I could barely breathe, and I didn’t care.
His hands slid under my shirt, fingertips dragging over skin like he was memorizing me. I was burning from the inside out.Thiswas heat.Thiswas what it felt like to fall apart and finally stop caring who saw the pieces.
We battled for control—his mouth, my hands, his groans, my gasps. A rhythm formed, wild and erratic. He moved over the center console, straddling me now, grinding down onto me, and I didn’t stop him.
I couldn’t.
I’d never wanted anything the way I wanted him.
But wanting didn’t make it right.
I tore myself away like I was ripping off a part of my soul, breaths coming in ragged gasps. Our foreheads stayed pressedtogether, lips still brushing, caught in the echo of something too raw to be undone.
“No,” I rasped. “This can’t happen.”
Sin’s eyes searched mine—storm-dark, unreadable. His lips were kiss-swollen, parted like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to yell or beg.
“Why?” he asked, voice cracking.
“Because I’ll ruin you.” Each word broke more than the last. “And worse—I’ll ruinmyself.”
I fumbled for the door handle, my hands shaking, shoving him across the console and stumbled out into the night air like it might douse the inferno inside me. I braced my palms on my knees, sucking down breath after breath, but I couldn’t slow my heart. Couldn’t erase the taste of him from my mouth.
I’d never felt so alive.
I’d never felt sodamnwrecked.
When I made it around to his door and yanked it open, Sin looked different—like the alcohol had burned off and left only the wreckage. Like a man who’d tasted the world and watched it get ripped from his mouth.
“Go,” I growled.
He didn’t argue. His gaze crawled over me like he was memorizing this version of me—the broken one, the weak one, therealone. And I hated that he saw it.
I wanted to beg him to understand.
To wait.
To try again when I wasn’t terrified of what he made me feel.
But instead, I bit it all back. I got in the car, hands trembling as I turned the key. The headlights sliced into the dark. I didn’t look back as I pulled away. Too afraid of what I might see and what it would make me do.
But just as the wheels hit the asphalt, I heard him laugh—a sound soft and sharp, full of shattered breaths and dangerous satisfaction.
He knew.
He’d cracked something open inside me. He’d taken the lid off Pandora’s box. And I would never be the same again.
CHAPTER 8
THEO
It had been five days since I’d felt his mouth on mine, tasted recklessness and relief, and walked away like it hadn’t set fire to my entire fucking world. I hadn’t slept. Not really.
Not when every time I closed my eyes, I sawhim—breathing hard, swollen slick lips, eyes dark with want and devastation. I’d kissed him like I was starving. Like he was the only thing keeping me alive. And then I left.
Like a coward.
Like a man who knew that one more second in that car with him and I would’ve burned everything down just to touch him again.
