A stupid tear slips down my cheek and I feel like the biggest idiot in the world. I can’t look at him. I’m too afraid he’s going to have that look of amusement on his face, his smug, condescending—
His thumb suddenly comes up to brush away the tear, and it surprises me, so my gaze automatically jumps to his face.
There’s no amusement there. Not a drop. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I saw a hint of remorse.
Holy shit, is that remorse? Is that what it looks like on him? Why does it hurt me?
“I’ve hurt you so much,” he says, simply. He already brushed away the tear, but he’s still caressing my face. Comforting me. It works, but it makes everything hurt worse, too. The tears subside as quickly as they welled up, but now the aching pit in my stomach has opened back up. I’ve thought before he was the black hole, the thing I couldn’t escape from, but somehow it’s like he’s put that black hole inside me. Somehow it’s not enough to keep my distance from him, because it’s in me now. A part of me. I can get sucked into that dark trap of yearning even if I don’t see his face. But it’s so much worse when I do.
I’m unprepared for the vulnerability that overtakes me now, as he shows me this side of him that I was once convinced existed, despite all evidence to the contrary. Hope reemerges, a damned hope, because even if there’s good in him, I know it’s not much. I know there’s more bad. I know he’ll always hurt more than he helps.
I need to go home.
I need to leave the mansion.
I need to get the hell away from this man before he decimates me.
It feels like it’s been an eternity, but it’s only been a few seconds. Mateo is still cupping my face in one of his hands, and now he gently turns my attention back to him, forcing me to meet his gaze.
“I’m sorry, Mia.”
My poor aching heart is going to explode in my chest. My lungs threaten to collapse. Emotions swirl through me like a tornado, ripping into crucial, necessary processes, sucking up values of right and wrong, demolishing every rational thing. He blankets my brain, my heart, my soul with those three little words.
And then he kisses me.
And I kiss him back. I don’t just kiss him back, I cling to him, like he’s the only stable thing in the shitstorm of emotion moving through me, and that’s so wrong. It’s a lie. He’s not a stable thing at all, he is the fucking storm.
He’s going to ruin every good thing in my life, and I’m going to let him.
His tongue sweeps into my mouth, his strong arms locking around me, and I can’t for the life of me remember why I wouldn’t. He can demolish everything else and leave me sitting in the middle of a barren wasteland—as long as I have this, as long as I have him, what more do I need?
He lets go of me just long enough to brace his hands under my ass and lift me. I lock my legs around his waist and he carries me to the bed, his mouth never leaving mine.
I already feel like a raging inferno, and all he’s done is kiss me. When he kisses me, it’s so much more than brushing lips and dueling tongues—he owns me. He doesn’t even have to battle me; I’m already his, but it’s scary and exhilarating, like dancing with the devil over an open pit of flames, knowing the only thing that keeps you suspended, that keeps you safe, is his hold on you. If he lets go, if he stops, if he pulls away, I’ll fall. I’ll burn up.
And I know he has to stop. I know we can’t stay here forever, dancing above open flames. No matter how long this lasts, no matter how high he brings me, it’s going to end. It has to end. I have to fall. Because he isn’t mine. He’ll sweep through my life like wildfire, burning up all the good, but all I’ll have to show for it is the barren wasteland—I won’t have him.
He stops kissing me long enough to drop me on the bed and get out of his pants, and my brain clears just enough to remember that.
“Wait,” I say, scooting back on the bed.
“We’ve waited long enough,” he states, climbing on the bed with me.
My heart’s still pounding from kissing him and here he comes again. I hold my hand out, like that can keep him away. It’s so hard, because I don’t want to keep him away. That’s the last thing I want. I want to pull him close. I want to open myself up to him and get swept up, swept under—I want to get lost in him.