Show Me the Way (Fight for Me #1)(52)

His eyes captured mine through the mirror. They flashed with a warning. An omen. A prediction.

“I’m not afraid,” I whispered, my promise striking the throbbing air. He gathered my hair in his hand, shifting it all to one side, exposing my neck. He pressed his lips there in the barest kiss. “That’s funny, because I’m fucking terrified of you.” His nose ran up to the back of my ear. “Terrified of this.”

A shiver rolled down my spine, and Rex eased back a fraction, taking the hem of my shirt and drawing it slowly up my body.

That shiver shifted. An avalanche of chills. He peeled it over my head before he did the same to his own, scrubbing at his face before he tossed his shirt to his feet.

My gaze traced him through the mirror, and I swallowed around the emotion that grew thick at the base of my throat.

This complicated, amazing man drove me crazy with desire. Crazy with need. Crazy with this want that had become its own entity inside of me.

He reached up and let his fingertips flutter across my exposed shoulder and down my arm. Tingles spread in a slow slide. All the fear I’d felt earlier transformed into this emotion I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt before.

Something so real it staggered my senses.

He reached back and unfastened my bra, drawing the straps down my arms.

My nipples pebbled as my breasts were exposed, and his chest heaved with a grunt. “So beautiful. So goddamned beautiful,” he murmured.

His fingers pressed under the waistband of my shorts.

“You want this, Rynna? You want me?” There was a tremor in his words. That same warning that flamed in his eyes. “Because I’m done running from you.”

“I want you so badly it hurts.”

He heaved a breath before he dipped down and kissed a path down my spine as he dragged my shorts and underwear down my legs.

“Oh God,” I whimpered, hit by an onslaught of sensations.

Need and want and desire.

But it was that emotion that pulsed in the depths of me that nearly sent me to my knees. Wave after wave. Seeping and saturating. Trembling in my throat and tightening in my stomach.

“Rynna.” It was a groan as he kissed down the cleft of my bottom and unwound my clothing from my feet, the sound so guttural it rumbled against the walls.

Then I was back in his arms and he was carrying me to my bed, lying me in the middle.

He stood with his chest heaving. So much stunning strength. The man so gorgeous and darkly appealing my mouth went dry.

Every thought and reservation fled from my mind. Every pep talk I’d given myself over the last two weeks about forgetting him and moving on scattered in the wind.

Because when it was just him and me?

There was nothing but the beat of our hearts.

Nothing but the call of our spirits. It was something louder than all the questions. Something bigger than his past. Something higher than our obstacles.

Something fierce rippled as he looked down at me completely naked on my bed.

“Are you sure?” he grated.

My hands fisted in my sheets, my body arching toward him. Needing him in a way I’d never needed anyone before. “I already told you I’m not afraid. You, Rex Gunner, are a chance I’m willing to take.”

“You shouldn’t be real.” It was rough. Just like the man.

I bit my bottom lip, loving when he let me glimpse under all that hardness. “Yet, here I am.”

“And what happens when you’re gone?” There was something so sorrowful in it, a stab right to the center of my chest.

Slowly, I climbed up onto my knees and stretched out my hand. I brushed my fingertips down the side of his rugged face. “And what happens if I stay?”

For a beat, his eyes dropped closed, and he leaned into my touch before he snatched me by the wrist and pressed my palm to his mouth. “And what if I don’t let you leave?”

God, this man. He pushed and pulled. Taunted and tugged.

Slowly he edged back, eying me with those mesmerizing eyes as he kicked off his boots. Without freeing me of his gaze, he unfastened his belt. His abdomen flexed and bowed as he tugged on his fly and lowered the zipper.

Desire swept through my body.

A battering storm.

Anticipation and need.

He nudged the jeans down his legs and took his underwear with them.

He stood there in the shadows that fell into my room.

Completely naked.

Bare.

So beautiful a downpour of desire soaked me through.

I hadn’t been lying to Macy. This man was what gods were made of. Sleek and defined. Carved in hard, indestructible perfection.

All except for the broken pieces I knew he tried to keep concealed, buried deep inside. I saw them so clearly. Held in the depths of those eyes. Those eyes that were looking at me as if maybe I should run if I didn’t want to be devoured.

But I did.

I so desperately did.

He edged forward an inch, big hand splayed across my chest, nudging me down onto the mattress. I was spread across its width, the man towering over me from the side.

I writhed, hips jutting into the air, not caring for a second that I was desperate.

That I needed him.

His touch and his body and that spirit that had already taken me whole. He ran a fingertip down the inside of my thigh. “Last two times I touched you nearly ruined me. Seeing you like this? Don’t think I’m ever going to be the same. Stealing my sleep. Stealing my breath. Stealing my sanity. Little thief.”