Page 47 of Backlash

“I already told you it’s complicated,” Sterling says, pulling up a half step before crashing into me.

My body responds to his proximity, longing for the release only he can give me. But I won’t repeat my past mistakes, even if all I do is make new ones. “And I already told you it isn’t. Either I matter to you or I don’t.”

He flinches as if I slapped him. “Of course you matter to me.”

“Not enough to tell me about the last five years of your life. Not enough to tell me who Noah is and why he scared you.”

“That’s not fair,” Sterling insists. “It’s not like—”

“Well, I won’t really know until you tell me, will I?”

It’s an excellent point, and he knows it.

“Lucky…” he trails off, his eyes wild, like a cornered animal’s. “I won’t lose you.”

He reaches for me, and I don’t stop him.

I tell myself I could, that I’m the one steering this runaway train of a relationship—but as soon as his hands are on me, I know it’s a lie. He leans down to kiss me, and it takes every ounce of self-control I can muster to keep the train on the tracks.

“I’m not going anywhere.” His face is inches from mine, and his eyes, beginning to close, snap open. It’s like I’ve breathed life back into him. “But I’m also not waiting around for you to get your shit together.”

“So where does that leave us?” His sense of relief fades, replaced by a sly, hopeful look. His hands, wrapped around my shoulders, begin to slide down my back.

That’s exactly what I’d like to know.

When I don’t answer, he moves his face closer to mine—close enough to kiss me, but he doesn’t. “Is this the part where you break my heart?”

Is it? In order to survive Sterling Ford, I told myself I had to slam the door in his face. And it was easy enough to believe when we were apart. But in the same room? With his hands on me? We’re both powerless. We hurtle forward, faster than we can see the way ahead, because this thing we have—whatever it is—is better than the darkness of our lives. Our passion throws sparks to light the way, but sparks only last so long. There’s always another bend in the tracks ahead, too far for the light to reach, and once we round it, the darkness swallows us again.

I know this and it doesn’t matter.

“Just put your fucking hands on me, already,” I breathe. Sometimes a girl needs freedom from the dark, even if it’s a stolen thing. Even if it’s all I can rely on Sterling to provide.

He doesn’t hesitate. Pulling his t-shirt off with one hand, he uses the other to force open my jeans. He doesn’t bother helping me take them off, instead shoving his hand between my legs to find his prize.

My own hand slides to his jeans, unbuttoning them to free his swelling cock. It falls heavy and hot into my palm, and his vocal cords spasm, collapsing his sharp grunt into a deep moan. He pushes them down and steps out of them. Sterling spins me the opposite direction, his left arm under my ribcage, bracing me tightly, his right hand buried in my panties.

He slides one finger into my gushing sex, then two. I can feel my clit between his knuckles, like a vise there’s no hope of escaping. The pressure is so intense that, for a moment, I’m afraid I might pass out. My head rolls back onto his chest as he lifts me off the ground and starts to carry me to the bedroom? The wall? I can’t think well enough to process the particulars, and I care even less as long as he doesn’t stop. I lose my sandals along the way and possibly my mind.

I give my body completely to him, not knowing what the future will bring besides the escape I so desperately need.

When he lowers me to my feet, he doesn’t release me. His hand slides away, but only so he can grab the waistband of my jeans and frantically jerk them off me. He moves closer, angling his body until my seam rests against the shaft of his cock. My body responds, my hips swiveling and twitching, trying to get him inside me.

“Not yet,” he murmurs, drawing his crown across my aching cleft until it throbs with expectation.

My eyes have been closed since the moment he first put his hands on me: I wanted to lose myself from the real world, to escape to somewhere else, to be consumed by him. But I can’t help my eyelids fluttering as some distant part of my brain tries to discover the reason for my denial.

We’re in the bathroom, facing the mirror. I’m naked from the waist down, my t-shirt pulled halfway up my stomach under his strong arm—and Sterling? Every inch of him is naked, but I can only enjoy the parts not hidden behind me: the massive swell of his biceps, the strong slope of his shoulders, the slab of abs peeking from the curve of my waist.

Sterling’s face is waiting for my eyes to open, for me to process where we are. He counterbalances in order to kick the door closed, and I distantly register Zeus’s skittering nails on the tiles outside.

“I want you to see what I see when I love you,” he says, fixing me with a relentless gaze.

I watch, now completely unable to close my eyes, as he coaxes my seam back and forth along his shaft, the head of his cock bumping against my clit only to slide back away. My legs tremble under me from the effort of holding out for more.

“You’re fucking perfect, Lucky. Christ, just look at you.” His eyes are possessive, but there’s something selfless in his attention to my body. He could take me any moment, but he seems obsessed with making this linger.

He spreads me open, wide enough that I can see where his cock is stroking against me. I want to see what he does, but my eyes stray to the dimples on my thighs, the thickness of my hips. It’s too much and I turn my head from the reflection.