“I think you’re confusing actions and emotions.” It’s a cutting, defensive statement that I don’t know how to respond to. “Phoenix has always shown me he loves me. When we were a bit older,, and he had his own place, he took me in when my father would go on one of his rants. He offered me a home when my own family was forced not to acknowledge me. He might not understand love, but he gives it freely.”
He’s pissed.
Shit.
I wanted something real and I guess I just got it. But I can’t regret this small bit of himself he’s given me, maybe only me.
“I didn’t know that,” I say so quietly the words barely crawl out of my mouth.
“No.” He breathes that word out and it’s like a switch in him. He turns to me and his lips are soothing along my jaw and neck, dragging sentimental kisses against my skin as he whispers there. “I keep a lot to myself, because there’s a lot of ugliness inside me, Syko. If you knew all of it, you wouldn’t be in my bed right now.”
My lashes flutter at the same time as my pounding heart sinks from the sound of his words. There’s a tenseness seizing his body, even with those gentle lips grazing along my skin. As if he fears he’s said too much and is waiting for me to shove him away.
My palm pushes up every hard line of his chest and slowly settles against his shoulder. With quick striking strength, I push him right back down to the mattress. His brows lift and his hips shift against me as he looks at me with surprise and lust shining in his crystal blue eyes. There’s another emotion there as well, burning in the darkness. A burning need to be accepted, to be loved. It’s something I understand almost too well.
“You’re not ugly,” I say sternly.
“I’m fucking beautiful,” he bites back. “I never said I wasn’t. But my personality, my history, my fucking lineage, it’s disgusting.” His jaw clenches as his breath comes out in a long heaping exhale.
Jesus, who screwed him up like this? Who made him think like this?
I wanted the real Saint. Now I’m not so sure Saint even wants the real Saint.
My lips hover over his and my tongue slides out and flicks against his lower lip before he finally kisses me back with a punishing press of his mouth. It’s a back and forth of our bodies as he tries to deepen it but I won’t let him.
“You’re not like that, Saint.” His mouth opens but I kiss away whatever angry reply must be slamming through his head. “We’re all shitty people. All of us. But in between all that bad, there’s good. There’s good in you.” I rock my hips into his and it eases the tension from his taut body as I flick my tongue against his. “Never say that shit again. Not because you’re hiding it but because it’s not fucking true.” I kiss him harder and then my hand slides down his chest, veering across each perfect part of him before slipping quietly beneath his boxers.
The smooth head of his cock grinds along my palm and I roll my wrist as I take my time sliding down every hard inch of him.
His groan is a quiet, feral growl that shivers through me, my hips thrusting against him in time as I stroke him, drawing out the feel of his hardness weighting my palm.
“Fuck,” he whispers, slamming his lips against mine and threading his fingers tightly through my hair.
With one arm above his head, holding myself up, I work him until he forgets all that shit he just said to me, until I forget it. I’m lost in the sounds he makes, in the way his tongue claims mine, the way my body responds to his.
I want him.
I want him so fucking bad it’s hard for me to keep slowing myself down.
Especially when I know he never will. He’ll dive right into every bad idea that ever steps in front of him.
But with me, my heart’s too important.
It’s been broken too many times by my own family.
That honesty rips through me as I stroke him faster and faster and he fucks my hand harder and harder until we’re both gasping against one another. Then every part of his body stiffens beneath me. His sharp jaw tips up, bright eyes open in the moonlight like glinting silver off a calming ocean.
He really is beautiful.
But he’s not a calming ocean at all.
He’s the storm.
Thick, warmth slides slowly across the back of my hand and he kisses the stunned expression on my face away until I’m kissing him back.
And still, all I can think about is how totally and monumentally fucked my heart is right now.
Fifteen
