Page 50 of Ruined (The Knights of Ruin)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Cat

I DIDN’TSLEEP all night. I was exhausted, yet my body was buzzing and my mind wouldn’t stop replaying what had happened with Smoke over and over.

I shut my eyes, willing the images away, but they wouldn’t go.

My body ached, my pussy was throbbing, my nipples were in hard, tight points. Pressing against the tank top I’d pulled on to sleep in.

‘Fucking, Cat. You and I will be fucking.’

I turned my head into the pillow, trying and failing to find a cool spot, my skin feeling like it was on fire.

Crazy. I’d gone all these years without being attracted to Smoke, yet now I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t stop thinking about tomorrow, about what we were going to do together.

It terrified me.

Shit, if the sex had been bad, we might have been able to put it behind us, carried on as normal. But the sex hadn’t been bad. It had been...incredible. And there was no way we could put that behind us—no way in hell.

It was going to change things and they would never be the same again.

I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. No, I wasn’t going to fucking cry about it. I wasn’t.

‘I’ve always wanted you, kitten.’

Oh, God, that look in his dark gaze. The one that went straight through me, that pinned me to the ground with a truth so sharp and so obvious I was amazed I hadn’t seen it before.

Or maybe I simply hadn’t wanted to look.

He’d wanted me all that time and it made me so shit-scared I could hardly breathe. He had to stay a friend—I needed him to stay a friend. Because anything more—like love—that was bullshit. It was all bullshit. Love was a lie, and in the end it always, always let you down.

Love had deserted my mom in the end, and in the end it had made her desert me.

And love always hurt—like Justin hurt me.

Relationships sucked and I didn’t want one. But friendship—that was strong. That was true.

Friends never let you down—like Smoke had never let me down—and that was what I wanted. What I needed.

Except Smoke clearly had other ideas.

I was fucked. Literally.

I flung an arm across my hot face, trying to settle, but the memory of how I’d knelt before him and taken his dick into my mouth grabbed me, and this time I let myself fall into it, feeling the power of it...

Somewhere in the middle I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew I felt something hot lying across my face. In fact I felt hot all over.

I opened my eyes to find the sun streaming through a crack in the curtains and fully over my bed, in a way it never did when I woke at 6:00 a.m.

I groaned and turned to look at the clock.

Holy shit—it was nine. What about Annie? What about school? I’d never slept in like this before. Never.

Cursing, I hauled myself out of bed and flung open the door, stumbling down the hallway to Annie’s bedroom only to find it empty. Oh, God, where was she?

I went back along the hall and into the lounge, trying not to feel frantic about the heavy silence that lay over the apartment. The living area was empty, too; the blanket Smoke had slept in was folded neatly on the end of the couch.

On the coffee table was a piece of paper with some writing on it.

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