Chapter 20
Jaw set tight, cornflakes crunch uncomfortably between my molars. Milk sliding down my throat, slipping around the lump in it, that, lately, seems to be ever present there. I stare at Flint’s bare back from my seated position across the peninsula, watch the black and green tattooed flames etched into his pale skin blaze and lull with every flex of his muscles. Shoulders curled forwards as he washes the last dish in the sink, passing it over to Nix on his right who’s drying everything off.
Cole’s in our home gym, one floor below. Unusual, really, for him to work out at home on a Saturday morning, he’s normally tempering fights down at the ring with the Swallow guy who runs the official Friday Fight Nights. Training youths, kids that come from nothing, hate the world and everything in it. Cole’s good at that shit because he can relate, having come from much the same, and he’s patient. Much more patient than I’ll ever be. Yet, I know why he’s still here.
Because of her.
The guys were quiet with me last night. After I told them everything.
History, between Ember and I.
The murder in the stairwell.
The gangs.
Her missing kidney.
My proposal to share.
How it is I ended up here.
Not that this isn’t exactly where I wanna be. Now. I’m lucky, I realise. Luckier than most that end up fighting for their lives at a meagre eighteen years old. Knowing nothing about the world, always trying to avoid the gangs, the dealing, the fights, that’s what I did until that day in the stairwell. Avoided it.
Spoon clattering into my bowl, pinging against the rim, milk droplets splattering onto the counter. I swallow hard, nudging the bowl away from me with the back of my knuckles, listening to the china scrape across the marble. Curling my fists, I stare down at them, criss-crossing scars, years’ worth, something I didn’t have at eighteen. But by nineteen, I had most of them.
I cared.
Once.
Bitter, angry, hateful.
Until this year, just over three weeks ago to be exact, on the night of Guy Fawkes, I wanted revenge.
To torment, to bury, incinerate.
I did the morning after too. I had her in my hands, all small and frightened and defeated. Eyes miserable and lifeless, full of rot and dead things. I look at her some days now, those sad blue eyes, and I wonder if they’d always been that way, just… just not around me. Had I made her happy, when we were kids, and I took it upon myself to look out for her. Even after I fell out with her brother, best friends turned enemies. It was always me.
It’s the reason we fell out in the first place.
Over her.
Everything’s always been about her.
Sighing, I drop my head back, blow out my cheeks, huff the held breath through my teeth. My heart beats rhythmically in my chest and I think about the sound of hers. The erratic pumping of blood around her body, too fast, too hard. It was like a punishment, to stop her pills, medication she needs because of her heart, a secondary effect of losing a kidney.
Having one unnecessarily removed.
Stolen.
I grit my teeth so hard they squeak, my fists curled so tight my nails cut into my palms. Flint tuts, but I ignore him as he drags my bowl away, wipes the splats of milk from the counter, takes it to the sink.
I try to count to ten, but it’s no good.
Being separated from her.
Again.
She’s mine now.
I need her.
Did you ever think of me?
I have thought of you always.
It took everything inside of me last night, well, the early hours of this morning, when I finally got in, not to go to her, after spilling our childhood story to my brothers like blood from a slit throat dousing the living room floor in crimson. Despite what my boys demanded. To stay away for the night. Give her space.
I don’t want to give her space; I want to infect her every waking moment with thoughts of me.
“Good morning, Sugar,” Flint suddenly says, as though my thoughts summoned her.
My forearms drop to the counter, elbows aching with the way the bones grind into the marble topped peninsula.
Ember steps cautiously out from the darkened hall, her head lowered, eyes flicking up from beneath her lashes, gaze dancing all over the room. She looks fragile. Nervous. Because of me.
Phoenix throws me a warning look as he hooks the damp tea towel over the long handle of the oven. Flint already halfway across the room, arms reaching out for her. It’s the flinch as he makes contact with her bicep that makes me mimic it with one of my own, one of my feet slipping off the rung of the bar stool.
“You okay, Sugar? You look a little…” my younger brother leans back, both of his big hands curled gently around Ember’s upper arms. “Pale,” he finally settles on.
She blinks up at all six-foot-five of him, a very slow tilt of her chin, as though she’s only just woken up and everything still feels like she’s wading through fog. Blonde curls wild, they flutter around her pretty face as she gives Flint a slow nod, her eyes drifting from him to Nix to me. She stills when our eyes connect. My tongue flicking out to lave over my lip ring.
I bite down on the inside of my lip, a million thoughts rushing to the forefront of my brain, a hive of bees having been shaken up and shoved inside my skull. I don’t say anything. Waiting as Flint strokes down the wild hair on the back of her head, dipping forward to press a chaste kiss onto her forehead. Those bright eyes of hers, clear sapphire pools ringed in inky blue, coming to me, checking for my reaction, my anger.
My jealousy.
She doesn’t understand what’s happening here. The conversation I had with my brothers last night. The agreements we made. The boundaries we each set.
I was caught off guard last night. Walking in and seeing the three of them kiss. Even now, the thought of it lights up bright white heat beneath my skin, anger bubbling as my insides begin to boil. But, ultimately, it is what I want. That’s why we had such a long discussion about it, the early hours of the morning creeping by as I spoke and they listened, and then they spoke, and I listened.
Flint spins, turning to face me as he walks backwards towards the front door, eyeing me in warning as he does, silently telling me not to fuck this up. Phoenix shifting in my peripheral to follow suit.
“Darling,” Nix half-whispers in greeting, a soft curl to his pink lips as he brushes past her, only the back of his hand touching the soft skin of hers as he moves past her close to Flint, like a drifting spirit pulled towards a demon in a haunted house.
She offers him a very tiny smile with her eyes, something I’d be honoured to receive, but I swallow hard, knowing I likely never will. But that’s okay, I don’t really think the two of us are built for that.
Separately, Ember is a dandelion, pretty, gentle, a strong stalk, but every important piece of her shatters apart in the softest breeze. Then there’s me, I’m like a nail studded baseball bat with a rotten core. All hard edges, and brutish touches with no perception of tenderness because I’ve locked that shit so tightly inside my centre that even my soul is barred from touching it. If I even have one. If I do, mine’s black and charred and toxic. Rotting. Ember’s is white fluff, soft down feathers and angelic chorus. All I’d do, if ours ever came together, is incinerate it.
That’s how I know, I’m going to keep her anyway.
Because the thought of lighting her up, engulfing her in my flames, doesn’t nudge even an ounce of guilt inside of me.
Ruining this pretty pure thing.
All it does is set my blood roaring through me like fire, my heart a harrowing mess in my chest, my head heavy and light, drunk on the idea that I can drag her, not down, but into me. We could rule this shit together. If only she still wants me.
It takes me a moment to clear my throat, fingers itching to grab a cigarette, twirl my lighter around between thumb and index finger. Flick it on and off incessantly. Fidget, for something to do. Nervous, I realise, at what I’ve got to say. Will she even listen?
I’ll make her, but I want her to want to. I don’t always want to use force with her. I want her to look at me like she used to. When we were young and dumb.
Innocent.
Cole slinks into the room. A solid, sharp entity emerging from the dark corridor, likely having stalked silently up the stairs at the very end of the hall from the floor below, his and Nix’s bedrooms also below our feet. He says nothing, but I knew he’d be here, for this. He told me as much last night. Something that was non-negotiable. And as much as it severely pissed me off last night, having him tell me how it was going to go, now, I’m actually glad he’s here. For me. My best friend and brother.
The cold metal of my lip ring is startling against the heat of my tongue as it curls over my mouth. Watching Ember glance at Cole as he takes a seat in the living room, his large sweaty frame dropping gracefully into the armchair with a clear view of the kitchen.
Ember stands in the centre of the space, the small area in the open plan flat that connects all of the ‘rooms’ together. Lounge to the left at her back, front door to her right, hall directly behind her, and the kitchen-diner before her, where she faces me.
The sleeves of her black hoodie are pulled down over her hands, short, neat nails curled into the thick, ribbed cuffs. Not one of mine. It feels as though a blaze ignites in the centre of my chest, seeing her wrapped up in someone else’s clothing, wearing their scent. I bite down on my tongue so hard I momentarily go blind, but as I swallow the iron taste in the back of my throat, I realise she needs direction.
Someone to drag her out of this kicked puppy persona this morning, it’s at that I think of Cole and the new fucking dog we apparently have.
‘She wanted it,’ he said last night, a shrug of his broad shoulders, expression blank, like that was reason enough for him to gift her a fucking puppy.
Her head dipped low, eyes downcast, her bare toes curl into the floor. I spin on my stool to face her fully, to take in the thrum of tension between us, like a piano wire pulled too tight, I feel the call of her. The tug of her vibrating along the length of our tether.
She needs me.
But, I think, I might need her more.
“Emmy.” I summon her with the lift of my hand, arm outstretched, open fingers in offering.
The way she eyes my waiting hand, so warily, should almost be considered funny. But then those big blue eyes, something I couldn’t scratch the memory of outta my brain if I hacked at my skull with a meat cleaver, lift to mine, and the shiny surface of them gets my dick hard as much as it makes my heart clench. I stare at the pale column of her throat, my gums itching to sink my canines into her, draw blood, bruise her, mark her up as mine. I want to decorate the long length of her neck like a fucking Christmas tree.
“Come,” I insist lowly, holding her eye, and as much as I hate myself for it, well, just a little, fuck, I wanna see her cry again.
Want to lick her tears and suck her skin and push my tongue across her eyelids to keep them all for myself. But I only want to see her cry for me. Not because of someone else, something else, just because of me, and not by making her sad.
By fucking into the cradle of her thighs so hard that tears stream down her cheeks as she screams out to the heavens. By knotting my fingers into the root of her hair so violently that salty water escapes in rivulets from the corner of her eyes. I want tears to wet my chest as she rides me, my cock so deep inside of her tight little cunt that they drip from her chin in pure ecstasy.
Ember walks towards me slowly, like an injured doe, almost something that looks like a limp in her step, but perhaps she’s just uneasy, uncomfortable, walking across the Devil’s den.
Knees spread, I drag her into the part of my thighs as her cool fingers slip hesitantly into the roughness of my palm. But she doesn’t flinch, not with me. I could almost feel smug about it, but then, I’m the one who made her like this today, so I don’t feel much more than relief.
Eyes downcast, I hook the curl of my finger beneath the hollow of her chin, lifting her face up to mine, “Look at me, Pretty Girl.”
Hesitantly, she blinks, drawing her eyes up, my own flicking anxiously between them. It’s really fucking hard to look at her sometimes. The way I see our past reflected back at me in the brightness of her gaze. It has something inside of me feeling a twist of shame.
“I’m sorry about last night,” I tell her honestly, quietly, my deep voice low.
Her eyes seem to grow sadder at that, my apology, and I grit my teeth, the bone popping in my jaw as I try to keep calm, anger doesn’t fucking work with this girl. But everything she does, everything she says, every look, every too heavy breath, all of it makes me feel like I’m on a cliff’s fucking edge, ready to fling myself off of it, and I’m not sure I can even fully explain why.
“I shouldn’t have raised my voice at you,” I lick my lips almost in sync with the way she licks hers, nervously. “I’m sorry I grabbed you.” Head canting, I dip my chin, trying to catch her eye as she re-drops her gaze. “Look at me, Emmy,” I whisper thickly, and her eyes come back to mine. “Did I hurt you?” I ask it because I care, but I think of bruises on her skin, made by me, my fingerprints, my teeth, and my body has a different reaction.
She shakes her head just once, but I know it’s not true, she’s not very good at speaking a lie, that’s why she doesn’t say anything now.
“Don’t lie to me, Pretty Girl,” I hush, my mouth close to hers, “let me see your arms.” At that, she pulls her cuff lower, curling the ribbed fabric into her palm, she smells like Nix and my insides sour. “Take this off,” I instruct, pinching at the front of the pullover hoodie with my free hand, my other still holding hers, “or I will do it for you.”
She looks up at me then, a sternness to her soft features, and she breathes in deep.
“You didn’t hurt my arms,” she informs me, a subtle crease indenting between her golden brows, one of my own dark one’s tracking up my forehead.
I don’t believe her, but I’m not going to argue anymore.
For now.
“Okay, well, I’m sorry for shouting, and I’m sorry for grabbing you,” I didn’t mean it isn’t something I’m going to say, because an apology doesn’t hit right if it’s got a fucking excuse in it, that’s not a sorry, that’s a fucking defence testimony. “Are you okay?” My finger unfurls beneath her chin, my elbow resting on the counter, I cradle the side of her throat instead.
Ember looks at me for a moment, those bright eyes scanning across my features, and I wonder what it is she sees, what she feels, when she looks at me.
Disgusting disappointment?
“No,” she replies softly, swallowing around her anxiety as I let it bleed from her into me, build itself a home inside my own throat, “but I will be.”
There’s a certain level of determination in the way she answers, the way she looks at me, the hard thump of her pulse pounding harder in her neck, beneath the cup of my palm.
“We need to talk, Pretty Girl,” is what I find myself saying, holding her gaze, her fingers cinched inside the fold of mine.
She nods again, her eyes drifting to where Cole sits at her back, but she doesn’t turn her head, it’s like he silently calls her attention, a weird sort of summoning that only she can hear. But I sense it, the way my brother shifts in his chair, the quiet squeak of leather as he adjusts his sweat slicked back in it.
“Are you going to tell me everything?” Ember asks it like she already knows the answer, and even though we both sense my unease, I answer her with a nod.
“Can you forgive me,” I breathe out heavily, the weight of the world depressing my shoulders, “for how I acted last night?”
“Yes.”
She doesn’t need to think on it.
It’s just that simple.
Releasing her fingers, I reach around her, dragging an empty stool closer, keeping her between my legs, I pull it right up to the backs of her thighs and help her move up into it. Her movements are slow, stiff, and she holds her breath as she hefts herself up, bare feet pushing up on the stainless steel rung of the stool. I get why she’s uncomfortable, but I very much doubt this conversation is going to ease her any either.
Ember draws in a slow almost painful sounding breath as she adjusts herself in the seat, her thighs pressing tightly together in the openness of mine. My hand is drawn to her hip, my thumb smoothing over the too thick layers of fabric, but I envision the scars there, on either side. Perfectly sliced, length, depth, width, all of it so neat, you would think they were measured.
“You know my dad used to run with the gangs,” that’s how I start, unquestioning, but I want to make sure she really did understand the lives we lived before she was whisked away to her castle.
“I do,” she swallows, her hands knotted in her lap, the pale skin wrapped around her knuckles blanching further, but she holds my gaze unflinchingly.
“Well, I never wanted that.”
“You were going to be a fireman,” she almost whispers, like the memory has just crept into the forefront of her mind, it makes me want to smile, my eyes tight.
“Yeah,” I rasp, throaty and thick, “I was gunna be a fireman.” It feels like that was ten lifetimes ago.
I can’t even remember what made me wanna do that now. But my heart was set on it for as long as I can remember.
“But something happened,” she says quietly, her voice soft, a furrow between her brows, this little divot that gives the urge to smooth it out with the pad of my thumb.
“Something happened,” I swallow tightly. “That night in the stairwell,” I say softly, her eyes immediately pinging towards Cole. It almost makes my heart ache, the way horror washes across her features, panic flaring in her pupils, at the thought of someone else knowing what happened between us. “It’s okay, Pretty Girl, Cole knows.” Her gaze drifts back to me, slowly, cautiously, almost like there’s an accusation in her eyes. “He’s my brother, Emmy,” I placate, “don”t worry, we trust him.”
We.
Her and I.
Almost a foreign concept, something I thought we’d never have, never get, share.
Us.
Together.
“That guy I killed,” I say it blankly, like it means nothing when for a long time it felt like it meant everything. “He worked for the Blood Soldiers.”
They were, and still are, one of the most notoriously violent gangs to run through parts of London. We run into them from time to time but as a rule, we don’t have beef. Plus, we trade in different things, we sling guns, they slice flesh.
“That’s why you’re…” she swallows again, but that divot between her brows is slowly growing, “...like this now?” It”s a whispered question that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, my skin cool.
“What am I like now, Pretty Girl?” I can’t help but ask, trying to find some sort of amusement in her uncomfortableness, but there’s a sadness in there too.
It makes the organ inside my chest feel as though it’s being torn apart. Thread by thread. That’s how many times it’s been metaphorically stitched up.
“Ya know,” she lifts one shoulder, her knees tightening further together, “in a gang.” She looks up at me, her blue eyes large and sad.
Chuckling a little, I drop my gaze, forced laughter dying in my throat, I lift my eyes back to hers, “I lead a gang, Emmy.” My eyes hold hers, searching. “You think less of me now?”
“What happened?” she asks instead, not answering my question, and those old, bloodied threads through my heart start to fray. “What did that have to do with anything, why was he masked, why did he try- why was he-”
“After you?” I interrupt, stopping her, her questions rattling me like the teeth in her gums as they chatter with her tremble, her legs brushing the inside of mine with short jerky movements.
“Yes,” she draws her face up, tilting her chin, “why was he after me?”
I stroke a finger down her cheek, along the length of her jaw, splaying my fingers over the side of her neck, my gaze drops to her plump mouth, my thumb plucking at her bottom lip.
“Because your father upset that man’s boss, and they were going to teach him a lesson by hurting you.”
That dent between her brows is like a crater now, her eyes pulling tight as her brow creases further, little ripples in the skin of her forehead resembling gently lapping waves at the shore.
“That’s how he got you out of here. Your family,” I clear my throat as I say it, letting my hand drop from her face. “He agreed to work for the Blood Soldiers, patching up their guys.”
“So they wouldn’t have the police called if they turned up at a hospital with bullet holes and stab wounds,” she guesses, my head nodding slowly in confirmation. “Makes sense,” she whispers, swallowing again, hard. “But then they came after me,” she frowns again, searching my eyes for the answer.
“He either tried to stop working for them, or…” I lick my lips, thinking that’s exactly it.
The man made his money, was ready to get the fuck off of this estate, leave it all behind like a bad dream. Move on with his life being a rich bastard. Except, he couldn’t do that, even as a well-paid doctor. He gambled it all away.
“Or?” Ember questions, looking at me again with those big blue eyes like I hold all the answers.
“Or they asked him to do something he wasn’t morally okay with, and he tried to run from them.”
There’s this moment then, where everything feels suspended, like there’s hope in her heart, but logically, in her head, she knows it’s likely not the latter. The man never had morals. Her father was never present, even as a child, and neither was her mother, not for her, anyway. Danny, though, he was a different story.
“So why did they let him go?” she asks, and it’s full of childlike hope, a wish, “in the end?”
But we both know the answer here, and the saddest part is, she still looks the tiniest bit surprised when I tell her, because deep down, she already knows, “They didn’t.”
She believes me when I say it.
Her silence says so.
And I don’t need to lie to her, she knows that, too. I don’t need to make anything up to show her what her family is really like. They’re already the worst sort of people. She knows it even if she doesn’t know it.
Even as kids, I was always the only one to have her back, and despite everything I’ve done over the last few weeks. She’s still here. She hasn’t tried to run. She hasn’t questioned me. She’s just… done as she’s been told. I’m not sure I really understand it either.
Did you ever think of me, the way I have so often obsessed over you?
“And why did you have to do… this?” She means run a gang, lead my crew, do dodgy dealings in the dark, slink through shadows like a demon. “What do those things have to do with each other?”
It’s the first time I want to glance at Cole, almost forgotten until now. That’s how much she consumes me, blurring the world outside of our little bubble into nonexistence. This is the question I knew would come up. The one we discussed last night, amongst other things, the most, for the longest, over the answer I would give her. In the end, we just decided on the truth. Even though this girl is soft, she’s strong too, and no matter how she feels about it, I’m not going anywhere, and neither are my boys.
Our family.
And she deserves to know as many truths, as of right now, I can offer her.
Soft and warm in my palm, I cup her cheek, offering her the gentlest expression I can muster, which probably looks like a strangled grimace.
“I needed protection, for killing one of their soldiers.” Swallowing, I hold her eye even as they grow glassy, “So I had to get an in, with one of their rivals.” I flick my gaze between her bright eyes, wide and wet, “By joining a gang.”
She sucks in a short but deep breath as I tuck a curl behind her ear, dropping my gaze to her mouth as her tongue flicks out, licking over her cupid’s bow.
“I’m sorry,” she starts, and contrary to how I felt like this is exactly what I wanted from her for the last fucking ten years, to apologise for ruining my entire fucking life, it’s really not what I want at all.
Because really, despite it not going where I thought I wanted it to, my life isn’t bad.
The scrunch of her face, the sting of pain in her eyes, makes my heart clench, “Shhh, no, no, no. Hey,” I dip my chin, cock my head to catch her eye beneath her mass of blonde curls, “look at me, Pretty Girl.” I plant my thumb beneath the bone of her chin, holding her head high, gaze on me. “None of that. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“It’s because of me,” she whispers, but I’m already shaking my head.
“It’s not because of you.” And for the first time since the night she left here all those years ago, I realise, I mean it. My fingers comb into her hair, bunching the thick tendrils back at the crown of her head, exposing her flushed face. “It’s not your fault. Never think that.”
Tears fall now, splashing against the apple of her cheeks, pink with heat, “I’m so sorry,” she whispers it, the words so genuine, those big blue eyes wide on mine, and I feel my own eyelids flare with heat.
Clenching my jaw, I bite down on my back molars, hook my free hand over her shoulder, holding her tight, “I don’t regret it.” I swallow as I voice it, the truth. “I don’t regret saving you, and if I had to turn back time, I wouldn’t do any of it differently,” I drag my palm up the side of her neck, my big hand smothering her, “except this,” I whisper, thumbing the tiny scar beneath her eye. I look at her then, making sure she’s really listening, “I will always keep you safe.”
‘I’m going to keep you safe. Even when you hate me, I will keep you safe.’
I think of the glass, the shock on her young face, the tight scrunch of her eyes as the glass flew up before the sound of it shattering, plinkingand pinging, raining its way down the stairwell.
Her hands come up, fingers of each hand closing around my wrist, my opposite forearm, holding onto me, keeping my hands on her. My heart thumps hard and fast in my chest. Every voluntary touch I get from this girl feels like a gift from a god I never believed in.
Fire bolts through my veins like lightning, the scorching touch of her skin on mine. She was made for me. I for her.
“Is that-” she glances down, her grip on my wrist and arm stronger, tighter, her weight pulling me down like she’s my gravity, and I suppose, perhaps, she always has been. “Is that why you did that to me?”
I blink rapidly, clearing my vision, “Did what?”
She clears her throat, all timid and awkward, and I feel her skin heat further beneath my hand, “At that- your party? Is that why you did that to me? Took my-” she shudders, dropping her gaze, her flesh getting hotter, my dick getting harder, because I want her to say virginity.
The inside of my brain rattles over the memory of my cock slick with her blood, my tongue in her mouth, my hands on her neck, teeth in her flesh. Fucking her was never my intention, well, not then, there, but when she told me how she didn’t know if that was her first kiss, I just…
“Is that why you did what you did to me and then took me?” she asks more confidently, really wanting the answer.
It’s too complicated, the truth. How I spent years planning to break into her house, sneak into her bedroom in the dead of night and make her mine, then steal her away and keep her safe. With me. Always.
So instead of unravelling all of that, I just tell her the answer simply, “Yes.”
“And you’re not going to let me go?” she asks then, my own brows lowering.
No is the immediate answer.
Never.
Not even over my cold, dead body.
But I find myself wanting to please her, wanting her to smile at me the way she does Phoenix. To reach for me in our bed instead of rolling away. Not having to grab her thin wrists, forcing her to touch me when I fuck her because I crave everything about her. Wanting her to want to stay. With me. With us. Wanting her to fucking love me.
The realisation hits me like a burning spear through the chest.
Love.
“Is that what you want, Pretty Girl,” I lick my lips, cradling her head in my hand, my other thumb delicate down the front of her pale throat, fingers splaying around the back of her neck, “to get away from me?”
I think whatever she answers with could be enough to gut me, to slice down my sternum, pry open my ribcage. I’d be forced to listen to the bones bend and bend and bend until finally they just crack. Splinter. Shattered pieces sharp like knife tips injecting my lungs.
Her hand dropping from my wrist makes the skin there feel cold instantly, a little shackle of ice left behind. But then her fingers come to my cheek, so soft and supple, warm, loving, and my face is drifting closer, hers is closing the gap between us and I can’t tear my gaze away. Those roaring blue flames deep and smoking, flaring around her pupils. I can see myself in them, not a reflection, just this sort of vision, a kindred spirit.
Her and I are the same.
Lost.
Alone.
Confused.
No direction or ambition.
We just go through the motions, day to day, do what’s expected, what’s routine.
But we don’t do love because we’ve never really felt it.
Not like this.
That’s what this is.
Deep inside the dark and hollow cavity of my chest, my heart starts thumping back to life once more.
“Never.” One word whispered from her plump lips, but it echoes around inside of my head like a crashing symphony.
“Yeah?” I ask breathlessly, my lungs shrivelling with every hard breath I take.
She nods, her lips brushing mine, a compulsion, I want to close my mouth over hers, “Is that everything now?” she asks before I can connect us.
“Yes.”
Her fingers stroke over the pulse point in my wrist, “No more secrets?” my thumb circling softly over her own kicking hard in her neck. “You’re not keeping anything else from me?” she asks warily, eyes narrowing slightly like she thinks I’ll try to be slick, avoid full truths.
And even though she’s right, I shake my head, “No.”
“And you won’t anymore?”
“Cross my heart, you can ask me anything you want.”
Her eyes flicker between mine, a crease denting the centre of her brows, and I’m thinking about kissing her, but I just wanna keep looking at her, and then she says, “I want to stay with you.” Another whisper, another ghostlike sound of honesty drifting from her parted lips, imprinting onto mine.
The words taste like something I’ve never felt before.
Rapture.
“Pretty Girl,” I breathe hard against her mouth, her breaths quick and sharp, her hand on my face scalding lava. “I need you,” I nip her bottom lip, wanting to sink my fucking teeth into it until I draw blood, scar. My hips thrust forward on the stool as though she’s already beneath me, “Do you want me, Emmy?”
I feel her nod, her heavy curls veiling us beneath them, shielding her and I from the rest of the world.
“I’ve always wanted you,” she confesses, and I’m gone for her.
My mouth finds hers in a desperate claiming kiss. My teeth scoring her lip, her tongue, as I suck it into my mouth. Her teeth clash with mine, nipping at the tip of my tongue as I lap it over hers. She’s sloppy and unsure, nervous and unpractised, but, fuck, it’s the best kiss I think I’ve ever had.
Because she wants it.
It’s not stolen or forbidden or shameful.
It’s just this.
Something raw and new and right.