Chapter one
age nineteen
Temptation:
n. The desire to do something, especially something wrong or unwise.
Drugs were a temptation. I started smoking weed when I was sixteen years old. These days, if Percocet was handy, I popped a pill or two. Anything to escape the darkness of my own mind. Anything to drown out the voices telling me I would never be worth a damn.
My first tattoo was a temptation. It started as an act of rebellion against my clean-cut father—a sure-fire way to get him to stop shoving the follow-in-my-political-footsteps card in my face. Senators and congressmen didn’t paint their skin in art. I didn’t stop until I was covered in ink from my shoulders to my fingertips.
Lyric Matthews was a temptation. Ever since the day she put her hand in mine and asked me to run. That was almost a year ago, and every time I looked at her, I still felt the tug of her hand, the feel of her skin against mine, the all-consumingneedto take her and run.
Right now she was standing in our kitchen in the middle of the night. The rest of the house was quiet and dark, except for the moonlight shining through the windows.
Why was she awake?
I was usually the only one who roamed around at night.
Her tiny pajama shorts barely covered that delicious little crease where her ass met her thighs. Fuck. It was the kind of thing that made a guy want to bend a girl over and trace the head of his cock along that fucking crease. Right before he slid it between her ass cheeks.
She opened the fridge, completely oblivious to me leaning against the kitchen island behind her.
Jesus. Why was I looking at her this way? The fuck was wrong with me?
Temptation. That was why.
I could. Not. Fucking. Stop. Looking at her.
Even though I knew it was wrong. She was my little sister’s best friend—the feisty sixteen-year-old girl who spent more time at our house than her own. The outspoken, free-spirited,brokengirl whose mother was dead and father was never home. The one thing I wasn’t supposed to want but couldn’t stop thinking about.
Maybe that was why. Rebellion flowed through my veins. I wasn’t supposed to want her, and that only made me want her more.
I dumped a handful of M&Ms into my palm, not giving a single fuck that if she turned around she’d see my rock-hard dick straining against my sweats. I didn’t even bother adjusting it. Iwantedher to see. I wanted to watch her gasp, to see her bright eyes dilate and darken, to watch that pulse point in her throat thrum and her porcelain skin flush.
She spun around at the sound of the candy wrapper crinkling, bringing a hand to her throat. “Jesus, Linc, you scared the shit out of me.”
I popped an M&M in my mouth. Blue. Just like her eyes. “Sorry.” I wasn’t. Not one fucking bit. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
Her tiny white t-shirt, that was two sizes too small stretched across her perky tits, revealing even perkier nipples. “Just restless, I guess.”
I knew the feeling.
Although restless didn’t even begin to cover it right now. Fuck the water I came down here to get. I was practically salivating at this point.
And then her gaze lowered right down to my dick. The light from the refrigerator door made it impossible for her to hide her reaction in the shadows.
A gasp. A rush of pink to her cheeks. Her hooded gaze. It was all there on display.
My lips twitched.That’s right, baby. You did that to me.
“You mind handing me a bottle of water?”
She cleared her throat, then turned back to the fridge. “Here,” she said, shoving a bottle in my direction without turning back around.
In all the time I’d known her, this was the first time she didn’t have something sarcastic to fire back at me.
I chuckled. “Thanks.”
Then I tossed the bag of M&Ms onto the counter—peanut, her favorite—and went back to my room. I didn’t need the candy anymore. If things went my way, I was about to have something much sweeter.