His words were spoken roughly, because his edges were rough, no matter how neatly his shirt was ironed, or how close cut his hair was. Whatever he’d been through chiseled and sanded down the parts you couldn’t iron, wash or shave. It made sense that his voice matched that.
But there was something beyond that. Something soft. Something I knew was for me. Something I wanted to be mine, I wanted to rouse the last soft and tender part out from this rough man, despite the fact it had a time limit.
Despite the fact that my beating heart would be a countdown to when it’d never be whole again.
Because I was falling for him.
People knew I believed in love at first sight, considering I proclaimed it every week. But that was with boys who spoke pretty words and had pretty, unblemished souls.
This man was not giving me pretty words and I could see his soul was plenty blemished from death and pain he’d both seen and administered.
This was not the kind of love at first sight I imagined. Or that I wanted.
But it was here.
“Everyone around me has always wanted to protect me from the world,” I whispered. “They don’t think I can handle it. The real one. Not the one they think I live in.”
His hand tightened on my neck. “I’m not here to protect you from the world. I want to give it to you. Because I know you’re strong enough to handle it.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, his lips inches away from mine. “You’ve only known me for a few hours.”
He grinned against my lips and the expression hit me in the stomach. Well, a lot lower than my stomach. “I’ve known you much longer than that, Little Girl. And I’ll know you much better in a few hours.”
And then he kissed me.
Kissed me.
I’d been kissed before. I wasn’t inexperienced in kissing. Or other things. My virginity was technical. I’d guarded it fiercely, but I’d been a lot freer with other things. So boys had kissed me. Some good. Some okay. Some not good at all.
But this was nothing like that.
This was not a boy.
This was a man.
Before he’d kissed me, like really kissed me, showed me the amount of experience and talent he had in that area—and presumably other areas too—but I was the one who was in charge of that. That was my kiss. I had the control, of when to start and stop. He hadn’t taken that from me, despite the way he held his body that told me he was fighting for control. Like absolutely freaking battling for control.
This time he wasn’t fighting.
Or battling.
I didn’t have the control.
He didn’t take it from me.
He kissed me in a way that told me I’d never had the control in the first place.
And he didn’t kiss me hesitatingly, as if he were asking permission. He took it. He demanded surrender, and also encouraged me to match him, to fight him.
And I did. Something inside me I didn’t even know existed awakened and I hooked my hands into his belt loops, yanking him closer to me, needing him to be pressed into every inch of me. I kissed with everything I had and everything I didn’t know I had.
My breath came in a harsh inhale when he released me, his face inches from mine, expression hard and wild.
“Fuck,” he ground out.
I blinked at him. “What?” I breathed, my voice husky and raw.
“You’re gonna be trouble,” he murmured.
“The good kind?”
His eyes darkened. “No, Little Girl. The worst kind.”
And then before I could even try and respond to that, he kissed me again.
It wasn’t until much after that I realized that he hadn’t even waited for permission to break my heart. He’d told me it was going to happen, given me the opportunity to walk away, but he’d been holding onto me with an iron grip as he did so.
But I could’ve had wings and I wouldn’t have moved from the sticky floor or the shitty bar.
From his arms.
Chapter Two
“Gotta ask you something,” he said an inordinate amount of time later.
Minutes could have passed. Hours. Lightyears.
Heck, the world could’ve ended outside, and I wouldn’t have known. Or cared. And I was a person kind of concerned with the end of the world, about recycling, about climate change, about the destruction of rainforests and the consumption of fossil fuels. I was passionate about it. Lucy called it “more annoying than slow walkers in airports.”
But I hadn’t known passion until him.
I hadn’t known life until him.
Of course that was a ridiculous thing to think about a man who I’d met in a bar and who I’d been making out with against a slightly sticky wall for however long. But that was me. I embraced feelings that other people might call ridiculous, or try to taint with logic.
“Anything,” I whispered.
His eyes flared. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” I said immediately, wishing it wasn’t the truth, wishing I was older and more worldly.
“Fuck,” he murmured, hands tightening around me. “You’re too young.”
My stomach dropped.
“A good man would stop this right here,” he continued, moving his hand so he could tug lightly on my hair.
My stomach continued to drop.
He moved his gaze up and down my body with deliberate slowness. “I’m takin’ you home.”
I gaped at him and tried not to show my disappointment. “Home?” I asked, my voice small.
I’d thought this had been good for him too, despite the reaction to my age. I was legal, after all. The hardness against my stomach was evidence that he wasn’t turned off by me. The darkness on his face sure made it seem that it was something more than him being turned on. That this was more than physical. But maybe I was misreading. Maybe I was seeing things I wanted to see. It wouldn’t be the first time. Everyone in my life knew I had the tendency to block out the darker and harder aspects of life, pretend they weren’t there so I could have my sunshine.
But this wasn’t sunshine.
Not with him.
It was dark, unyielding and unpredictable.
But maybe I was imagining it. Or pretending that he was having this same visceral reaction. Maybe he kissed like a man so he could totally see that I kissed like a girl.
“Yeah,” he rasped, his thumb brushing my swollen bottom lip.
I sucked in a ragged breath at the gesture.
I did not know people did that in real life.
But they did.
And it was awesome.
“I can, you don’t have to—I can find my own way home,” I whispered.
I was originally trying to make it sound like I wasn’t a heartbroken little girl that her passionate liaison was ending without even...ending. I was trying to sound like a strong independent woman who didn’t need the man who kissed the heck of out her to drop her off at home.
His body hardened. “Oh, you’re not findin’ your way anywhere, Little Girl,” he growled.
He stepped back, taking me with him, his hand grasping mine in a grip that was just a little too tight—in other words, perfect.
“I’m plannin’ on getting lost tonight. In you. And you’re getting lost too.”
And then he started walking. I went with him mostly as a result of his powerful stride and his firm hold on me. But once the words penetrated, I all but skipped behind him. The bar was loud and crowded, a mess of writhing bodies that it hadn’t been before.