“Always.”
“I’m really angry,” I admit. She reaches out and tilts my head to check the cut above my eyebrow. She pinches it together and places a butterfly bandage on it. “Ouch.”
“Sorry.”
My heart beats wildly in my chest, and every touch of hers sends electric currents through me. I really fucking wish she would stop touching me, because her smell, her heat, her bare skin.
I want it all.
“I hate that he did what he did,” I whisper, and she pauses.
Her eyes briefly meet mine before she goes back to tending to my wounds.
“I hate that whatever he said made you feel you had no other choice but to do it. I hate that he made you feel however he made you feel to the point it had you sobbing in my arms.”
She stops, staring at me so intently and swallows, her eyes no longer tear filled, but clear and glassy as she listens.
“I hate the thought of his lips on yours. I hate the thought of your lips on his. And do you know what I really fucking hate?”
“What?” she whispers, her hand frozen above my eyebrow as she hears everything I’m saying to her, feels everything I’m saying.
I reach out and wrap my arms behind her, so my fingers can touch the bare skin on her thighs beneath her shorts.
“I hate that I wish it had been my lips. I hate that I want you how I do. I hate that he has hurt the one person who I love more than anything else in this whole entire world, Lucy. I hate that he hurt you. I hate it. It makes me sick to my stomach. I hate that I have all these feelings for you, and that I don’t know how to process them. I hate that I know that it’s wrong. I hate that I can’t have you, and I hate that he did.”
She sucks in a breath, and I clench my eyes shut.
“I hate my life; I fucking hate everything about it apart from you.” When I finally open them, I stare and see how my words have affected her.
She blinks, it’s slow.
My heart beats, it’s rapid.
She’s frozen to the floor.
Her forehead has a cute frown line. Her eyes are wide and lips parted where she breathes shallow breaths, because her heart is beating as wildly as mine.
Everything is silent around us, but there is so much noise between us.
Hurt, pain, anguish.
Lust, love, loyalty.
So many fucking goods mixed in with the broken and the bad.
I pull her towards me, my fingers tracing up under the shorts to the curve of her cheeks.
“Please tell me to stop, Luce.” I barely recognise my own voice. I move my hands onto that fucking round arse that’s as perfect as a peach and hold them there, enjoying her curves against my touch. Enjoying how her eyes have widened in surprise.
She doesn’t tell me to stop, though. She steps between my legs and drops her hands to my shoulders, staring down at me.
“I beg you, please tell me to stop.”
But she doesn’t. Even as I stand up and tower over her. As she peeks up at me through her lashes.
“I’m not telling you to stop,” she whispers as she reaches her hands behind my neck and sinks her fingers into my hair. “Because it would be a lie.”
She pulls me towards her face and places her lips on mine.
