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His smile vanishes, and he pulls in a sharp breath at my reaction, letting go as quickly as he had me in his grasp, as if surprised at the strength of his own hand. And that look on hisface, that angry, lost look, that tender ferocity—it’s too much like the swarm of feelings inside me. And I can’t hold myself together anymore.

Tears fall down my mud-splattered face.

He sits back on his heels, looking me over, his lightness filling in around us. Then, one swift motion has him on his bottom, his legs on either side of my tucked body. He takes my ankle and unfolds my leg, drawing it over his knee, then the other, outstretching my legs over his.

I can only feel the tears, the struggle of my heart trying to keep itself in one piece as he holds my waist and pulls me closer. And closer. Until I’m in his lap. Until my legs hug him. Until his arms so tentatively find their way around my back. Until breathing is a burden. And he looks at me. With those eyes. At every falling tear. He simply tugs me nearer when my legs tighten around him, when my tears wet his shirt.

I can’t take the silence, the depth of his stare. I punch two fists into his chest, into that tiny space between us, right over his heart, my face crumpling. “She’s my mother,” I sob.

Chapter

Thirty-Six

One dark brow rises.

It’s the only sign he heard me mention my mother. He doesn’t ask who, doesn’t question my tears, doesn’t take one look at my knuckles digging into his chest. He goes for his knife instead, pulling it from his pocket, and brings it to my face. His eyes soften as though the heaviness in my heart were his, but somehow they hold on to their sharpness, that edgy glint catching the moonlight.

One side after the other, stroke after stroke, he scrapes the cold blade over my cheeks and down my jaw, wiping away my tears before licking the metal clean. He holds my gaze, watching me sniffle. My shoulders quake, my lip tight between my teeth as I try to stop the salty streams. His tongue slides over the knife’ssurface until not a tear falls, my breath fogging the silver as he pulls it away one last time.

I stumble through the act of breathing, addled by his gentle touch and the way he takes those little jewels of sadness from me and makes them part of him. “What are you—”

“Don’t.” He shoves the handle of his knife longways into my mouth, pressing on it so I can’t spit it out. His thumb taps the metal. One, two, three times, and he leans in so close our noses touch. “Don’t let me do this,” he warns, his voice uneven, pained.

His pinky strokes my temple, and with his quiet, steely words and trembling touch, something hard has me biting down on that knife—him, his cock crowding between us, growing.

Despite his words, his free hand goes to my ear, thumbing and stroking its shell. He dips a finger inside, and I squirm in his lap, my hips sliding forward. He lets out a fast breath at the movement, and grips my ear tighter. Saliva dribbles down my chin. One more tap, and he pulls the knife from my mouth and slips it under a lock of hair in my face, guiding it away.

I can’t move my hands from where they rest on my legs, can’t let myself take hold of this man and can’t—not even if I dredge up every maddening moment—bring myself to push him away. I look at his beat-up face, the heat he spews from every pore, and I beg with my eyes. I beg him not to do the things I want him to do while I speak in the most hushed of tones, fighting each word. “Don’t do it.”

He groans, desire and the rigor of restraint rising in his throat like faint thunder.

“Stop?” I offer, but my breathless attempt at resistance screams the opposite.

Another sound makes its way from his chest, more primal than the last. He shakes beneath me.

I swallow.Hard.“No?” It’s excruciating, the word leaving me.

Another groan, and that control, that tightly coiled band holding him back—it snaps. He’s free, and even the air around us changes, raw and possessive, biting cold. His lips graze my cheek, so lightly I might be imagining it.

I don’t dare move, not even when he flattens his tongue and licks the trail of saliva from my face, terribly close to my open mouth, my lips. Warmth spreads over my cheeks and down, flushing through my chest, and down again. To my belly. And down,so far down. I shudder, an uncontrollable ripple of pleasure at the warm wetness, at what he does to me.

And if I make a sound as my neck arches back, my hips and chest seeking him out, I can’t hear it over the firing up of my senses, the blaze now roaring at my core. He snatches my jaw and forces it back down. Every inch of me is screeching—shrieking no, shouting yes, my body pulling me in two, doubt and desire rampaging through me. My moral compass spins out of control, round and round until it marks its point, finds home.

I want him.

His wide eyes dart back and forth, such a panic in them, such hunger that I dig my fingers into my legs, holding my hands back from acting on those same feelings.

“Fuck, Never.” His throaty voice rumbles through me. “Stop me before I fucking devour you.”

My arms finally move, unbearable desire forcing them into action, giving him what he wants.

I shove his chest and yell. “Get the fuck away.” I freeze, remembering the knife in his hand. He pokes the point into my cheek and moves closer. I flinch. A warm drop of blood slides down to my jaw.

“Fight me, Never.”

I push him again.

“Harder,” he says, blade still to my skin. “Godsdammit, now’s your chance. Fucking fight me. Stop me.”