Chapter 23 – “Born To Die” - Lana Del Rey #2
“Don’t you have an appointment to get to?”
He pauses, barking a laugh before catching up to me again. “You’re fucking jealous.”
“I’m not jealous, but I find it appalling that you’d be…” I trail off, unsure of how to describe whatever the hell has been happening between August and me since I moved in with him two months ago.
“What, Elena?” August stops on the boardwalk, grabbing my arm and halting me too. “What claim do you so desperately want to have on me that the mere mention of another woman’s name next to mine sends you into such a spiral?”
My teeth grind, skin heating where he holds my wrist. The world warps around us—people passing by, the squeal of seagulls above our head, the sea breeze floating through my hair and the distant crash of waves against the shore—but all I can focus on is his flaming emerald eyes and the pressure of his touch.
“Are you…dating another woman and then coming home and holding me in the middle of the night?” I ask. “Toying with me the way you have been, while entertaining someone else at the same time?”
August bursts out an unhumorous laugh, jaw tight as he glances at our surroundings. Only now do I realize we’re standing directly in front of Heathen’s, and he must notice it too, tightening his grip on my wrist and dragging me around the side of the building.
Before we make it to the parking lot behind the boardwalk, August spins abruptly, pushing me against the wall of my brothers’ surf shop. His chest is heaving, brushing against mine with every angry inhale. Green eyes blazing behind his dark-rimmed glasses, his nostrils flare as he studies my face.
“You are… You are delirious, woman.” He slides his hand up my arm, leaving goosebumps in his wake.
“So frustratingly blind.” His long, strong fingers wrap around the back of my neck, tightening in my hair.
“Impulsive. Reckless.” He inches into me.
“But fuck are you beautiful when you’re envious.
” His eyes linger on my lips before they snap to mine, blazing and breathtaking.
“For you to think I’ve ever seen anyone but you—it is endlessly infuriating.
” He huffs another flat laugh, nodding toward the parking lot.
“Go get in the truck. I’m taking you home. ”
“What about your appointment with Maggie?” I snap back.
“If you want to act like a brat, I’m going to treat you like one. If you want to throw a fit, I’m going to punish you for it. Now get your ass inside my fucking truck. Wait for me while I go cancel with her.”
All of the heat radiating across my skin floods right to my core at his insinuation, and I can’t hide the triumphant smile that spreads across my face.
I have an irrational, intense, ruthless hatred for whoever the fuck this girl Maggie is, and I don’t care how crazy that makes me. I’m dripping at the thought of him walking inside his shop right now to tell her that he can’t work with her today because he’ll be busy with me instead.
We are so fucking toxic.
“Yes, Daddy,” I whisper into his neck as I press off the wall, not missing the way he shivers. He damn near growls as he watches me walk away.
His Bronco’s top and doors are taken off, so I’m able to climb in easily, warm spring air breezing over my heated skin as I wait.
It only takes a few minutes before the back door to Boardwalk Tattoo opens and August slips out.
His features are hard and rough, and I’m concerned about what it does to me to see him angry like this.
He doesn’t say anything as he hops into the driver’s side and starts the ignition.
We make the short drive home in silence, sexual tension permeating the air between us, thick and hazy.
Once he pulls into the driveway and kills the engine, August unbuckles himself, but I make no move to do the same.
“Are you seeing her?” I ask.
“No.”
“Why did Leo say that then?”
He sighs, running a hand through his dark curls. “She’s been interested in me for a while, and your brothers are under the impression I’ve been suffering from a…dry spell. They’ve been trying to convince me to go out with her for years.”
“Who the fuck is she?”
“She works for me.”
Goddammit. Nope. I don’t like that at all.
My face must give me away because August shakes his head, hiding a smile before licking his lips. “I like seeing you jealous. It makes my cock hard. Feels like a fitting punishment for the torment you’ve been providing me all these years.”
“Torment?” I ask incredulously. “I haven’t been around!”
“Oh, you don’t need to be, Little Vice.” He hops out of the driver-side before rounding the Bronco to where I’m sitting in the passenger seat. “You can destroy me from three thousand miles away.”
“You say that like you witnessed me trying.” I throw off my seatbelt and hop down from the truck, but August pins me against the side of the hood before I can shove past him.
I look up at him, narrowing my eyes. “You talk about the claim you think I want to have to you, but you seem to be the one trying to own me.”
He drops his head so his gaze meets mine, his arms bracing against the truck, boxing me in. I feel so small beneath him, and he watches my face like he knows it too.
“I’ve never wanted anything more than to own every piece of you, Elena.”
“Then why’d you let me go so easily?”
There is a war within his gaze, and his mouth twitches, lips trembling with hesitation. Like there are words he wants to say, but he can’t get them out. He swallows them down, and whatever secret he’s harboring has me shoving against his chest.
“No, you don’t get to do that. Whatever you’re hiding, say it. I can fucking take it.”
“It wasn’t easy,” he rasps. “It destroyed me, waking up that morning to find you gone. The night before, seeing you at my door, taking you to bed—it was the first time I allowed myself to have hope.”
My breath shortens at his admission, tension and trepidation coiling tightly at the base of my stomach. He closes his eyes, like he doesn’t want to look at me. Suddenly, I’m grabbing his face, pulling his forehead against mine.
He exhales with trembling breath before he continues, “You don’t get to talk about jealousy to me when I had to watch you walk into that Manhattan apartment with another man’s arm around your waist. When I had to watch him twirl you in the street and watch you laugh at something he said.
You don’t get to be jealous when I had to witness that. When I had to walk away.”
My chest seizes, his words wrapping around my lungs and squeezing impossibly tight. “What…” I pull back, blinking. “What do you mean?”
“I came after you,” he whispers, eyes still closed.
“I came to New York, and I saw you with a man. With friends. Happy and carefree and fine.” His voice cracks on the word.
“I didn’t let you go easily, Elena.” His lids finally flutter open, burning right through my soul. “I never let you go at all.”
I imagine the drumming between our chests could be heard for miles, and the haze of tension between us begins to dissipate, revealing the most clarity I’ve had in years.
I inch my thumb along August’s jaw, feeling the short, shallow bursts of breath escaping his lips.
Running my thumb over it, savoring its soft feel against my skin.
“Elena,” he rasps, and I feel the vibration against my palm. Multitudes of green dance in his eyes, like the color of the Earth. Grass beneath my feet, palm leaves whispering in the wind, the sparkle of glittering water when the sun hits it just right. Gravity.
He’s my gravity, my atmosphere.
A yearning hunger radiates inside that gaze—a need, a question.
I don’t make him ask it aloud as I snake my hand behind his head and bring him to me, answering. His lips meet mine, soft in the way they feather between my own. Tasting, and teasing, and testing the waters of this rebirth between us.
It’s not enough.
I twist my fingers in his hair, pulling hard, and he groans as I force us closer together. I’m brazen in my pursuit of our connection. I need his touch to know I’m still breathing, his mouth to remind me what I’m living for.
As his mouth opens, I slip my tongue inside, seeking claim.
He meets me halfway, allowing them to dance together.
The ball of his piercing flicks against my lip, earning a surprised moan from me.
He matches it as our mouths continue to move in sync.
One hand leaves the hood and lands on my lower back, splaying across it and pressing me harder into him.
Our hips flush, and we swallow each other’s moans as he grinds his length against my core, giving me a tease of every inch I’ve been craving. None of it feels like enough, and I’m not sure how anything else ever will again. It’s all I can do to bring us closer—merge our beings.
Both of his hands find my ass, scooping me higher as my legs wrap around his waist. I feel the vibration of my name leaving his mouth, and I swallow it with hope I’ll trap his voice inside me forever.
We’re a clash of teeth and lips and tongue, hard lines and soft hands, trembling limbs and impassioned whispers.
He takes me off the hood, and I cling to him like he’s my tether to the very orbit of the planet as he carries me up the front porch steps to the door.
He holds me against it, his lips moving across my jaw and down my neck, before falling off my shoulder as he looks down to fumble with his keys.
The door falls open under our weight, and August stumbles us inside.
We’re a mess of breathless caressing, and I work to catalog every movement of his body and every sound leaving his lips.
It’s one of those moments that feels deeper than real, brighter than color—it’s innate and all-consuming.
The kind of moment that tilts your axis, restructures your being, and alters your soul.
He devours me—hand sliding up my spine, teeth nipping at my lips, the wet slide of his tongue against mine, his dizzying taste flooding my senses.
The twist of his hair beneath my fingers and the grind of his body against my own.
My breath catches as his teeth drag against the hollow of my throat, and I’m entirely unaware of the place he’s taking me until he sets me down against a bookcase in the den.
It’s the kind with an expansion at hip-height, providing a wider countertop space and a cabinet beneath, the shelves above it lined with a colorful array of books.
My back rests against the spines as August stands between my legs, hands falling from my thighs and to the counter where I’m sitting, boxing me in the same way he was before.
He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, allowing me to catch my breath, even though I don’t want to. I don’t survive on oxygen anymore. He’s all I need for my heart to beat. Our staccato breathing is the only sound in the otherwise silent house—a sensual purr.
His lips part with rapid breath, pupils blown as his eyes track the movement of my hands when I glide my palms down the center of his chest, dipping underneath the lapel of his flannel and moving down his arms, taking it off him.
He works with me, sliding it off and allowing it to fall to the floor.
Our foreheads press together, and both our gazes fall to see the way my black tennis skirt has ridden up my legs, revealing bare skin wrapped around his hips.
“You couldn’t find the word earlier,” he rasps breathlessly, fingertips inching up my thighs.
“What?” I ask, voice shaking at the tease of touch.
“Earlier, you stopped short when you were searching for a word to describe what this is. What we’ve been doing all these weeks.”
I nod.
“The word is falling,” he says softly, slipping his hand beneath the hem of my skirt. “We’re falling, Elena, and I’m so goddamn tired of pretending I’m still standing on the ledge trying to make a choice when we both know that I dove headfirst the minute you showed up on my doorstep.”
“August.” My head drops back against the shelves, his name leaving my throat in a whimper.
He lifts an arm, cupping the back of my neck and forcing me to look at him again. Those green eyes blaze behind his fogged glasses, and in desperate need to see him clearly, I raise trembling hands to his face, pulling the frames off him.
“I want to see your eyes when you finally speak the truth your mouth has been too afraid to voice,” I whisper. “They’re always honest, even when you live in lies.”
“What’s the truth?”
I set them down beside me before bracketing his jaw, pulling him close enough that I can feel his breath, but keeping enough distance that I can watch his emerald irises catch flame when I say, “You still belong to me.”
They flare as his lips feather over mine. “This is the last first time, Elena.”
Every atom in my body comes to life at the rough promise.
“The last first time,” I echo back, claiming his mouth again.