Page 94 of Last Breath

‘This is thefrontof the car. You’d know that if you renewed your licence.’

‘Sounds like you’re backtracking.’

He tightened his grip on her backside, her eyes widening as he pulled her closer, his erection straining against the jeans he didn’t remember throwing on as he’d run from the hotel room.

‘Go on.’ She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Drive.’

‘Start the timer.’

He kissed her through her underwear, the lace coarse and damp. It was her – the taste, the scent – but everything he’d tasted of her before had just been an echo of this. Her nails dug into the back of his skull and his head spun like he’d been drugged. He would kill and slaughter and destroy a thousand worlds to get high like this again.

He ripped the lace aside with his thumb, telling himself to hold back, to go slow, but his desire to devour her, to mark her as his burned as she murmured something he’d never know. The feel of her, the taste, the way she tightened against his tongue ... he was afraid he was going to be done and it hadn’t even started.

‘Jett.’ She arched against the seat. ‘Oh my god ...’

His name, breathless, from her mouth was more than he could take. He was bowing before the altar to the only thing he’d ever believed in, the only thing he’d ever worshipped. The only thing he’d give his life for. Her. It had always been her.

‘I don’t want you to stop, but I’m literally going to die if you don’t fuck me,’ she hissed as he drew himself up, licking the taste of her from his mouth.

‘I don’t want to hurt you.’ He held his body in a suspended plank above her, not wanting to crush her into the seat.

‘You can’t.’

It was those words that did it.

One minute fire was coursing through him and the next everything ran cold and drained away.

What the fuck was he doing? What the fuck weretheydoing?

He knew she’d meant he couldn’t physically hurt her. But her words had unlocked something that had been rolling around in the attic, hiding in some shadowed space while the rest exploded.

He was going to hurt her. If he went through with this, he’d have to hurt her. Because they couldn’t ever be anything real.

He couldn’t be her escape – her friend with benefits, her comfort fuck. He was leaving. And she wanted to be friends, and he’d told her they couldn’t because of the way he felt about her. But he couldn’t sleep with her and then leave. He might be a lot of things, have had to fit into a lot of different lives that never truly belonged to him, but he’d never been that person.

And Nella was grieving. She’d said she wanted it, but how could he know he wasn’t just a way to forget, a distraction? Hell, a few minutes ago he would have been whatever the fuck she wanted him to be. But what if she woke up in a few hours and realised she’d made a huge mistake?

The whole point of never staying long enough to make a place home was so that he could be forgettable, but he knew this time would be different. He wanted Nella to remember him. And he couldn’t have this be that final memory. He couldn’t be another regret.

Sensing the entire world had shifted, Nella pulled his face to look into his eyes. ‘What is it?’ Her mouth curved in that wicked, giddy way of hers that drove a stake right through his heart.

‘I can’t do this.’

31

Nella

Everything had been in high definition, all of her senses heightened like she’d taken that sci-fi drug that opened up the other parts of her brain not normally used. His smell, the pressure of his body, his fingers, the sound of his voice reverberating through her like she was a struck cymbal, ringing at a pitch only he could hear, it all faded to black and white, like a 1920s movie. Everything slowed. The moment that had filled her with straining, burgeoning ecstasy was leeching from her body, from the car. She was coming down before she’d peaked. A drug siphoned from her bloodstream unwillingly, painfully.

‘What do you mean youcan’t do this? Seems like all the mechanics are working just fine.’ She nudged the hard ridge between his thighs with her knee. To his credit, he didn’t wince.

Jett pushed himself back into a sitting position in the passenger seat. Doing this in the car had seemed erotic and spontaneous a minute ago but now she felt like a ditzy high schooler about to lose her virginity after two sips of a goon bag. She sat up too and scrunched her knees under her chin, her jaw clenched against the words burning on her tongue.

Don’t you fucking dare say this is a mistake.

‘This is a mistake.’

She made a sound likehargh!into her knee, her teeth scraping against the skin.