Page 49 of Undertow

“They got your chest pretty good too,” she says, studying the ugly bruise on my ribs. I flinch when she runs her fingers over it. “It hurts?”

I shake my head. “That was an internal reaction.”

Her gaze lifts to mine, searching as her hand curves around my side, searing my skin wherever it touches. Neither of us speaks when her other hand pushes up my chest and hooks around my neck, forcing our bodies close.

I feel every inch of her. She grinds slowly in search of every hard inch of me.

“You don’t really have a girlfriend, do you. You wanted to keep me away. Why?”

My pulse pounds at the sultry tone of her challenge. I’m wired for the fight. The lie coats my tongue to deflect her. Butwould it work this time? The potent demand in her touch makes anything else seem irrelevant.

She searches my eyes with a silent warning.It’s going to happen, Shaw. You can’t fight it. Let it happen. Just give in.

“Julia,” I say in a cautioning tone. It’s all I can do. A Hail Mary to prevent what’s about to be a huge mistake. Because once our lips meet…

Explosion.

She grips my hair, moaning into the kiss as if she’s in pain. Maybe she is. Maybe I am too. Badges of pain come in all forms.

I back her toward the couch, matching her aggression with my mouth, my hands, my body that’s hardened into blatant need. She pulls me on top of her, locking her legs behind mine to fuse our hips together in a sharp rush of pleasure. I rock against her, loving her reflexive gasp, the way her eyes close and her hips instinctively seek more. Again and again and again we collide, violent and aching.

“Please tell me you have protection,” she breathes against my ear as I sample the soft skin of her neck.

I do, I just haven’t decided if I want her to know that. It might be the only remaining lie that can save us from each other and what I know is coming if we don’t put an end to this.

Regret.

Heartache.

Blood.

But I don’t stop it. I can’t this time.

Her heels tighten around the backs of my thighs, forcing me into her center. She arches her back with a groan, absorbing the pressure through thin fabric. Her needy response tells me she’s hungry for the rest. Desperate to consume me. Devour and own in a way no one has before.

Because it’s not her that’s different. It’s me. The sudden desire to let go. To be cherished instead of used. To be made whole by human connection, not stripped and tortured by it.

Is it possible? Is there a place where the sun doesn’t rise in Hell each morning? I know there is. An old man risked his life to prove it to me.

“Shaw?”

I blink down to soft blue eyes engulfed in passion—and something else. Something far more dangerous for a predator who only breathes poison.

I can’t look anymore.

“I want you,” she says quietly, tracing my cheek. “All of you.”

I wince before I can stop it.

She doesn’t want me. She wants a ghost. An idea. She wants the thing I fucking made her want because that’s what I do. Make people desperate for lies that will destroy them.

There is nome.

I lean in anyway.

“I want you too,” I say against her lips, sealing it with the kiss I’ve already logged as her favorite. I dip my hand beneath her shirt, molding it over her breast until she bucks into the friction. Her hand covers mine to urge harsher contact.

You can still stop this. Youneedto stop this.