Page 125 of Kill for a Kiss

I guide us so that I’m sitting on his lap, taking in his entire length, and shivering in a way that’s frightfully far too delightful for the tension behind his gray eyes.

I slowly move my hips, drawing out the time passing through us. My fingers thread through his hair, tugging until he’s breathing unevenly.

“Sterling,” I whisper, my voice trembling with a feeling bigger than fear. “Can I blindfold you?”

He lifts his head slowly, the dim light catching the sharp line of his jaw, and the storm brewing behind his eyes. But he doesn’t question or hesitate. Instead, he reaches for my hand, pressing it to his chest, right over his heart. “You can do anything you want to me,” he says. “Anything, Elle.”

The weight of his trust, his surrender, is so unguarded. I take it, leaving my palm on his beating chest. I feel his pulse race and see his pupils dilate.

I reach for the sheet. The edge of it comes free in my hands with a quiet pull, worn cotton giving way without a fight. I tear a strip with fingers that don’t feel steady, don’t feel sure, but keep going anyway.

He doesn’t look away. He watches the whole time, silent andstill, as if the waiting itself is part of his offering. He sits up without needing to be asked and lowers his head.

I wind the cloth around his eyes, not tight but firm enough that no light could slip through. His breath grazes my wrist while I knot it behind his head. When I’m done, he stays still, waiting.

I straddle his lap, knees on either side of his hips, and let my hands trail down his chest, tracing the hard muscles that ripple under my touch.

“You trust me,” I murmur, more thought than statement.

“I do,” he says with so much certainty.

I feel his answer everywhere. In his voice, in his hands resting on my waist, in how he lets me guide him without the smallest hint of resistance. I reach down between us to bring his hand where I need him most. It’s slow, intentional, and claiming. He groans low in his chest. He lets me set the pace, lets me take what I need from him. And I do. I sink onto him, over and over, so slowly, savoring every stretch and every inch of him.

The blindfold on him makes it easier. It makes it feel like no one can see me falter, not even him. I rock against him, the exhilaration filling me when everything else threatens to spin apart.

When I find my voice, broken and breathless, I ask the question I’ve been running away from for so long. “Tell me, Sterling,” I whisper and moan. “Who was I before you saved me?”

Sterling’s hands tighten on me in his silent response. He’s blindfolded, helpless to do anything but feel every slow, dragging roll of my hips against his and every shuddered breath I steal from him.

His jaw clenches under the weight of his restraint returning. I can feel it, even though he isn’t speaking. I set the rhythm. Torturously slow. A rhythm meant to tease the truth out of the both of us.

He’s hesitating again. So I lean in, brushing my mouth against theshell of his ear. “I remember…a fire,” I whisper, my lips moving to the side of his throat. “A house. My family’s home. It was burning.”

I roll my hips some more, swifter this time, dragging a broken groan from his throat.

“Was that because of you, Sterling?”

For a while, there’s only the sound of our breathing in the growing dark. His fingers flex against my skin when he says, “Yes.”

The word lands deep in me, deeper than I expected. It cracks open an old wound that’s been festering in the back of my mind.

I move again, slower this time, hovering before I take him back in. I groan. He gasps. My hands run over his shoulders. He shivers as I press my breasts onto his chest, seeking friction. His heart beats so hard against my touch. He loses his breath, lips parted and panting. His body says what his words don’t. Regret’s stitched into every rigid line of him.

The next question tears itself free from me before I can stop it. “And the people inside,” I whisper. “My parents. Was it you who I saw…kill them?”

For a long time, he doesn’t speak. Then a breath leaves him, dragged out of him as though he’s carried the ugly truth for far too long. “Yes.”

It’s a gut-wrenching confession. An unbearable truth lying bare between us.

I press my forehead against his, breathing him in to steady myself even as the memory claws through—smoke choking my lungs, my younger brother sobbing into my shirt, the sickening crack of bodies breaking, and the harrowing howls of pain that followed. And all the red I saw, from my parents’ spilled blood sliced out of them and from the flames engulfing the home I only knew then. I’ve made plenty more homes with Sterling ever since.

“Did you know I was there with my little brother?”I ask, moving over him like the rhythm might keep us both from breaking apart.

His hands tighten at my waist, trembling now. “No,” he grinds out. “I didn’t know. Not until after.”

He lets out a broken breath. It’s another crack in the armor he’s worn so long. “I saw you,” I murmur, almost to myself. “Through the closet slats. You were wearing all black and an older mask.”

Sterling shudders beneath me, the tension radiating off him. “I didn’t see you,” he says, voice shaking. “Not until later. When you were running. I was outside. Saw you carrying him out of the place. Both of you were…burning.”