“Why? Why, with everything else in your life, do you want to add me to the mix, knowing I might not be able to stomach this? I’m not Dovie. I’m not from the streets, Race. Your life scares the hell out of me.”
I let the Scotch bottle fall to the floor, not caring if it broke. I threaded my fingers through the supersoft hair at her temples and tilted her face up so we were looking at each other and she couldn’t pull away.
“I know it does, but you’re here anyway and that’s why I want you in the mix. You make all the ugly things a little less nasty to look at, and really”—I leaned even closer so she was feeling my words against her parted lips rather than hearing them—“your life is just as scary as mine at the moment.”
She let out a breath and then lifted herself up on her knees so that our mouths were hovering a fraction of a breath apart.
“I really wanted to convince myself that I could hate you. I wanted you to be the worst thing in the world for me, but every time I turn around, you end up being the best thing in my world at any given moment.”
I brushed my mouth across hers, let the very tip of my tongue touch the little divot in her upper lip, which had her shuddering and had her fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt.
I told her in a rough rush, “I’m not a very good person, but I do know right from wrong. I’m tired of the wrong always winning in this place, and I’m tired of the wrong trying to eat you alive, so I will do anything and everything I can to make sure it doesn’t get its teeth into you.”
I was done talking. She was almost naked, she was beautiful, and she had come to me. I had every intention of kissing her and taking her backward to the bed, but she circumvented me by lifting her hands higher on my back, pulling herself up straighter, and sealing her mouth over mine. She tasted oaky and intoxicating from the booze, but under that she tasted tart and sweet, like the best treat I could ever ask for. My thoughts from earlier rang even more true now. I wasn’t done with her by a long shot, and at this rate I was doubting that I ever would be. I was more than willing to fall for her, and as she leaned backward and pulled us both down onto the bed, I literally fell for her, and nothing could’ve made me happier.
Chapter 13
Brysen
MY INTENT HADN’T BEEN to seduce or to tempt. But when I saw him standing at the gate, a perfectly composed, gleaming gold, and shining light in a place that was so dreary and dark, my motivations had instantly shifted. There was something about how effortless he was in both the skins he wore—the one of a stunningly handsome young blue blood, and the one he more typically wore as the ruthless and broken king of the streets. They both just got to me.
There were so many unanswered questions and so many obstacles that seemed to stand between us. Really, when I broke it all down in my head, as I stripped on my way to the barren little room that now felt more welcoming and more like home than the house of lies I had been living in for the last year¸ I could see that Race was the only person who had been unfailing in his honesty with me. He was also the only person in recent memory who’d gone out of his way to do something for me, instead of expecting me to swoop in and hold it all together for him. I could no longer deny that this alone had me ready to crawl all over him and wind myself around him so tightly neither one of us could ever get loose.
I was impatient to get him at least to the same level of undress as I was, but when his shirt came up and off over his head, instead of admiring all the ripped and corded muscle pressing me down into the mattress, I got caught up skimming hands over bruises that had mottled to an ugly yellowish-green color. It was always there under his polished and glossy veneer. The ruthlessness of who he really was. The dual parts of the man that made Race Hartman who he was. I shifted my legs apart as he nudged them with his knee and gasped a little as he settled his hard body more fully into mine. I twined one arm across the breadth of his shoulders and let the other one snake between the very limited space between us so that I could go to work on his belt and the front of his pants. I could feel him pulsing in time to our racing hearts and could feel how hot and ready he was. When the backs of my fingers got inside his waistband, I heard him groan as they immediately encountered eager and willing flesh. Nothing ever thrummed and burned with life and vitality the way Race did. I wanted to eat them, and him, up.
He shoved the shoulders of the shirt I had commandeered off of me and bent his head so he could lick from one side of my collarbone to the other. He repeated the process back the other direction and stopped in the center at my breastbone. When he lifted his head and flashed that sexy dimple at me, I felt a full-body shiver overtake me. I could tell by the way the green in his eyes darkened that he felt my reaction as well. I needed to get his pants out of my way before he rendered me mindless, which I was pretty sure was his intent, when he lowered his head and captured the tip of one straining breast in his mouth.