I recoil. “I’m trying to—”
“I know what you’re trying to do.” He wheels around, streaks of green, blue, and red across his face and torso, as much a part of him as his freckles. Does the paint on my face look that chaotic now, that smeared? “And I do na know how else to tellyouthat I will na do this to you. I will na be some cruel awakening for you once reason comes back in.Go to bed.”
“You wouldn’t be an awakening.”
He snorts in disdain and spins back to his painting.
I close my eyes, trying to pretend I’m writing. That these words are coming out of my fingertips, not my lips. “It wasn’t a mistake. When we kissed. I couldn’t say that because of how much it meantto me, which is dumb, I know. I should be able to tell you. But I’mterrifiedof you. I’m terrified that you see the same broken shit in me that’s made other people leave because I’m a fucked-up mess and what do I have to offer you? God, Loch. Look at what you’re doing. Look at who youare.”
I pry open my eyes. He’s still facing the canvas, his arm frozen, head cocked to the side.
“You aren’t an awakening,” I whisper. “You’re the whole dawn. And I can’t believe I ever thought I’d seen the sun before you.”
He arches into the canvas, hand coming down to scrub at his hairline, so when he turns, a polychrome paint streak bursts through the shock of his red hair. That’s what I focus on, the blur of colors all across his body as he closes the space between us in an angry, stomping rush.
Everything in me goes pliant, ready for whatever his reaction might be—please don’t throw me out, please don’t fucking throw me out—
His hand clamps around my neck.
I’m assaulted by his scent, dumbstruck by that expensive cologne and whatever paint chemicals are imbedded in his skin. Maybe that chemical twist shouldn’t smell so good, but it all combines to be him in the peak of his element, and it’s sexiness embodied.
My pliancy becomes submission, wide eyes and hands splayed as he keeps walking, walking, and I stumble backwards in his grip until my spine connects with the wall.
He presses the full length of his body against mine and uses his grip on my neck to tilt my face up to him, the paint slick and slipping between his palm and my skin.
“You’re a goddamn poet,” he snarls down at me, livid, “and I dinna stand a chance.”
He kisses me, and the world goes ultraviolet.
He kisses like he’s furious, all open-mouth attack that yanks the air from the very bottom of my lungs. I don’t match his energy for once, I don’t meet him in fury and rage; I stay malleable because the unarguable force of his storm is buffeting me like smacking hurricane waves and I am so eager to get sucked away by that chaos. Let it take me, let all of him take me, and somewhere to my left his speaker is blaring out a song I don’t recognize, lyrics about fire, about lions, about roses.
He pulls back, lips tearing off of me. “Kris.” It’s furious still, but tinged with regret. “I need to tell you something first. I—”
I try to kiss him again, to shut him up, but his grip on my neck is relentless and runs a current of thrill from my shoulders to my groin.
“Tomorrow,” I say.
His brows twitch together.
“Not now,” I beg, and I don’t even care that I am begging. “Please. Tell me tomorrow.”
His gray eyes sift through mine, red-rimmed in his heightened emotions, or maybe he drank tonight—but he doesn’t seem drunk at all. He looks clear-headed, for good or for bad.
The clarity makes his shift from confusion to realization obvious.
His eyelids flutter in self-deprecation. I recognize that emotion so well.
“You should want someone better,” he tells me.
As good as confirmation. A red flag jabbed into dirt, ripping through roots and life.
I have one last chance to take the higher path. One last chance to do what I came to Ireland for, to stay safe in my miserable little world of order and duty and self-imposed rigidity.
“I don’t want better.” My thumbs dig circles into his hips, marking this spot, this moment. “I don’t want a fantasy. I don’t want sweetness. For once in my life, I want to be ruined.”
I see in real time the way he processes what I say.
Wide open shock.
