My little thief, with an unknown strength from her or an unknown weakness from me, turned me to face her. I nearly stumbled over before catching myself with a slick palm on the wall behind her. With my arm quivering above her head, she was caged beneath me and yet I was the one who was trapped.
She stretched up onto tiptoes, lifting her face up to me, her features softening as her gaze dropped to my lips.
“Why would it be so bad?” she whispered.
I let out a groan. Unable to form words. Unable to explain. To her. To myself.
“Why…” She leaned closer, so close, her breath against my mouth, a soft cloud of spearmint and the hint of strawberry jellies. “Why can’t we…”
Her lips touched mine. It was just a brush but the sensation cascaded down my body. I made a noise in my throat. I hadn’t meant to, I swear. But she coaxed it out of me, like she coaxed so many wicked things unbidden from me.
Somehow our mouths were fused, our lips moving against each other, her fingers tangling into my shirt. Later I’d swear it was her tongue that pressed into my mouth but I couldn’t be sure it hadn’t been me who had opened up and demanded entrance first.
The heat that washed through my body numbed the pain of my knee. Until I felt nothing but her. The voice in my head that was screaming this was wrong, silenced as I lost myself in her kiss. I let her hands slide down my stomach. I barely registered what she was doing until her hand slid down the front of my pants. I almost buckled at the knees as her small fingers brushed the head of my cock. My hand against the wall fisted, my nails scratching at the wall.
“Fuck, you’re so hard,” she whispered into my mouth. Her dirty words jarring with her innocent features. “I know you want me. Why don’t you just…fuck me.” Her eyes bore into mine. “I want this. I want you. Haven’t I made that clear?”
I was going straight to hell.
“Please,” I gasped, still frozen. Still unable to move. Fearing that if I reached out to push her away, my traitorous hands would instead wrap around her throat, push her panties aside, to slide myself in. To corrupt her fully. “We…can’t.”
“Why not? I could make it so good for you. You could teach me.” Her finger swirled my precum all around the tip of me. I had to squeeze my eyes shut against the dizziness that threatened to take me under. She needed no teaching. She was already a deadly siren calling me into her wild waves. My undoing.
“Stop,” I begged.
She didn’t. She wrapped her fingers around me and pressed closer, her eyes ablaze with triumph. Like she knew I was on the verge of giving in.
My fist was through the wall above her head before even I realised it. Her eyes widened, her intake of breath audible.
“Get. Your. Hands. Off. Me.”
She snatched her hand out of my pants and pressed back into the wall; her eyes were wide with fear.
I almost laughed. How had she not seen what she was doing? How had she not seen that it was all coming to this? That this was always how this was going to end?
With me scaring her. With me, yet again, driving her away. I just had to do a better job this time.
“Do not fool yourself,” I growled. I would have pushed myself away from her, but I would have fallen back. I was sure of it. “Do not flatter yourself. Tell yourself all the little fantasies you want, touch yourself however you want at night, but do not drag me into it, little girl.”
I was collapsing down into her because I was having a hard time keeping myself upright, but she mistook it for a threat and cowered beneath me. If I had been thinking straight, I might have stopped. Maybe not. Maybe I was cruel, just like she said.
My voice rivalled the roar of the rain as I snarled down at her, “You are a child that arrived on my doorstep unwanted. You are a brat I need to babysit. A little thief I need to keep an eye on.”
“But you…you want…” She waved at my pants, a bulge still giving away my sinful desires.
I snorted. “You obviously don’t know much about men. We’d get hard in a stiff wind.”
Pain flashed clear in her eyes. Even that wasn’t enough to stop my tirade.
My shadow darkened Aurnia’s bright cheeks. I put my face right up against hers.
“If I look at you, it’s to make sure you’re not stealing. If I talk to you, it’s to keep you busy so you don’t start destroying things. If I don’t teach you to tattoo, it’s because you’re still young enough to colour inside the lines. And if I come drag you out of some godforsaken home, it’s because of some fucked up sense of right and wrong in me that I never asked for, because you’re a child. A child, Aurnia. A fucking child!”
Aurnia ducked beneath my quivering arm and ran from me. I stayed there as the door slammed shut. I couldn’t move. Even if I could, where was I to go?