Lead Me Home (Fight for Me #3)(53)

My muscles tensed beneath the assault.

Her perfect, perfect assault.

I grabbed her by the wrists, voice a warning. “Nikki.”

“Please,” she whimpered. “I need you. I need you. Take it away.”

My mind flashed to a year ago. I could almost hear my own words echo through my spirit. My pleas when I’d needed her in a way no one else could offer.

Like she needed me now.

The two of us knew each other better than anyone else.

Trusted in a way we shouldn’t.

“Nikki,” I said again, another warning that only sounded like giving in.

“Please.” She pressed the word right against my heart that thundered and roared and sent an earthquake through me.

Protection and greed.

“You are so much better than what I’ve got to offer. I’m messed up.”

“What if I want to be messed up with you?”

A low chuckle rumbled out, and my fingertips were tracing across her lips.

Everything coming closer.

Closer and closer.

“It’s my job to protect you, remember? Even if that means protecting you from me.”

The smallest smile pulled across her sexy mouth, a tease barely winding into the words. “I guess I like your brand of pain, don’t I?”

Lust flickered low. Right where it’d always burned for her.

Embers and ash.

An aching, smoldering glow. “Don’t want to hurt you, Nikki, and I’m pretty damned sure you don’t want me to hurt you, either.”

She blinked up at me. No reservations when she should be running for her life. “Then don’t.”

“Not sure I know anything else.”

Need flickered through those bewitching features, and I brushed my fingers through the wild pieces of her hair, holding her by the side of the head.

“If I could, I’d do anything for you. Give you anything.”

Her nails scratched over the cross etched right at the center of my chest.

Right over the boom of my heart. It pulsed my blood harder and harder, every thrum winding me higher.

Lust bottled in the air. Wobbling. Teetering as everything threatened to spill.

Stark vulnerability seeped into her words, a line pulling into a scowl across her brow. “Please, Ollie. Touch me.”

Need tied my guts into a thousand knots, and I gripped her as we swayed. To the beat of the music that filtered up from below.

The bar alive.

Nikki and I elevated above it.

Removed.

Two strangers who knew each other better than anyone else who’d landed in a realm where they shouldn’t be.

My thumb traced along her cheek. Right over those freckles that made her appear so sweet and a little untamed.

She was.

But she was more. So much more.

She was beauty and belief and the sun.

Made up of her own mistakes and her own regrets.

She was fear and challenge and perseverance.

She was the girl I’d thought I would spend my life with until I’d lost it the day I’d lost Sydney. “I will ruin you, Nik. We both know it.”

Nails scratched across my skin, searching for a place to sink in. “You ruined me a long time ago.”

My nose brushed across hers. “Nikki.” Her name was a moan. A plea. It was giving in. “What do you need?”

“You.”

A groan rumbled deep in my chest, and I swept her off her feet, one arm under her back and the other under her knees. That was right as my mouth was slanting over hers.

Possessively.

Protectively.

My tongue plundered that smart, delicious mouth.

Deprived of the taste of her for far too long. For too many fucking years. After the tease I’d gotten the other day, I was desperate for more.

Damn the consequences.

A whimper pulled from her, and she murmured, “Ollie,” on a needy breath of surrender.

For a moment, both of us were giving in.

Her arms wound around my neck as I moved across the balcony. I owned that mouth the whole way, Nikki clinging to me the entire time.

Kissing me back.

Just as hungry.

Desperate and needy.

Needy for me.

Heaviness stretched my chest taut, everything I’d ever held for this girl swelling.

Getting bigger.

Consuming in a way that I knew would never let me go.

Angling to the side, I slid open the door with my elbow.

Shadows played across the floor and walls of my loft, and I carried her across the dusky, dimly-lit room. When I laid her on the couch, a surprised breath gushed from between her lips.

I swallowed it.

Made it my own.

Wanting more. So much more. Wanting it all.

Fuck.

I had to focus. Focus on this girl, who was squirming on the dark leather, wearing this ridiculous short floral dress and boots.

Those legs bent as her hips bucked from the couch, begging for me. That dress slinked up to reveal the silky skin of her thighs. It gave me a peek of the black lace covering her underneath.

Desire clutched every cell.

Heart and mind and body.

There was nothing I could do. All I wanted was to take her away from there. To a reality where it was us and nothing else.

I stood, staring down at her through the darkness.