Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)(27)

I INCHED FORWARD AND pressed her closer to the wall. She looked up at me with wild blue eyes. They roiled like a tormented sky. I brushed my nose along her temple and inhaled. She smelled so damned good. A touch of cinnamon and a whole lot of spice.

This girl made me lose my head. Fuck. She made me lose my head.

If I were in my right mind, I would walk. I would turn right around and walk away and never look back. Just like I’d promised her I would. I knew it deep. Knew it like the setting of the sun that led me into the darkness night after night.

This was gonna end bad. Just the fact I was chasing her was evidence enough.

But right then? I didn’t care because I wasn’t close to feeling sane.

It seemed no matter how hard the two of us kept trying to fight it, pushing each other off when the other got too close, the next time we just got closer.

Closer and closer and closer until there was no going back.

I couldn’t.

Not anymore.

Sitting up on that stage and playing that song while watching the ripping expressions tear across her features had proven that.

For one night, I wanted it. I wanted her secrets. I wanted to sink my fingers in and take for myself. She was the exact kind of contradiction I craved.

The push and pull.

But this time the pull was too great to ignore.

I traced my thumbs along the delicate slope of her neck. Dragged them across the soft? soft skin. Her pulse was racing with a violent beat. I forced her to look at me while my entire body ran hot.

“Tell me what you want, Red.” It slipped out in a rough murmur.

In the distance, thunder rolled. Those blue eyes flashed. Flashed with courage and fear.

Something about it made me shake.

Almost defiantly, she lifted her chin, and she reached up with her small hands and grasped me around the wrists.

“I want you to kiss me.”

Motherf*cker.

Leave it to Red to ask for the thing I didn’t want to give. Memories cut a path of panic through my consciousness. Reminding me of what I’d done. Of why I could never get too close.

Of where my loyalty truly lay.

Clenching my jaw, I gripped her tighter. My heart was giving its all to reject this. Screaming at me to wise up and to do it fast. To turn my back and walk away. No doubt, my feet had officially crossed into the forbidden zone. Out of bounds.

Red was trying to take me places I didn’t want to go.

On the inside, I struggled like a goddamned madman. Torn between lashing out like I’d done the last time she’d been tempting me with the need to sink inside her, to discover the countless secrets she had lying underneath, and gathering her up and letting her in on all of mine.

I was at an all-out war with my instincts. The f*cked-up thing was I didn’t even know what those were anymore.

Not when it came to her.

Wavering, I rocked forward in indecision then rocked back. Getting closer to those full red lips with each pass.

Her attention flitted over my face. They jumped from my eyes to my mouth and back again. She fisted my suit jacket.

“What do you want?” she demanded, turning the question on me. Her voice was a brazen, needy mix of the siren who had no issue with putting me in my place and the soft vulnerability that kept seeping through.

My tongue darted out and swept across my bottom lip.

Dying for a taste.

“Fuck it.”

Figured she was going to kill me, anyway.

My mouth came down hard on hers. At the same time, I drove my hands into ruby-red curls.

Yes. No f*cking question. This was what I wanted. Every hesitation left me.

I twisted her hair tight and yanked her head back to grant better access to the pouty mouth that had starred in more than just a few of my fantasies. I needed to take more of this girl.

Because hell, if I was giving in, then I was getting it all.

“Red,” I groaned as I edged back for a second. Diving back in, my lips closed over her plump bottom lip that’d been seducing me for months.

Goddamn, she was delicious.

I tugged and sucked at it, before I turned to the top and did the same.

A hard breath left her, and tiny pricks of pain just wound me higher as she dug her nails into the back of my neck.

Tamar was short, and I found myself smiling against her mouth as she pressed up on her toes to get closer to me, just as I was pressing her into the wall. Trapping her against my dick that had been hard for her for days—for a damned year, really.

But God, it’d been unbearable since I’d tossed her out my door two days ago. I’d been desperate to keep her out when I knew full well she’d been trying to break through. Back when I’d been a big enough fool to think there was a chance we weren’t going to end up right here.

Her tongue touched mine. Tentative at first. Like maybe it’d been just as long since this girl had kissed someone as it’d been for me. Like it was foreign and too much and too little, all at the same damned time.

Then she opened more. Needing more.

Her tongue flicked against the intrusion of mine. She moaned.

Sexy as f*ck.

“That’s it…show me, Red,” I coaxed at her mouth. “Show me what you’ve got.”

My dick throbbed, and I yanked her from her feet so I could get her legs around my waist. Right where they belonged. And this f*cking dress…this f*cking dress that’d nearly brought me to my knees when she’d come walking through the church doors and down the aisle, was bunched up over her thighs.