Page 92 of Last Breath

Everything he’d kept away, every memory he’d shoved in a corner, pushed distractions in front of, all crashed to the ground.

Her grin in the rearview mirror of his car.

Bare hips as her T-shirt rose up when she grabbed a mug from the top cupboard in Grey’s cottage.

Her legs tightening around his waist as he’d lifted her onto that desk.

The slit of cleavage as she reached across him to grab her water bottle from the driver’s side door.

The hypnotic swish of her hair as she pulled it into a ponytail.

Now her hair was in his fingers, silk, sweat, knots. Her sharp tongue – always with an answer, a snipe – now in his mouth, tasting, curious, hungry. Every part of her he’d locked away because it could never be his, all his secrets he thought he’d take to the grave, he now confessed.

You. I couldn’t leave. I stayed longer than I’ve ever stayed anywhere because of you.

She bit his lip like she could taste his thoughts.

And it doesn’t make sense. Because there can never be anything between us. But when I close my eyes, it’s always you.

It’s always been you.

She pulled him down on top of her, and thoughts became incoherent.

‘So. Beautiful.’ He kissed her neck, down her sternum to the cotton of her T-shirt.

‘So are you.’ Her fingers grazed his face again, her long nails against his scar.

He shivered and brought his face down to her neck again so she couldn’t see it. She didn’t mean that. ‘Are you sure about this?’ He could barely pull his lips away from her skin to ask.

‘Just shut up and kiss me.’

‘Nella.’

She glared in such a Nella way his heart constricted like she was squeezing it in her fist. ‘For fuck’s sake, Jett.Yes, I want you to fuck me. Do you want my signature or ...’

He caged her smart-ass lips with his and she moaned into him as they both lifted her shirt over her head. The feel of her rough, lacy bra against his bare skin was enough to send him over the edge, and the way she gripped his shoulders to bring him closer, so she could feel exactly how much he wanted this – wanted her – was not helping.

‘You’re impossible,’ he said, his mouth moving down to the swell of her breasts.‘Impossible.’

‘It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,’ she teased, fingers dragging through his hair.

‘I never looked.’

‘Never?’

‘Never.’

‘Yeah, right.’ She traced the outer line of his lips with her nail; her mouth not being on his skin was torture. ‘What about that night at the Perth apartment, when you didn’t knock?’

‘Oh, you mean when you were ... what was the phrase you used ...this close to an orgasm?’

‘Iwas.’ But the certainty was gone from her voice, their old walls not completely fallen, but cracking.

‘Do you know what I was thinking, in that moment, when I came through the door and saw you on top of him?’

Her eyes burned. She dragged him back down, mouth hungrier than ever, before she released him and said hoarsely, ‘Tell me.’

‘The first thing,’ he said, tracing a finger around her mouth like she’d done to him, then slowly down her throat, over the lace of her bra, down the flat plain of her abdominals, over the swell of her stomach, lingering over the waistband of her shorts. She tried to push him further down but he shook his head, splaying his hand over her stomach – he was so big compared to her, his fingers almost spanned her hip bones. ‘The first thought was I’m going to need to blow my brains out to get this image out of my mind – where is the closest gun?’