Page 66 of Sweet Ruin

Or so I tell myself.

Instead, I lie.

“Because you have sugar on your face.”

She frowns and goes to wipe it with her forearm, but that’s dirty, too, so it only makes things worse.

“Stop moving,” I order.

She stops.

I step even closer.

She doesn’t know what’s happening. I’m not sure, either. The possibilities at my fingertips are endless.

All that’s obvious is that I am here and towering over her, and she is here and so fucking breakable beneath me. Her pupils are enormous. Her chest rises fast under the apron bib. Her hands hang open at her sides, floury, useless, and the breath that trickles between her plump lips is tinged sweet with sugar.

It’s fear in her eyes.

It’s want.

It’s both.

It’s everything.

I hold there and let myself savor the taste of it all on my tongue.

Because this is the thing I’ve been hunting in fights and card rooms and bottles for years. Not obedience. Not a woman lying still and smiling at whatever I say.

This.

Somebody truly alive in front of me.

“Kane…” she whispers.

“Hold still.”

I lift my hand and paint her cheek tenderly with my thumb, from the bone down toward her jaw. The sugar comes off her skin. She doesn’t dare breathe.

Then, without breaking eye contact, I put my thumb to my mouth and suck the sugar off of it.

When there’s nothing left, I sigh and step back.

“There,” I say. “You’re clean.”

I turn away from her. I need distance. We’re too warm and too drunk on sweets and the irresponsibility of being tucked away from a snow-covered world at midnight.

Anything could happen in here.

That is a very bad idea.

“I’m leaving,” I announce.

Her head comes up. “Now?”

“Right now.”

“Were the doughnuts that bad?”