out at me when they open.

“Never again, Brin. Not for anything or anyone.”

He’s so damn serious right now that it unsettles me. I’m not used to this. Wasn’t expecting this.

“Sheesh, you leave a guy for one night and he tries to put a ring on it.”

His lips curl. “Would you be mouthy and glare at me if I tried?”

My eyes round, and he laughs before planting quick kisses up my jaw, his teeth taking soft hold of my earlobe.

“I’m not saying all that. I just can’t go more than an hour without arguing with you. It’s too addictive.”

My head falls back against the wall, and he steals the opportunity to run his lips down the length of my throat, stopping just over where his hand still lightly chokes me.

“You confuse me,” I complain.

“Then stop listening to what I say, and start paying attention to what I do.”

All I can manage is a quick squeal when he turns us away from the wall and tosses me on the bed.

Gripping his shirt from behind, he pulls it off with one tug, his stare catching mine as I inch my way up the mattress. Kicking off his shoes, he winks at me when he shoves his jeans and boxer briefs down then kicks them off too.

There’s something feral in him right now.

Unleashed and untamed.

And damn if it isn’t a thing of beauty, his naked body untouched by a single blemish that distracts from how perfect he is.

Frightened that he doesn’t have a handle on himself, I crawl backward with every doubt that I can handle him.

“We should talk about this.”

“About what?”

He tilts his head, the smirk still in place and his eyes running such a slow path down my body that I can feel where it touches.

I’m being made a meal of, and yet he stands at the foot of the bed, his shoulders rolled back, his chest and abdomen exposed, all those tattoos seemingly coming to life.

“Would you like to talk about what I’m planning to do to you or how you’re planning to stop me? For the first, I think every inch of you belongs to me now, and I’ll do what I want with it, and for two, there’s not a damn thing you can do to convince me otherwise.”

My thighs tighten together, my lungs working harder to draw in air.

I can barely stand to look at him. He’s beautiful on his own, but when he has his sights set on you, it’s difficult not to feel like you’d be a stupid woman not to give in.

Shane is a work of art.

He’s an experience.

Not just the perfect cut of his physique or the colorful tattoos that cover his skin, but in his mind and soul—in everything he is.

Wanting to apologize to my younger self, I realize now—in this very instant—that I’ve never known what it feels like to live. I’d lied to myself for all the years I’ve hidden. I pretended I was okay when what’s really inside me was fighting to survive.

It took Shane to show me that.

When his eyes meet mine again, the heat of them nearly burns me.

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