Page 90 of The Same Backward as Forward

Hunger. Need.It’s not a whisper this time or a hum in my bones. It’s everywhere. It’s everything. It’s electric and ocean-deep—every part of her calling to every part of me.

There’s nothing to quit.

“Liar,” I murmur. A breath catching in my throat, I skim my hands over her face and when she leans into my touch, I am undone. I could spend a lifetime doing this and only this—my fingers, her skin—but the tilt of her chin echoes her initial challenge.

Every part of you, I think,and every part of me. I drive my hands into her hair, and she makes a noise halfway between a moan and a growl.You’re going to kill me, everything girl.

I bring my lips closer and closer to hers, then force myself tostop. I meant it earlier when I said that she didn’t have to tell me a damn thing that she didn’t want to, and she doesn’t have to give me a damn thing, either.

I will never take anything from this woman that she doesn’t want to give.

Time is agony, and it’s ecstasy, her lips so close to mine, each fraction of a second a torture both electric and deep as I ache in ways I can never remember aching. I amwant. I amneed.

I have never felt so real.

And then Hannah surges up.Shecloses the gap and renders the rest of the universe nonexistent, and as my lips part for hers, I remember that one of my earliest thoughts in this life was that kissing her might kill me, but ifthistakes me out, I will consider it a life well-lived.

I am need, and I am want, and I will take everything she wants to give, andIwill give and give and give to her.

My body shifts. Her hands react by pulling me tighter to hers. Her back is against the lighthouse, and my hands are still tangled in her hair, and every breath she takes is like a bolt of lightning through my body.

I have never needed anything the way that I need her. But being neededbyher?

Makingherbreath go ragged—

It’s everything.She has always been everything. And this—

“This is a mistake.” Hannah pulls back just enough to speak directly into my lips. “You’re…”

“Horrible,” I fill in, and maybe that should hurt, but it doesn’t, because her hand snakes around the back of my head, and my lips crash back down onto hers.

You, Jackson says in my mind.Hannah. It can’t happen.

“Yes,” she tells me.

Yes, I am horrible. Yes, I am here.Yes, I think,I am yours to command. She pushes me back, slams me into the lighthouse wall, and any pain I might have felt is lost in a wave of everything.

Of her.

“I have no redeeming properties,” I murmur.

“None,” she agrees.

With gentle hands, I tilt her head back, trailing kisses down that strong, strong jaw. “You hate me.”

She hates me.

She hates me.

She hates me.

And as her back arches, I know, the way my body knows that it was made for hers, that if the lighthouse door is unlocked, the two of us are going inside.

I know: Thisishappening.

I know: She is the beginning and the end and everything in between for me.

Chapter 22