Page 72 of Make Me Yours

My tongue darts out to moisten my lips as I force myself to answer the question. Talking to Steele about this is so much more embarrassing than I imagined. “I don’t know. I mean… maybe? I guess I just…” I trail off, unsure how to express the tangled thoughts running rampant through my head.

“Hey, it’s me, Lilah,” he says. “We can talk about anything.”

I exhale.

He’s right.

We can.

“Yes. I think… I wanted somethingmore. But Devon never saw me that way.”

Steele’s jaw flexes.

“I guess I don’t understand why,” I add, eyes falling shut. “Why her and not me? What was it about her that made him souninhibited?”

Steele swears, and when my lashes flutter open, I find his hands balled at his sides.

“Don’t do that. Don’t compare yourself to her. You’re… Jesus, Lilah. You have no idea.” He drags a hand through his hair. “The way you’re wired, the things you want, they’re not wrong. Wanting to feel that kind of passion, that connection? It’s not something you should be ashamed of.”

I don’t realize I’m trembling until he reaches out and places a hand on my waist to steady me. His eyes search mine, like he’s trying to read everything I’m holding back. All the things I’m unwilling to put into words.

Steele exhales slowly, like he’s barely holding himself together. “You think you weren’t enough for him. But that asshole couldn’t even begin to understand what he had. Or what you needed and deserved.” His voice is a husky whisper when he speaks again. “If I were him, I never would’ve left your bed. I’d have worshipped every damn inch of you. I would have touched you in all the ways you craved until I learned how to read your body like it was the only language I understood.”

Heat blooms beneath my skin.

It’s hard to make sense of what’s shifting between us.

Or maybe I already know exactly what it is.

And that’s the part that terrifies me most.

“Steele…”

He lifts a hand, brushing a strand of hair away from my cheek. “Is that what you want, Lilah? To experience that kind of passion? To have someone take you like an animal, to make you feel like your brain can finally click off and you can stop thinking for a change?”

The arousal that slams into me at those words is almost enough to knock me off my feet.

Because the answer is there.

On the tip of my tongue.

Fighting to break free.

24

STEELE

She doesn’t respond right away.

Not with words.

But it’s there in the way her lips part and her chest rises and falls with each shaky inhalation. Or how the air between us turns charged until it’s almost crackling.

She’s right there on the edge with me.

But then, she takes a single step back.

That’s all it takes to knock the air from my lungs.