I hooked my thumb in the waistband of her shorts, tugged, testing, daring her to say stop.
She gasped, but her legs locked tighter around my hips. I pushed harder, found the heat of her through the cotton, and nearly lost my mind.
“Shit,” I whispered, voice raw. “I need to feel you.”
She shook her head, fingers winding in my hair, dragging my mouth back to hers.
I tried again, sliding my hand under the leg of her shorts to bare skin, tracing the perfect line where thigh met heat. I thumbed the seam, pressed it up, needing to feel the proof of her need against my hand.
I groaned, the sound tearing out of me, and hooked my fingers in the waistband to tear her shorts down.
She dug her nails into my shoulder and twisted away, breathless. “Wait,” she panted, shaking her head, hair flying everywhere, “too fast?—”
She broke. Her spine went rigid, arms shoving hard against my chest, and with a single, panicked movement, she shoved me away.
My whole body recoiled, a snapped cable. I stumbled back, hands splayed wide, the ghost of her taste lingering in my mouth.
“Fuck,” she whispered, voice shredded with confusion. Her thighs snapped closed, feet finding the floor.
She wrapped her arms around herself, as if to hide the shiver, the heat, the hunger that still radiated off her in waves. “I can’t. Not like this, Caiden?—”
I wanted to punch my own skull through the drywall. Or at least tear the need out of my chest and leave it bleeding on the kitchen floor.
She was trembling. I held my ground, fingers splayed on the counter, and tried to breathe through the violence of wanting her.
My cock throbbed, every cell screaming for the heat of her, but my jaw locked, and I let her put space between us. I watched her arms wrap tight around her ribs.
I hated her for retreating, for breaking off when I’d have burned the fucking house down for another taste of her mouth. I hated myself more for letting it show.
“Why do you do this?” The words crawled out of me. “Why do you fuck with my head and then pull away?” I wanted to bite the words back, but they were out, fouling the air between us.
I knew I was a hypocrite for saying that. I do the same thing to her, but having it done to me was crippling.
She flinched, and her eyes flicked up, wild and wet. “I don’t know,” she said, voice shaking. “I don’t know.” She shook her head, hair falling into her eyes. “It’s like—like I can’t help it. I want you, and then I get so scared I can’t even breathe, and I have to run. I see your face in Pathosbury, when I believed you were a monster, and it’s like something in my mind switches. I know I give in when I’m drunk, but that’s different. I’m not thinking clearly when I’m fucked up.”
I wanted to say ‘good.’ Wanted to say that was exactly how she made me feel, every second of every day since I was old enough to want anything at all. Instead, I clenched my jaw, fists, every muscle. “We’re not in Pathosbury anymore.”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, shivering now, and finally looked up. “All I know is, when you look at me the way you do, it’s like I’m drowning in this hunger. But it’salso the only time I feel alive. It’s fucked up, Caiden. You fuck me up.”
She was crying now, just a little, the silent, shaking kind that carved lines down her face and never reached her eyes. I wanted to lick the salt from her cheeks, to devour her sadness.
We stood in the ruin together. Two idiots, chained to our own hunger.
“So why do you keep running?” I forced the words out, voice barely above a growl. “Why kiss me like you mean it, then push me away?”
She sucked a breath, flinched, then finally looked up. “Because I’m scared of you.” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand, eyes hollow and bright. “I’m scared of what you do to me. Of what I do to myself when I’m around you. I hate how much I want it.”
The words hit me like a fist. For a second, I thought I’d actually collapse. It was the old script, the one tattooed on the inside of my skull since the first time my dad told me I ruined everything I touched.
I was the corrupted thing, the monster under everyone’s bed, and here she was, confirming what I’d always known.
But then she did something that made my brain short out: she took a step toward me. Her hands trembled hard, but she reached for my wrist again.
She didn’t pull me in, she just held on, like if she let go, she’d drop through the floor. “I shouldn’t have come down here, but I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered, and her voice was all splinters. “But you were all I could think about.”
I laughed, thought it was a bitter sound. “Yeah. Me too.”
All my life, I’d been taught that love was a currency you spent by breaking things. That wanting meant devouring. If you touched something soft, you pressed harder, just to see where it would snap. That ache was in every cell of me.
