Rosabelle 37 #2
“Tell me something,” he says, his voice low and lethal. “Who gave you those bruises?”
I stiffen. “What?”
“When you showed up here, the medics found nearly three hundred identical bruises on your body,” he says. “Warner said it was evidence of systematic torture.”
My breath catches.
“Where did they come from?” he demands. “Who did that to you?”
Now I panic.
I’ve never seen James like this. The fury in him, the steel in his eyes. He’s pure fire.
When I say nothing he closes the remaining distance between us, so close now I can almost see his eyes dilate. A few inches of air and my thin T-shirt are all that separate our bodies, and I can’t think clearly.
I can’t breathe deeply enough.
“How often did he torture you, Rosabelle?”
I’m shaking my head. My mouth opens, but I can’t get the words out.
He’s too close.
James is too close.
“He’s the same guy from the island, isn’t he? The one who slammed a rifle into your skull after you spat in his face.”
“James—”
“The same guy who hunted you down in the warehouse, who left you so covered in your own blood I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“He—My—my relationship with Sebastian is complicated—”
James’s eyes flash. “Your relationship with him?”
I can hardly speak. “Yes, we—”
“You’re mine,” James says, his chest heaving. “My problem. My pain. My fucking heart.”
A broken, frantic sound leaves my body.
Tears are burning my eyes.
James takes a shaky breath, curls his hands into the loose material of my shirt, and tugs me closer.
I gasp.
I’m losing the will to fight him.
I’ve lost the ability to think beyond this moment. The heat of him, the look in his eyes, the brawn of his bare body.
“I will cut off his fucking hands before he ever touches you again,” James says, fighting to stay calm. “You don’t need anything from that bastard.”
I’m horrified to realize silent tears are streaming down my face. “I don’t—James, it’s not that simple—”
“It’s exactly that simple,” he says. “You’re not alone in the world anymore. You have me. You have me. And you and me, Rosabelle, we’re going to find another way out of this mess, and we’re going to do it together. Do you hear me?”
I’m shaking my head, trying to swallow around the knot in my throat, when James tips up my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. It’s enough to feel his skin on mine.
I lose what’s left of my mind.
“Do you hear me?” he whispers.
I look into his eyes and I feel like I’ve been knocked backward into the night sky.
I’ve only ever imagined moments like this.
Never did I allow myself to believe that one day someone might touch me like this, talk to me like this, look at me like this.
I have so little experience with emotion.
I have no practice regulating the subtleties of feeling.
I’ve never been stripped down to these essential parts long enough to know how to work more than an on/off switch, and now my body has gone rogue, refusing to ask my mind for permission before experiencing every heightened feeling, all at once.
James is looking at me now with a need so great it makes me feel tipsy. His heated eyes are tracking my face, his thumb moving across my cheek, sweeping tears toward my jaw.
I blink softly, suspended here.
A tear releases from my eyelashes, breaks against my mouth.
I taste the salt on my lips before I hear the tremble of his breath, and then he takes my face in his hands and claims my mouth with a desperation that drives through me like lightning.
Agonizing pleasure blazes within me at a decibel level I’ve never known.
A cry builds inside me.
My legs nearly give out.
James crushes me to his chest, parts my lips on a breath, and the taste of him turns me molten, drawing an anguished sound from my body.
I reach for him in a blind panic, searching ridges of heated muscle, the scarred satin of his skin under my hands.
His mouth is hot and devastating, our bodies fused together, and I’m so overwhelmed by blinding sensation I think I might be drowning.
My heart is all violence, my lungs fatigued.
I’m worried I might need to lie down and let this kill me.
The tension in James coils only tighter as he pulls me closer, his own need unrelenting. His touch is possessive and searching, and when he draws a hand below the hem of my shirt and drags it back up again, the material hitches against my waist, exposing my skin to the night air.
James groans deep in his throat.
He breaks the kiss, breathing so hard he’s practically shaking. With aching care he glides his hands down my soft, bare curves, then closes his eyes. Tips back his head. “Fuck,” he whispers.
It feels like we’ve stopped time.
This moment, this dreamlike hour, seems to exist in space, outside of the real world.
When James opens his eyes he looks like he’s in pain. “Baby, you’re not wearing any underwear?”
This is like a death I’ve never known.
His hands on me, the fevered look in his eyes, the ache in his voice. The very thought that he might touch me again.
Kiss me again.
I feel explosive. Out of my body. I want to pin him to the bed. I want to feel his skin everywhere, against every part of me. I want his weight, his heat, the salt of him in my mouth.
I step back, reach for the hem of my shirt, and pull the loose article over my head. Let it fall to the ground.
“No,” I whisper.
James exhales so hard I hear the tremor in his breath. His body tenses before my eyes, and I watch him swallow, his muscles taut, the cords in his neck straining as he looks me over in the starlight.
He drags both hands down his face. Then he swears, softly, under his breath. “Jesus. Rosabelle.”
I take a step toward him and he stops me.
“Don’t,” he says, his voice in shreds. “Don’t move.”
I go still, my heart beating out of my chest.
He crosses to the window.
I watch him push the curtains as far open as they can go, and greater moonlight pours inside, bathing me in silver. When he opens the window a moment later, I take a sharp breath.
A cool breeze pushes into the room, unsettling my hair, causing me to shiver.
James walks back over to me, and I’m suddenly so nervous I can hardly breathe. I’m waiting for him to touch me. Waiting, desperately, to touch him.
But he doesn’t draw closer.
He just stands there and studies me, his chest lifting and falling unsteadily.
“James?” I whisper.
He exhales, swallowing hard. “Fuck, baby, I just want to look at you.”
This feeling is decimating.
Spasms of exquisite pain branch through me. I’m nothing but sensation, static and breath, my heart beating harder than it ever has.
I feel alive.