“Wildfire. Trying to do me in.”
“I think it’s me who’s done in.”
I chuckled as I ran my nose along the edge of her lace underwear, nearly knocked out by the lust-inducing scent.
Guts in knots as I confessed, “Nah, baby, I knew you were going to do me in the second you climbed out of your brother’s car.”
“I wanted to hate you.” It was a whisper she released into the dense, lapping air.
“You should still hate me,” I warned.
“I wish that I did.”
And I could feel both of us teetering on that ledge. Tripping in a direction neither of us could afford to go.
I forced myself to look up at her so she could see the truth of what I was saying.
“I’m not a good man, Brinley.”
She made a ‘no shit’ sound. Clearly, I’d already more than proven it.
But she didn’t know the lengths.
“That doesn’t seem to matter, does it?” she pressed. “Because no matter how hard I fight it, it only grows. This burn that lights me up every time you get near me. It’s big and powerful, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop it.”
A shock of dubious laughter rocked from me. “You think you’re not having the exact same effect? The fact I have you in this room alone is enough to warn me to stay far the fuck away from you, and I’m powerless to do it.”
“Maybe we’re both what the other needs.”
There was far too much hope lining the underside of those words.
I should shun the suggestion, but it lit something in the coldest place inside me.
And did she stop?
No.
Not this one.
“Maybe you need reminding that there is good inside you, too.” Her eyes flared with enough vehemence to sear it into my flesh, as hot as an iron prod.
Fuck.
Brinley Webber might be perfect for me. Carved of the same battered, brutalized stone.
I forced myself to edge back a fraction, rising up high on my knees as I gripped at the outside of her thighs.
Giving her space to change her mind.
Waiting for her to resurrect the walls that once had stood like a mile-high barrier.
But they’d been felled.
Rubble in a wasteland.
Her expression begged me to put her out of the misery that had built between us, while her spirit begged for something bigger.
And fuck, I didn’t know how there was some piece inside that wanted to return it.
