Wherever he was from, he could growl his big-city speak to me all day long. I loved it. And it distracted me from the reality that he was right: I was as fucked up as Cam.
Maybe more.
Fight it. I took a breath. “I owe you a secret.”
A beat passed before Mateo simmered down. A heart-stopping pause. Then he sat back, his dangerous hands still on my hips. “You don’t have to tell me shit you don’t want to talk about.”
“Who says I don’t want to talk about it?”
Logic.
Common sense.
Mateo wasn’t always a proponent of either when his mood was all wrong, but he was steady today, brain engaged. “I’m not saying that. Just that you don’t have to.”
“That’s sweet but unnecessary. I can tell you I wanted us to bang up here without losing my shit.”
It was Mateo’s turn to blink. Slowly. His long lashes like fans. “You wanted us to fuck?”
“Yup. Didn’t care which way round. But I wanted it. I wantedyou.”
“Wanted...” Mateo spoke around a deep sigh. Then seemed to catch himself and clamped his mouth shut.
He had the best lips, especially the bottom one. It wasn’t often I could stare at it so uninhibited, but I stared now, long and hard, before the weight of Mateo’s single word hit home. Mother of Christ, he thought—
No.
The same energy that had propelled me to sit on him in the first place returned. I gripped his chin, forcing his downcast gaze to meet mine. “There were other things too... that I wanted to do up here. Things I still want to do.”
Mateo swallowed. “Like what?”
My pulse became a metronome of nerves, swallowing me whole as it pounded in my ears. “The things I fucked up for us already.”
“You didn’t—”
I cut him off with my lips, claiming him, bold and dangerous, because the worst had already happened and I’d survived. Because however messed up the world was, if the past came for me and beat me to the ground, Mateo would break my fall.
This time, I didn’t fall. Unless you counted the headlong tumble into the rhythmic tug of his lips and tongue as he kissed me back, his startled gasp a millisecond long before his body reacted on instinct.
A low growl fell from him, simmering with pent up energy. He moved like a snake to seize control.
Then he caught himself and snatched his hand away, flattening himself against the wall.
I wanted to tell him to stop. To let go and touch me the way he wanted.
To own me.
I wanted to set him free.
So I kissed him harder, fighting the wave of terror building in the distance. I pushed closer to him so I felt him in my chest. In my blood and my bones, and the horror I’d thrust on him became something else.
Something shifted.
The vice in my gut gave way. The creeping sensation of wrongness morphed into the softness of his supermodel lips and the brush of his dark beard. Wrong becameright, and I pulled back, just for a moment, to meet his wide-eyed stare. A deep, deep gaze that left me vulnerable in ways I’d never allowed with anyone else.
“Em.” His gravelly whisper raked my heart. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I want to.”
