Page 64 of From West, With Regret

London’s smooth legs are still covered in goosebumps, and I want nothing more than to reach out and rub my hands all over them. Heat blasts from the air vents, stifling what little oxygen there is, but it does nothing to break the chill over her. She clings to the side of the door, staring out at the city, leaving the club and the man I nearly killed behind.

The words I want to say sting the tip of my tongue.

“London.” I swallow my goddamn nerves and reach out to her, my knuckles swollen and red from the fight. “Are you okay?”

Her eyelids slowly close. “Please stop asking me that, West.”

“I won’t,” I argue back. “Your wellbeing is all I’m concerned about, and I can’t help feeling like you’re not okay.”

Her eyes open, and all she does is stare out the window with the tip of her black-painted thumbnail between her teeth. She shakes her head and a bitter chuckle passes her beautiful lipsbefore she snaps her head in my direction. “Even if I wasn’t, I always find a way to be okay. My life is messy, West. That much hasn’t changed.”

Her words are a hammer to the chest.

Alden eyes us in the rearview mirror, and I fucking hope we get home soon. I hate having this conversation with London while he’s in the car. Alden already knows more than he probably should for someone who works for me, though I know he won’t intervene when it comes to personal matters.

“Talk to me.” I beg. “Tell me what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours.”

Her mouth curls. “Where do I even begin?”

“I don’t know.” I run a frustrated hand through my hair, ignoring the searing pain. Alden takes a sharp turn, and I have no clue how close we are to my place. I’ve lost all sense of time and space. Judging the brief stop-and-go movements of the car a few seconds ago, I’m guessing we’re at least across Brooklyn Bridge.

“Start with tonight,” I tell London.

“You nearly killed that man, West.”

“If you think I regret the way I responded to that fucking asshole, you’re mistaken. He deserved it.”

“You can’t just beat someone up because he said some stupid shit to me.”

“I absolutely can and I would do far worse to someone for far less.”

Seconds pass by in painstaking silence. My muscles tense, and the pain in my knuckles intensifies, but it isn’t from the fight. It’s from the need to touch London. I want more than what we did yesterday.

She inhales a sharp breath. “You’d kill someone for me?”

Oh, you have no idea.

“I think you already know the answer to that question.” I growl.

Her chest is rising and falling with every laborious breath she takes in and pushes out. Her eyes are the shade of cold steel until they soften just for me.

Her chin wobbles, and my coat slips away from her shoulders. She scoots closer to me though barely. With one hand, she grips the back of the passenger seat, the other planted against the back between us.

“I’m hanging on by a thread, West,” she breathes, her shoulders dropping. “Cut it.”

Then my hands are in her hair, and I’m stealing what remaining breaths she has left in her lungs.

EIGHTEEN

LONDON

Finally.

Fucking finally.

We collide, his hands in my hair, my mouth starving for his. West’s kiss is exactly how I hoped it would be, hungry and frantic, yet still measured. I should have asked him to kiss me last night. I was a fool for not because damn, he’s a good kisser. His soft lips press firmly to mine, drinking me in. I’ve never been kissed like this. An explosion bursts in my chest, and I’m worried I’m caught in another dream—one that has me questioning what’s reality and what isn’t.

Not breaking our mouths apart, I shrug the rest of my arms out of his sport coat, allowing it to fall to the footwell as I lift my leg up and over him to straddle his lap. Fresh goosebumps slither across my skin from West’s touch. He grips my ass as I lower myself over him, immediately feeling his stiff cock rub against me, making me moan. His tongue slips between my lips, tasting and teasing me. My heart bursts with every lap of it against mine.