Page 62 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Nella

He got it; she could tell by the way his mouth responded to hers.

It wasn’t like it had been in the car: hot and forbidden and daring.

It wasn’t like in the office: shocking, guarded, undeserving.

It was hungry, but not the ravenous, starved desperation of the previous times, where they’d frantically attacked each other before the glass illusion around them shattered.

This time, there was no illusion – it was just them.

He wasn’t kissing her on her pedestal, or as his boss, or his kryptonite.

He was kissing her like she was Nella and he was Jett.

And the pressure of their lips, their hips, their stomachs ignited her entire body.

Pieces fitting into places they’d always belonged but had never been.

He tasted like mint, like he’d just brushed his teeth, and his skin was cool and floral-smelling from the shower – but he still smelled like pepper and leather.

It made her crazy. Out of control, the one thing she never wanted to be.

She was a car with her brakes cut, hurtling towards a cliff and all she wanted to do was fall over, and over, and over again.

He backed her into the garage until their joint, frantic form hit the first solid obstacle. She leant against the flat hood of one of his projects – a silver something – or it could have been pink, for all she cared.

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ she said, pulling away for an agonising moment to breathe out those words.

His tongue caught hers back into a breathless, sliding rhythm. ‘The only way you can hurt me,’ he murmured, his fingers gripping her hips, pushing her up against the bonnet, ‘is if you stop.’

Kissing was no longer enough. Nothing was ever going to be enough. Not with him.

There was no belt. Her fingers slid easily through the band of his grey tracksuit pants and the groan he pressed into her mouth as she took him in her hand sent bolts of lightning through her bloodstream.

She had never felt so powerful, so vulnerable.

This was Jett, her Jett, standing before her, completely and utterly turned on by her.

His fingers were on her hips, where they’d been in the office, but this time they were under her shirt, scorching her bare skin.

‘I love your butt.’ His voice was as reverent as an oath sworn in court. ‘I lose my fucking mind when you wear these.’ His fingers dug into the satin of the incriminating pants. ‘I used to think you wore them specifically to infuriate me.’

‘Maybe I did.’ Her words coupled with the movement of her hand turned his eyes black.

He growled. ‘Bedroom, now.’

‘No way. I’ve waited too long. I’m not waiting anymore.’ Before he could protest, she was on her knees and had taken him in her mouth.

He closed his eyes, previous objection dead on his lips.

Her knees dug into the concrete but she felt no pain, only the brutal ecstasy of the realisation that she’d wasted so much time, pretending there was nothing between them when all along she could have been here, in this garage, metres away from her own bedroom, her mouth around him.

The sparks she’d felt with just her hand on him were nothing compared to the surge of power that came with this. She ran her tongue around his tip as she worked her hand up and down. Everything about him was warm and wanting.

‘Fuck.’

His moan rippled through her as she took him deeper, further than she’d normally dare. For him, she was realising, she’d cut herself into a million pieces and stitch herself back up if it meant they could fit together.

‘Nella, if you keep going I’m going to ... no, not like this ...’

She revelled in the obvious pain ripping through his voice, caused by asking her to stop.

‘Nella ...’ She could feel him barely holding it together.

As she brushed her thumb over his balls, he groaned again and seemed to involuntarily push himself deeper into her.

‘No, Nella.’ He looked like he was in a trance, fighting against himself.

‘I’m not fucking you for the first time in my garage. ’

The first time. Her pathetic little brain cradled those words like a precious stone. Did that mean he wasn’t going to leave?

‘Good thing it’s not your garage anymore.’ She stood, her heart heavy with the knowledge that he was still leaving, and that she had to let him go. Because she loved him.

And maybe that was the truth, really, of why no one ever passed her challenges.

Because she was afraid of loss. Love had never been a given for her and her siblings.

Respect was what they fought for; love was a side effect of being too human, too normal.

But maybe it was just because they were afraid to lose it.

‘Nella—’

‘We’re not friends anymore, Jett, I don’t need to compromise.’ She backed him up against his work bench, his pupils dilated as he drank her in. He was shaking his head but his hands were pulling off her shirt. Then they were back on her hips, lifting her up so now she was against the bench.

‘Are you sure?’ he rasped as her bra came off.

She’d never felt safer, her back against the wall of spanners and screwdrivers, her best friend kissing a line down her throat. ‘Yes, you have my whole ice-hearted consent.’

His teeth sank into her neck, a throaty, disapproving rumble. ‘I’ll keep your secret, Nella. You don’t have to pretend for me, you know that now.’

‘What secret?’ God, she was dying, she was actually dying, and he was doing nothing to stop it.

‘That your heart isn’t ice.’ He licked her collarbone. She shivered and fought the burning swell of tears behind her skull. ‘You are fire,’ he continued. ‘You are warmth, and life, and the light in all my darkness.’

‘I thought you just meant I was hot.’ But she could tell he knew how much his words affected her as he smiled into her mouth.

‘Oh, you’re hot, all right.’

And then he proceeded to tell her, with a tongue he’d clearly sharpened in the dark alleys of his youth, exactly what he thought about her body.