Page 90 of The Next Lie

I brush damp hair away from her cheek. “I’m not Nash.”

Her eyes stay on mine.

“I don’t need to own you,” I say. “And I’m not Shiloh. I won’t charm you into forgetting.”

Her fingers tighten in my shirt.

“I’m just the man who’s going to hold you down until the ghosts give up.”

Her breath breaks. “Then hold me.”

She pulls me down. The kiss is heavier this time.

Not the first soft touch from before. Not a question. This one has weight behind it. Her mouth opens under mine, and the sound she makes moves straight through to my spine. I kiss her slow because if I don’t, I’ll take too much too fast. Her hands move over me, restless and clumsy, trying to get skin she can’t reach through fabric.

I pull back long enough to strip off my shirt, yanking it with a hand to the collar.

Her eyes drop.

Her fingers follow, tracing ink, scars, the hard line of my shoulder, the healed ridge beneath my ribs. She touches like she’s mapping proof. Like she needs every inch of me catalogued.

I catch the hem of Shiloh’s hoodie, and she helps me pull it over her head.

Under it, she’s in a fitted tank, dark with sweat from training, and black leggings riding low on her hips. She is all heat and exhaustion, all fight burned down to need. I slide my hands under the tank and feel her ribcage expand beneath my palms.

She shivers as I pull the tank over her head and toss it aside.

She is bare beneath it, her nipples tightening immediately as the air from the lazily circulating fans wafts over them. Her skin is flushed from crying and exertion, marked here and there by the mats, by tape, by the life that keeps putting its hands on her.

I lower my mouth to her collarbone, and she inhales sharply. I continue, kissing down the line of her throat, over the center of her chest, then lower. She arches under me, hands sliding into my hair. When my mouth closes over one breast, her nails bite into my scalp.

“Ever…”

I lift my head. “Say stop and I stop, firefly.”

Her eyes are closed. “I don’t want to stop.”

“Say slow and I slow down.”

“I don’t want slow.”

I believe her. I also know she is shaking.

So I move with purpose instead of haste. I hook my fingers into her leggings and pull them down with her underwear. She lifts her hips to help me, impatient now, breathing hard. The clothing catches at one ankle, and she kicks free with an irritated little sound that would be funny if I weren’t on the edge of losing my mind.

I settle between her thighs.

She reaches for me, but I catch her wrists and pin them gently above her head. Holding her down.

Her eyes flare.

“Til the ghosts give up,” I remind her.

She nods.

I slide one hand down her body, over her ribs, her stomach, lower. She’s wet when I find her, hot and slick against my fingers. My control slips another inch.

“Fuck, firefly.”