Chapter 6 #6
“You don’t have to fix it tonight,” he says softly. “You don’t have to stop loving him tonight.”
The words hit like another wound and another mercy all at once.
“Then what do I do?”
His thumb strokes once slow at the back of my neck.
“You breathe,” he says. “You let me hold you. And you stop acting like this doesn’t matter just because it’s not the story you planned.”
His hand slides from my jaw to the back of my neck.
Big.
Careful.
Possessive in the earned way.
He smells like fresh cotton, mint, rain, and something purely male underneath it all—warm skin, clean sweat, the kind of scent that should not feel this safe and this dangerous at once.
The fire pops behind us.
Rain keeps striking the glass.
His mouth moves over my skin with a tenderness so patient it almost hurts more than the heartbreak does.
Because he is not trying to take advantage of me.
He is not turning my grief into an opening.
Not making my ruin convenient.
He is kissing me like he hates that I’m hurting.
Like he’d rather hold the worst of it for me than watch it keep carving through me.
And that—
that might be the thing that undoes me.
My breath catches.
Then stutters.
He pauses at the corner of my mouth, forehead almost touching mine now, his hand still warm and steady at the back of my neck.
I wanted lightning bolts from Tristan.
I wanted the polished prince.
The it guy.
The one everybody wanted and I was stupid enough to believe might finally want me most.
Not this.
My eyes burn again.
Because no one has ever made room for the mess without trying to neaten it first.
And maybe that’s why the next thing happens.
Not because I decide.
Not cleanly.
It happens in the ache.
In the firelight.
In the rain.
In the warmth of his body wrapped around mine.
In the maddening steadiness of him.
His mouth is right there.
His breath is warm against my lips.
His thumb is still at the back of my neck like he already knows I’m slipping.
So I tilt my face up and kiss him.
For one stunned heartbeat, he doesn’t move.
Then his mouth answers mine.
And God.
Lightning.
Not soft comfort.
Not warm brandy.
Not careful almost.
Lightning bolts.
They hit so hard I nearly jerk in his arms.
His mouth is hot and firm and devastatingly alive, and the first real taste of him sends a sharp, electric shiver straight through me. My whole body reacts before my mind can catch up—every nerve lighting at once, my skin going hypersensitive, my breath catching so hard it almost hurts.
I hate it.
I hate it because this is what I wanted from Tristan.
This violent, impossible rush.
This heat.
This sense that one kiss could rearrange the whole architecture of a girl.
And instead it’s Drew.
Drew with his rough, blue-collar hands.
Drew with his deep voice and those stupid cut-off hoodies.
Drew, who should feel all wrong and somehow doesn’t.
His hand stays at the back of my neck, holding me there without making me stay. The other arm tightens around my waist, big and warm and certain, and my body answers him in some deep, elemental feminine way I do not appreciate at all.
My nipples harden instantly under the thin cotton of his old shirt.
My stomach drops.
Heat pools low and sudden and humiliating.
A hungry little ache flickers awake between my thighs that has absolutely no business existing in the middle of heartbreak.
I want more.
That’s the worst part.
I want more.
More of his mouth.
More of the heat.
More of the rough edge under all that control.
And yet I don’t.
Or maybe I do and I hate myself for it.
Maybe it’s both.
My fingers clutch at his shirtfront, twisting into the soft cotton over his chest. He makes a sound low in his throat—deep, rough, almost startled—and it shoots another pulse of heat through me so intense I could cry over it.
Then he kisses me deeper.
Not frantic.
Not greedy.
Just enough to make sure I feel all of him.
The strength he’s holding back.
The hunger he’s trying very hard not to turn loose on a girl who is still bleeding for another man.
That restraint is somehow sexier than if he’d lost control.
It makes the kiss feel more dangerous.
More real.
And when he finally pulls back, he only goes an inch.
Barely enough to breathe.
His forehead falls to mine.
Both of us breathing hard now.
“Well,” he murmurs, voice wrecked and dark and unfairly amused, “that sure looked like it affected you.”
A laugh breaks out of me through the leftover tears.
Small.
Shaky.
Broken around the edges.
I hate that he got that from me.
I hate even more that I don’t hate it enough.
His thumb brushes once under my eye, catching the last dampness there, and then he settles me back against his chest like the kiss changed everything and nothing all at once.
And this time, when I fold into him, I do it knowing.
Not healed.
Not over Tristan.
So I do something stupid, I grab the back of his head and pull him down for more.
The kiss is still burning on my mouth when he pulls back, forehead pressed to mine, both of us breathing like we just ran suicides.
My body is humming, traitorous and alive in ways it has no right to be after the night I’ve had.
His hand is still at the back of my neck, big and warm and possessive, and I can feel how hard he is against my thigh through his sweats—thick, insistent, impossible to ignore.
He’s mad. I can feel it in the tension coiled through every muscle of him. Mad that I answered my mother. Mad that I’m still tangled up in Tristan even after everything. Mad that I kissed him back like I meant it and then looked guilty about it.
But he’s not letting me go.
“Shh,” he murmurs against my lips when I start to speak. His voice is low, rough, threaded with something darker than usual. “Your heart cries for him… but your body does for me.”
I shiver. Hard.
“Drew—” It comes out half protest, half plea.
He doesn’t let me finish. His mouth finds mine again, slower this time, deeper, like he’s proving a point with every stroke of his tongue.
One big hand slides down my side, under the hem of his own oversized t-shirt I’m wearing, and I gasp into his mouth when his fingers brush the bare skin of my inner thigh.
He finds how wet I am instantly.
A low, satisfied sound rumbles out of his chest. “Fuck, baby girl. Soaked for me already.”
I should be embarrassed. I’m not. The meds from earlier are long gone, but the ache in my leg is nothing compared to the one building between my thighs. His fingers slide through my slick folds, find my clit, and circle it once—slow, deliberate, filthy. My hips jerk.
“Joder…” The Spanish slips out before I can stop it. Heat floods my face, but he just groans like it’s the sexiest thing he’s ever heard.