“You’re not like me.”
“Perhaps not the same, but in my own way, I’m broken just like you. So please, let me in. Let me join you in that pain, walk with you, feel the same torture I know you carry. There is so much of your life that is a hell for your soul, and you stay there from strength rather than weakness, I know. So give me a chance to find my feet with you, to stop my own head from spinning so one day we can save each other. Broken people save broken people, Leo.”
My gaze dropped to Ravenna’s mouth. Those little pink lips twitched. Then her tongue peeked out to tease me as she wet them. She stared at my assailed lips, too. Her sigh was heavy and breathy. It slid over my skin, making the distance between us unbearable.
The memory of Lina’s lips flickered across my vision, unbidden. I pushed it down in vain. All the time Ravenna was opening her arms wide, welcoming me in with acceptance and passion, begging for an invitation, willing for what no one else was, one thought hummed in my head. Why didn’t Lina do the same? Why wouldn’tshesay those words to me?
It hurt as much as the screams. I didn’t want to hear them anymore. But all my senses were trapped by the girl that wouldn’t let me go. The girlIcouldn’t let go.
“I don’t see you,” I confessed in a whisper, which was more of a cry for help. “I only see her. All the time. Just her.”
Wincing, she curled her lower lip under her teeth. “I know.”
“Then why are you doing this to yourself? You know I’ll use you and crush you. Why the torture of offering everything you have to give to someone who will give you nothing but pain?” There was only one acceptable explanation. “What are you guilty of, Ravenna, to be such a glutton for punishment?”
Her face contorted, heartache and loss and shame pouring out of her eyes.
I grabbed her hair and pulled her head down to mine. “Answer me.”
CHAPTER 13
Ravenna
My tears seared my flesh and marked his. He demanded my confession. One I couldn’t give without losing him forever. I didn’t want to lose him. I’d just found him, and we already only had very little time together.
“What are you guilty of, Ravenna?” he repeated harshly, his fist shaking my skull.
I couldn’t waste the only chance I had to finally be with him. So I did what I did best. Twisting the truth for the sake of the guilty. “So much. So many sins I lost count.”
His beaten blue eyes pierced me. Could he see it? The truth that disgraced me? The lies I’d told? The pain I’d caused? Could he tell? What would he do to me if he could? My heart thudded as I waited, every moment a death sentence in the making.
“You, too, hear the screams?” he asked.
I sighed in relief, unable to believe I was off the hook for now. “And I want nothing more for them to stop. So I’m here, telling you it’s okay if you don’t see me yet. Ifyouuse and crush me, I will take that pain over any other.”
Without letting go of my hair, he brushed his thumb along the line of my cheekbone. I shuddered, my racing breath laced with his scent, his touch powerful enough to take over all my senses. His tongue darted out, wetting his lip. I mimicked him, reflexively, preparing—as if possible—for another fantasy of mine turning reality.
He didn’t give me a chance to part my lips or pucker or even bend closer to his mouth. The hot roughness of his split lips took me by surprise, by force, as he’d presumed it was the only way to get anything he wanted.
His mouth seared mine. A cruel caress I welcomed with inexperienced eagerness. His kiss—my first kiss—set every nerve ending in my body aflame. My blood ran hot, and my flesh demanded more. My fingers reached for his bare chest, tracing the crude scars, feeling each one of his aches through me, craving the punishment, letting him know he wasn’t alone.
Our chains clicked and rattled with each move. In approval or in protest, I didn’t care. In this moment, I was his even if he would never be mine. My ears were deaf, except for his laboring breaths and the wild rhythm of my heart. All I saw was the pleasure he evoked upon every fiber, every cell of mine. His scent was all I could breathe. His masculine taste mixed with wounds and blood filled my mouth. I felt nothing but his maddening kiss, his harsh, arousing touch and the heat they induced, pulsing hard through me.
Drowning.
I was drowning in the ocean of darkness Leo Bellomo was, the dark corners of my mind drawing me into him, and every instinct of mine that was begging me to get myself out before it was too late was thwarted by the intensity of his kiss. I wanted him, and not just because of my guilt.
Iwantedhim.
Suddenly, cruelly, he stopped. I scowled, beseeching him with my gaze. He smirked as he tipped my chin with his finger. “Breathe,” he reminded me. I was too enthralled to even notice I was out of breath. My need for him transcended my need for air.
My chest heaved with a stuttering breath. I might have taken longer than I needed to take one breath so I’d keep my chest inflated, giving him the illusion of relatively more seductive breasts. Then I bit my lip in embarrassment. I was making a fool out of myself. No one liked an insecure, never-been-kissed, geeky girl. I shouldn’t have—
His hand crawling under my shirt brought the train of my thoughts to a halt. He palmed my breast, his hand so big on me. My thighs pressed together, applying pressure to the ache throbbing between them. He flicked my protruding nipple, and then he pinched it so hard I moaned loudly, drenching myself one more time.
“I’m a man controlled by obsession, and you’re a woman infatuated to the point of blindness,” he said.
“A lethal combination.”
