Page 115 of Cruel Lies

"And it's barely eleven o'clock. And my mom doesn't need me to pick anybody up until tomorrow."

"That's all true."

I take a step toward him. I'm still in my finest opera wear, but suddenly, it feels almost immaterial. Like I'm wearing nothing but a cloud that could be blown apart by a strong wind at a moment's notice.

"So take me to bed," I say. "This time, I'm sober, and I'll remember every second. Isn't that what you said you wanted?"

His jaw clenches. "You remember that."

"I remember everything you say. It's becoming a real problem."

He reaches out and lays his hand along the side of my face, his thumb at my cheekbone, and he tips my head back. He looks at me for a long time.

"Say it again," he says. "So I know it's you asking."

"Take me to bed, Ronan."

He kisses me.

It's almost unbelievable to me that this is legal. Kissing isn't supposed to feel this good, but since it does, there probably ought to be some rules and regulations to keep it in check. At the very least, there should be some fine print somewhere that says a kiss is only allowed to be this good the very first time you ever do it, before you know better, back when you're a naive sixteen-year-old who doesn't understand that mouths are mostly just for chewing and passive-aggressive comments about your stretch marks.

But there is no such fine print to be found here. No rules, no kids, no lies, no barriers to leaning into Ronan and sighing intohis open mouth as my brain goes offline and my body comes alive.

Yes. Yes. This,I think, somewhere in the last functioning corner of my mind.This is what I was supposed to be feeling for ten years.

I forgot kissing could make you feel born all over again.

His other hand finds the small of my back and pulls me in until there's no space left. I can feel all of him, the heat of him, the hard planes of his chest through his shirt, the roughened edge of his breathing.

"What happened to the bedroom?" I manage to sputter.

"In a minute," he says against my mouth. "I've waited a long time for this. I'm not going to rush it."

He walks me backward, slow, still kissing me, until my back finds the cool glass. The whole city is behind me, below me, as he cages me against it with a hand flat on the glass by my head.

"Look at you, you fucking angel," he murmurs. He drags his mouth down my jaw to my throat and nibbles at the soft skin there. "Do you have any idea what you do to me? What you've done to me since that bar?"

"Mm… Nope, I'm clueless. Guess you'd better tell me."

"You let me buy you a drink you didn't want," he says against my neck, as his hands move to the zipper at my side, working it down tooth by tooth. "And then you told me I was a piece of shit. You were right. Too bad I haven't stopped thinking about you for one single day since."

The dress loosens. He peels it down my arms, off my hips, until it pools on the floor around my heels. I'm standing against the glass of his penthouse in the lingerie I put on tonight because some part of me was hoping for exactly this. The cool of the window meeting the backs of my thighs makes me shiver.

He steps back, holding my hands, and lets his eyes rake up and down my body.

For a second, I feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. I'm Helen of Troy, and every tortured sigh that slips through Ronan's parted lips is another thousand ships launching on my behalf. His gazes moves over me slow, but there's nothing polite about it. It's fuckingravenous.Animalistic, almost.

The longer he looks at me like that, the more I start to feel the same way. It's the strangest thing, this combination ofI'm holy to him and he's treasuring me,all tied up withI'm a starving wild animal and I need him to treat me like that.I'm flushed and needy from head to toe, and especially in the middle parts.

But then the old thing creeps in, like it always does.

I'm standing in a wall of glass, all lit up, with the whole city as a backdrop. There's nowhere to hide. No dim bar light, no forgiving blue water, no dress to smooth over the parts I don't like.

My hand twitches. I want to cover my stomach. Or at the very least to turn to the side, like how I used to angle myself in family photos so the camera only got the good half.

I don't do it. But I want to.

"Come here," he snarls.