I trace the ink that wraps beneath his biceps, following each delicate leaf with my fingertip. “Huh.”
His arm flexes around me, muscles shifting as he angles his head to see what I'm studying. “What?”
“Oh, nothing,” I whisper, my throat swelling as sadness sweeps in. “It’s just that this tattoo looks like a vine.”
He pauses. “Huh. Weird.”
I rest my chin against my hand and peer up at him as he widens his legs and pulls the blanket over my body. His chest is a canvas for every artist, and each tattoo draws my attention to different things. Beautiful. Everything about him is beautiful.
He lifts his outer leg, caging me in, and my heart constricts at the thought of it just being him and me and no one else like the last time we were here together, only we wasted that time fighting what fate had planned for us anyway.
“What’s the matter?” Simple words from a not so simple man. One I’ve known for longer than I do most, yet it feels like I’m meeting him for the very first time. As if I didn’t know him at all.
I can’t even see past the fact that once we leave here, there’s a possibility that I will lose him forever. That everything leading up to this point was for me to say goodbye after Winter Games.
I hate him.
I wait for the guilt to hit. The kind that should strangle me for thinking these things while wearing another man's ring. For being the type of woman who lets herself want this.
It doesn't come.
My father's voice cuts through the quiet.Let yourself love one day, Ivanya, or you might wake up one day and find yourself unlovable.
Shit advice, looking back. But at twelve, his words were gospel.
“Just thinking about my father.” I lose my thoughts on the perfect lines of his lips, how the top one dips in to form a bow, not the kind you wrap pretty things with, the kind you shoot with.
“You got my dick inside you, and you’re thinking about your dad?”
His smirk hits me somewhere deep, somewhere I've kept locked. God, I've missed this. Him.
My shoulders drop. “Asher, ew…”
He sees right through my deflection. His hands slide beneath my arms, dragging me up his body until we're face to face. His lips brush the tip of my nose. “Enough about that.”
Then his mouth claims mine again, harder this time. Something wars behind his kiss. Desperation, or restraint barely holding. The tension in his jaw, the grip of his fingers against my ribs, all of it screams of a man fighting himself.
Thank fuck for ourno question zonefriendship. Now more than ever.
Chapter 18
Ivy
“Morning!” Punk bounces down the steps of the sunken fire pit lounge. It’s my second favorite area of the house. Surrounded by cushions and overgrown plants.
Punk starts yapping off about whatever carnage she’s planned for tonight, but my mind keeps drifting back to last night. I swear I can smell him everywhere. On my skin, in my hair—in my soul.
I force myself to focus on Punk's mouth moving, but then Asher drops into the chair directly across from me. The air shifts. Thickens. My pulse hammers against the bruises his mouth left on my throat. I swear I can still feel them.
He doesn't speak. Doesn't need to. Just spreads his legs wide and watches me with those blue eyes that saw me shatter four times last night. Five, if you count what he did with his tongue after he thought I'd fallen asleep on him.
“You good?” Punk's voice cuts through the haze.
“Perfect.” The word comes out raw. Asher's mouth twitches.
He reaches for his coffee, and I catch the angry red scratches I carved down his forearms when his hips held me down with enough force I almost split open. When he made me beg for things I'd kill anyone else for suggesting.
You're mine, Venom.
