“If you want to survive and make it through what’s coming, you’d better fucking hope you’re wrong.”
I feel her heart racing against my skin and she’s breathing fast. My blood trickles down my arm and my other hand grips her hips. The hand in her hair tightens, pulling harder, making her gasp, and I stare at her throat, at the line of her neck that leads down to her collarbone and her breasts, and I want to sink my teeth into the skin on her chest and leave my mark. I want to make her gasp, moan, scream my fucking name. I want to make it hurt and make it feel so good she can’t help but plead with me for more.
The emotions are twisted and dark. I shouldn’t be doing this, not with Tara. Not with the girl that got my sister killed. But what my mother said the other day was right—I have wanted Tara for a long time. Fucking pretty Tara, gorgeous, off-limits Tara, too-young Tara, my sister’s best friend. But all those reasons to stay away are long gone now, washed away by time and distance, and only my hate and my lust remain, pure and clear and terrible.
“I don’t want your protection.” She spits the words out from between her teeth. “I don’t want to be involved.” Her tone softens a bit, almost begging.
“It’s too late for that.”
“Let me go. Tell Hugh I’m not helping you. Tell him I’m neutral.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Kellen—”
“Hear what I’m saying to you. Really listen. It’s too late. I dragged you into this and now you’re on his radar, and no matter what I do, he’ll find some pretext to use you against me. The only way I can keep you safe now is to claim you as my own. To keep you and kill for you. I know you don’t want it, but too fucking bad. There’s no alternative.”
She releases a strangled sob and she snarls at me, half raging and half crying, and fuck, she looks so beautiful. I lean forward and kiss her cheek, tasting her tears, and she tries to pull away but I keep her held there with my fingers gripping the roots of her hair.
“Mine,” I whisper in her ear and her body reacts to my hot breath against her flesh like I’m running my fingers down her spine. She shivers and as I move along her chin, I feel her lips part, her heart racing. I sense all the hairs on her exposed flesh standing up on end and I know, I fucking know, that if I reach down between her legs—I’ll find her dripping wet.
“All mine,” I say as I claim her mouth with my own.
I kiss her hard, brutal, unyielding. My tongue slips between her teeth and slides against hers, and she releases a whimper of submission that makes me so hard it’s like I might break. I tighten my grip and kiss her, drinking her in, diving between her mouth and conquering her, because there’s nothing left but to give herself to me, not if she wants to survive. Those whimpers, those moans, the way her hips press against mine, I know that she wants this as much as I do, and she hates me as much as I hate her, and all these fucked-up and confusing emotions swirl between us, but none of it matters. History has a way of repeating itself and ghosts can’t stop their own haunting. None of it matters.
Because there’s this kiss, and there are her hips, and there’s my cock pressed against her, and she feels it. She feels every inch of it.
I pull back, breathing hard, loosening my grip, and in that instant, she twists away. I let her go and she stumbles until there are a few feet between us, her fingers touching her lips like they’re bee-stung and swollen. She looks gorgeous, cheeks pink, breasts rising and falling fast, and I want to lick her nipples and hear her moans as her back arches underneath me. I want her exposed and mine, all mine.
“Don’t do that again,” she says. “Or next time the shovel won’t just cut your arm, I’ll jab it straight into your fucking chest.”
She turns and runs off, leaving me there dripping blood into the dirt, smiling wide.