Page 28 of Forbidden Confessions, Volume 2 (The Forbidden Volumes #1)

Seven weeks earlier

I pause outside the kitchen door and drag in a deep breath, bracing myself. Mental preparation before I face Havana, my son’s girlfriend, has become a morning ritual over the past few weeks. It’s both necessary and increasingly difficult.

She’s been living with us for a mere two weeks, and she’s already changed everything.

The house smells like fresh air and cinnamon, combined with her vanilla-jasmine scent, instead of takeout containers and stale beer.

She cooks, and hot meals are waiting in the oven when I finally get home.

The place is cleaner than it’s been since… hell, maybe ever.

I know Havana is doing what she can to “earn her keep.” But her impact on me is far greater.

Just her presence brings sunshine to my usually bleak existence.

Since I spend my days dealing with criminals, lowlifes, and thugs—people who’d sell their own mothers for the right price—spending time with Havana and her sweet disposition is a bright ray I find myself craving more and more.

For days, I’ve wondered if it’s an elaborate act. But no. Nothing about her is fake.

Since she stepped foot in my house, I’ve watched her, probably closer than I should have, given the fact she’s seventeen.

She genuinely cares about the people around her.

Hell, a few days after she moved in, I came home after prowling the Vegas streets and nearly taking a knife between the ribs in a street brawl.

Havana didn’t flinch at the blood soaking my shirt.

She launched herself at my wound, despite my protests that I could patch myself up.

When infection threatened to set in and fever took hold the next day, she stayed with me for forty-eight hours straight, keeping the wound clean and fighting to break my temperature.

When it finally did, I woke up to find her in my bed, curled against me, surrounded by bloody rags and bandages.

In my sleep, I unconsciously dragged her body to mine, wrapped an arm around her small waist, and buried my face in her soft neck.

The heady scent of her skin and the feel of her curves pressed against me had me harder than steel before I was even fully conscious.

Bad enough that I felt an instant jolt of pure lust the moment Ethan first introduced her to me.

But now? It’s so much worse. My fantasies about her have progressed from inappropriate to absolutely filthy.

My desire for her keeps multiplying. All because now I know what kind of person she is underneath the beauty of her dark hair and pouting mouth.

That knowledge attracts me to her even more. It’s bad for my focus. My future.

This madness—wanting her until I ache, until I’m on the brink of snapping and dragging her to my bed—has to stop.

With that thought in mind, I let out the breath I’ve been holding and walk into the kitchen as the morning sun slants in.

When I see Havana, I stop dead in my tracks.

She stands at the counter wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt. My T-shirt, I realize with a kick to the gut. When did she adopt that? Why?

I don’t know, and I can’t stop hungrily devouring her with my stare—her bare toes with black polish, her muscled calves, my threadbare shirt brushing her sleek thighs, the edges of her long dark hair falling like silk to her hips.

The bare hint of her hard nipples under my graphic tee nearly fells me before I climb her profile to find her eyes, still heavy with sleep, as she grabs a mug from the cabinet and sets about making coffee.

Havana has no idea that she’s slowly killing me.

Christ. Those lips. Full and soft, naturally rosy without any of that glossy shit most girls wear. I can’t stop staring at them, imagining what they’d feel like under mine. What they’d look like wrapped around my?—

Stop. She’s seventeen. She’s Ethan’s girlfriend. She’s living under your protection.

None of that matters to my cock.

Yes, I’m a bent bastard, and I’m going to hell.

In my defense, everything about her seems older than seventeen. Maybe it’s her quiet sense of responsibility, or the dignified way she handled her flighty aunt skipping out on her duties as guardian. Havana has an old soul and a pragmatism that can only come from hard work and loss.

I clear my throat.

She turns, glancing at me with a sleepy smile that makes my chest tight. “Morning, Mr. Garrison.”

“Morning.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. I need coffee. And about ten feet of distance between us.

“I didn’t hear you come in last night. I waited up for a while, just in case.”

In case…what? I was injured again? Instead of cozying up to my son, her supposed boyfriend, she worried about me?

“You don’t have to do that, Havana.”

She shrugs. “I gave up about two-thirty.”

It’s not even seven yet. I frown. “That’s not enough sleep when you have a full day of school.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m just glad you’re okay.” She turns back to the machine, spooning what looks like half a bag of sugar into her mug. “Ready for some coffee?”

“I’ll get it.” I move to the cabinet, trying not to notice how the hem of my shirt barely covers the curve of her pert ass. “Jesus, how much sugar are you putting in your cup?”

She laughs. “Enough to make it taste like candy.”

“That’s not coffee. That’s liquid diabetes.”

“Says the man who drinks his black as tar.” She turns to face me with a teasing smile as she leans against the counter, elbows braced on the edge. The position pulls my shirt tight across her breasts, and I force my gaze to her face.

But I just find myself staring at her mouth.

“Yes,” I say. “I like it black, like my soul.”

She shakes her head, studying me with perceptive eyes. “That’s not true. You’ve been very kind to me.”

Because I’m desperate to fuck you .

But I’m also brutally aware that isn’t the only reason. I want to hold her, protect her from the savage world I know is out there. My instinct is both irrational and goddamn dangerous.

I need to change the fucking subject—now.

I clear my throat. “Did you get a hold of your aunt?”

Havana’s legal guardian threw her out weeks ago when one of her flaky boyfriends came onto the girl.

How does the goddamn woman think a high schooler with no job skills is going to support herself and stay in school?

I’d love to throttle some common sense into the bitch.

But if I lay eyes on her, I’m unlikely to control my need to retaliate.

Havana hesitates, then shakes her head. “She’s blocked me everywhere. Sorry.”

The last of her family has shunned her, and the girl is apologizing to me? “Don’t be. It’s fine.”

As long as I can resist taking the girl to bed.

But seriously, how can any adult—family, no less—simply fling Havana aside like she’s trash? Since she’s a sensitive soul, I know the rejection hurts her on some level. And the fact I’m dying to take her pain away isn’t good.

Silence falls between us, broken only by the dripping of the coffeemaker and her soft breaths. While we wait, she looks at me with her sultry golden eyes under thick black lashes. Is that…desire I see in her eyes? Yes, and it’s not my imagination.

“Havana,” I say quietly. “I’m warning you. Stop now.”

She frowns with an innocence that can’t be real if she’s sleeping in my son’s bed. “Stop what?”

“Looking at me like that.”

Her lips part slightly. She blinks up at me in confusion. “Like what?”

She wants to play dumb? Not happening.

“Like you want me to kiss you.” I lean closer, my voice dropping to a rough whisper. “Because if you keep looking at me like you’ll starve if I don’t, I won’t be responsible for what happens next.”

But Havana doesn’t stop. Sure, she blushes. But if anything, her gaze intensifies. Then she pushes away from the counter and pads toward me, slow and deliberate. I should back away, put a counter between us—something. But my feet feel rooted to the floor.

“Havana…” I growl another warning. “I’m serious.”

She swallows and steps directly in front of me, close enough that I smell her—vanilla and jasmine and something uniquely her that makes my head spin. I swallow back a thick knot of lust.

“Ransom…” she whispers my name for the first time. Not Mr. Garrison. She’s crossing boundaries.

She does it again when she lifts her fingertips and settles them on my chest, over my heart.

No way she can miss how it’s racing at her touch.

That’s all it takes to light me on fire and bring me dangerously close to my knees. Every rational thought flees my brain. “You don’t know what you’re inviting.”

“You’d never hurt me.” She rises on her tiptoes, tilts her face up to mine, and brushes her lips against mine—soft, tentative, testing.

She’s right, and I’m fucking lost.

Without another thought, I surge into her personal space, tug her against my body, and capture her mouth with a hunger that should terrify her.

It’s so primal, it scares the hell out of me.

As if they have a mind of their own, my hands grip her waist, and I lift her onto the counter, stepping between her legs.

I glance down to find my shirt on her body riding around her hips. A wave of possessive desire crashes through me. But the sight of her bare thighs and the pale pink panties between them, dark with a damp spot, makes my vision blur with ravenous need.

I grip her face and tilt her under my conquering mouth. When she gasps into my kiss, I swallow the sound and push deeper inside her, claiming her with my tongue like a man starved.

With a little whimper that incinerates the last of my self-control, she wraps her legs around my hips and grips my shoulders as if she’s drowning and only I can save her.

She kisses me back inexpertly but enthusiastically, making little whining noises in the back of her throat that have me wondering…

Would she make those same sounds while I’m fucking her?