Falling into You (Falling #1)(45)

It’s not alright, it’s not okay.

I know, I know.

The night is long, it’s dark and cruel.

I know, I know.

You’re not alone. You’re not alone.

You are loved. You are held.

Quiet your crying voice, lost child.

You’re okay, now.

You’re okay, now.

Just hold on, one more day.

Just hold on, one more hour.

Someone will come for you.

Someone will hold you close.

I know, I know.

It’s not okay, it’s not alright.

But if you just hold on,

One more day, one more hour.

It will be. It will be.”

Nell is silent, staring at me with limpid gray-green eyes like moss-flecked stone. She heard every word, heard the cry of lost boy.

“Did you write that?” She asks. I nod, my chin scraping the top of her scalp. “For who?”

“Me.”

“God, Colton.” Her voice is hoarse from sobbing, raspy. Sexy. “That’s so sad.”

“It’s how I felt at the time.” I shrug. “I had no one to comfort me, so I wrote a song to do it myself.”

“Did it work?”

I huff at the ridiculousness of the question. “If I sang it enough, I’d eventually be able to fall asleep, so yeah, kind of.”

I finally glance down at her, actually look into her eyes. It’s a mistake. She’s wide-eyed, intent, full of heartbreak and sadness and compassion. Not pity. I’d flip my shit if I saw pity in her eyes, just like she would if she saw it in me.

Compassion and pity are not the same: pity is looking down on someone, feeling sorry for them and offering nothing; compassion is seeing their pain and offering them understanding.

She’s so goddamn beautiful. I’m lost in her eyes, unable to look away. Her lips, red, chapped, pursed, as if begging me to kiss her, are too close to ignore. I’m suddenly aware of her body against mine, her full breasts crushed against me, her leg, one round thigh, pale as whitest cream, draped over mine. Her palm, long fingers slightly curled, rests on my shoulder, and lightning sizzles my skin where she touches me. I’m not breathing. Literally, my breath is stuck in my throat, blocked by my heart, which has taken up residence in my trachea.

I want to kiss her. Need to. Or I might never breathe again.

I’m an asshole, so I kiss her. She deserves ultimate gentility, and my lips are feathers against hers, ghosting across hers. I can feel every ridge and ripple of her lips, they’re chapped and cracked and rough from crying, from thirst. I moisten them with my own lips, kiss each lip individually. First the upper, caressing it with both of mine, tasting, touching. She breathes a sigh.

I think I’m okay, I think she wants this. I was honestly terrified at first she’d wig out, slap me, scramble away. Tell me she couldn’t stomach a kiss from a blood-soaked monster like me. I don’t deserve her, but I’m an asshole, a selfish bastard, so I take what I can get from her, and try to make sure I give her the best I’ve got.

She doesn’t kiss me back, though. She shifts on my body, and her curled fingers tighten on my chest, but her mouth? She just waits, and lets me claim her mouth with mine. I take her lower lip in my teeth, ever so gently. My palm, my rough and callused paw is grazing her cheek, smoothing a wayward curl back behind her ear. She lets me. Foolish girl. Letting a brute like me kiss her, touch her. I’m afraid the grease under my nails will mar her skin, worried the blood that has been soaked into my bones will seep out of my pores and sully her ivory skin.

She nuzzles her face into my palm. She opens her mouth into mine, kisses me back. Oh, heaven. I mean, goddamn, the girl can kiss. My breath never really left my throat, and now it rushes out of me in disbelief that she’s letting this happen, that she’s actively taking part.

I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m a nice guy. I’m not good. I just held her when she cried. I couldn’t do anything else.

I end the kiss before it can turn into something else. She just looks at me, lips slightly parted, wet like cherries now and so, so red. Oh, fuck, I can’t resist going in for another kiss, from letting some shred of my raging hunger for her beauty show through in my kiss. She returns it with equal fervor, moving so she’s more fully on top of me, and she doesn’t stop me when my hand drifts down her scalp, down her nape, down her back, rests on the small just above the swell of her ass. I don’t dare touch her there.

This is insane. What the hell am I doing? She just bawled her eyes out, sobbed for hours. She’s seeking comfort, seeking forgetting. I can’t have her like this.

I pull away again, slide out from beneath her.

“Where are you going?” She asks.

“I can’t breathe when you kiss me like that. When you let me kiss you. It’s…I’m no good. No good for you. It’d be taking advantage of you.” I shake my head and turn away from the confusion in her eyes, the disappointment. I retreat, squeezing my hands into fists, angry with myself. She needs better than me.

I grab my guitar, rip it from the soft case, and head for the rickety, creaking, outside stair to the roof, a bottle of Jameson in hand. I plop down on the busted-ass weather-beaten blue Lay-Z-Boy I lugged up here for this purpose, twist the top off the bottle and slug it hard. I kick back with my feet up on the roof ledge and watch the gray-to-pink haze of onrushing dawn, guitar on my belly, plucking strings.