Page 29 of Pretty Little Trigger

CHAPTER 28

Hunter

“We’re just pretending.”

It sounds like a lie.

Because nothing about this feels like pretend.

Not the way her breath stutters when I exhale against her neck.

Not the way she arches ever so slightly, her body betraying her even as her mind screams rules.

Not the way I’m hard beneath the sheets, every inch of me aching for a taste I’ll never allow myself to take.

I bury my face into her hair, inhaling jasmine and desperation.

She fits. God help me, she fits so perfectly in my arms it makes me want to destroy every version of myself that could ever hurt her.

I need to let her go.

And yet… I don’t.

She shifts again, unconsciously rubbing against my thigh.

A soft whimper escapes her, almost inaudible, but I feel it like a punch to the chest. My fingers twitch.

Don’t. Don’t touch more of her.

Don’t ruin this.

“Hunter…” she says again little more breathless.

My hand clenches into a fist. “Alana,” I murmur, voice like gravel.

“You need to stop.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

She didn’t.

But she could. One move.

One grind of her hips and I’d be gone.

The leash I’ve got wrapped around my self-control would snap clean in half.

“Exactly,” I say. “Don’t start.” Because if she starts, I won’t be able to stop.

She goes quiet. But she doesn’t move away.

And fuck me, that might be worse.

Because now I’m stuck in this purgatory, wrapped around a woman I want more than my next breath, pretending it means nothing while every cell in my body screams that it means everything.

I press another kiss to her bare shoulder.

Just one more.

Then I close my eyes, heart pounding, jaw clenched and will myself not to ruin her.

I drift off to sleep like that.

Starving. Wrapped around the one thing I want most. Pretending I don’t want it at all.