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Her expression gave away nothing. Her posture was defensive. She’d learned that from the professor.
“Those nights when you came on raids with me, when all we did was thieve and laugh and kiss and then fuck till neither of us could think straight, they were the best nights of my life. I thought they’d go on forever.”
“Nothing lasts forever except lies.”
“We could’ve given it a shot.” He let a beat of silence pass and watched the war inside her push its way to the surface and flash in her eyes. “We still could.”
“You think you can get Celestia this way. You’ll have to kill me first.”
He stood instead and crossed the room to her. She was too proud to give up, to give in to him. “If I wanted Celestia,” and he did, she was his by right, “she’d be mine already and you know it.”
“Then get out.”
“I want you.”
Nothing, including the tremble that went through her, gave him the right to touch her, but he was a thief, a conman and a liar, and he loved her still, had never stopped, and he couldn’t help himself.
He put a hand to her cheek and slid his fingers into her hair, missed the prickle from the stubble, like he’d missed her tongue stud when they kissed. He stood close enough she could take him down with her knee. He stood far enough removed she could wrench away. He wanted her to choose this as much as he tripped toward it.
Up came her chin. “I don’t want you. I hardly remember us.”
She had so many ways to wound him. “You wanted a good time tonight and we only got started.”
“I got what I wanted from you already. What I could’ve gotten from any man.”
He eased closer, his other hand now on her forearm. She could shake him off so easily. “You used to lie to your father, tell him stories to make him think worse of you.” To make him notice her. “You made him think you were the town slut, when all you’d ever done was raise your eyes to mine. You’re one of the best liars I’ve ever met.”
She accepted his breath across her mouth. “I’m not lying now.”
He spoke against her lips. “Liar.”
Hellion, heartbreaker, heroine. A whisper kiss, another, another, exquisitely gentle, her hands to his face, at last again, the possibility she was his.
His to band tight with unsure arms, his to plunder with a tongue that only ever told her truth, his to crush against, to undress with hands increasingly unsteady, to grasp with a realization close to hope. Like this, all their artifice stripped away, not strangers, not lost to each other, but taken down to what made them essential, what made them love. He had to trust they’d find those parts of themselves gone missing and never want to ache for again.
“You want this,” he said. Her body did, her fingers on his shirt buttons, but her complicated mind was his ultimate prize. She was down to those thigh-high boots, and her skirt and the boots might have to stay, because his tolerance for working out how to get them off fast was frayed.
Her response was a kiss, hand holding his jaw, lips soft and yielding. It made him fall further, doubt harder. “Need to hear you say it. Say my name.” Otherwise he might think this was a dream.
She pushed away. “I don’t want you.” She walked past him and he spun to watch the sway of her hips. The kick of that skirt was a hit to his pulse. “I never missed you.” Her hands went to the skirt zipper and the fabric dropped to her feet. “I never thought about you.”
He had no spit to swallow. A scorpion tattooed over her belly made his hands fist. Not just a scorpion—Palazuzum. God of their laughter, their first night together.
“I never loved you, Cleve Jones.” She made a beckoning movement and he had no will to disobey, ditching his shirt, going to his knees in front of her. She took a handful of his hair and jerked his head back so they were eye to eye. “I never lie.”
She lied with every panted breath. He pulled her down to his lap. She was the scorpion and her sting would probably kill him, but he was beyond caring. They fed on each other, marked each other, and he almost took her there on the floor on his knees with her boots at his back, but it wouldn’t be enough.
With her wrapped around him, he got to his feet, then dropped her to the bed. She sprawled on her back, breath halting and eyes heavy. It’d be a mistake to think she wasn’t still a risk. She vibrated with it. She could take his eye out with a stiletto heel.
He’d been hard for her in the alley, he was painfully rigid now. He got rid of his trousers, then crawled over her, hands to her thighs, spreading them. The scent of her strong now, making him groan with anticipation.
The first taste was a time machine tossing him back in space to the backseat of a stolen car. He’d jacked a big luxe sedan more suited to laying her out and getting between her legs than a fast getaway from a break and enter. She’d thrashed and wailed and scratched that night, then returned the favor with a certain savagery that made him half certain he’d need a hospital. What would she do now?
He settled over her to find out. A few long, deep, slow licks and a graze of teeth and she almost bucked him off. “Pickled fucking Christ, Cleve.”
It wasn’t I love you, but he’d take it. He collected her twitches and curses, her hands twisted in the bedcover, and the sharp stab of her boot heel in his thigh as trophies. He played her up and down the scale of desire, and added his fingers to bring her to crescendo. She broke so beautifully into stillness and silence he thought for a moment he’d damaged her, until she reached for him.
“My turn.”
