Page 76 of Undertow

She pulls off her top, revealing two perfect breasts I’ve seen before but didn’t properly appreciate. I need to taste. Touch. Explore.

I take a step, but she holds up her hand. “Not yet,” she warns, lowering her gaze to my pants.

With a pained breath, I slide them open and shove them down.

“Step back,” she says, her voice husky and breathless. “Farther.”

She slips off her shorts as well, standing tall like a gorgeous statue in just a small strip of black lace. She’s breathtaking and deadly. I’m frozen as her teeth sink into her lip, almost shy.

“The rest.”

I barely hear her final command, but I would have understood it without words anyway. Her desire is all over her face. Not just lust, but the same awe I feel when I look at her.That same need for something infinite, and the fear of what will happen if you don’t get it.

After stripping completely, I straighten, still several feet away. My blood pounds, my skin hot and tingling as her ravenous stare slides over my body. Across my face, down my neck to my chest, where it stalls as if taking in every tattoo, every line and groove that now belongs to her. She knows it. I see it in the way she studies me with a possessiveness that makes me burn from the inside out.

She’s not looking, she’s cataloging what’s hers.

My body.

My heart.

My soul.

“How are you so beautiful?” she whispers.

Because I know how to hide the ugly.

But I swallow the pain of the lies I’m telling with my silence, and advance.

She’s ready for me, already panting by the time my hands slide into her hair and my mouth finds hers again. She groans, kissing me back and pulling me into her. Hot skin on hot skin. Hands and mouths and electric collisions. She reaches between us to run her palm over me with deliberate, agonizing strokes and…

“Wait,” I gasp out. “Let me grab a condom.”

I move to pull away and her fist clenches around me, refusing to let go. I groan with a mix of pain and pleasure.

“I’m on birth control,” she says. “I haven’t slept with anyone in months. My last test was negative. You?”

I stare into her pleading eyes, my soul shredding right here in the dim living room light.

Am I negative? Yes. Am I clean?

God, I’m so fucking dirty she wouldn’t even be able to see past the grime.

And suddenly, I can’t. I can’t do this anymore. I’m a parasite, leeching her beauty to feed my darkness and soothe my aching soul. What does she get in return? Lies and a broken heart when she learns the truth. I know she wouldn’t want this if she knew who I really was. No one wants that person.

I take her wrist and gently remove her hand from my body.

“Shaw?”

There’s fear in her voice. It creeps into her eyes.

I can’t look and close mine.

“Shaw!”

I shake my head, my throat shut and chest so tight I can’t breathe.

“I can’t,” I whisper, taking another step back. It’s all I can get out.