If she had any goddamn clue just how close I am to throwing it all away for her, she’d run out that door and never look back.
She’s staring down the big, bad wolf like she isn’t a sheep waiting to be eaten the fuck alive.
When I don’t respond, my lips remaining pressed together, she laughs. But there isn’t anything remotely funny in it.
No, she’s glaring at me, her posture rigid with how tall she’s now standing, and I feel the shift before she even speaks.
“Why are you so determined to act like there isn’t anything here? Tell me right now that you don’t feel…” Her hand moves through the air between us. “Whatever the hell this is, Wilder. Tell me that right now, that I’m alone in that feeling, and I will walk out of here and not look back. I won’t say another word to you that isn’t something related to the program.”
I cross the room, each step toward her measured, deliberate, until I stop in front of her.
Her bare chest is heaving, her pupils blown as she stares up at me.
“I’m a lot of things,” I say, my gaze dropping to her lips, then down to her tight, puckered nipples, her skin decorated with goose bumps. “Selfish. An asshole. But I’m not a liar.”
“You want me as badly as I want you. I know that you do. Ifeelit,” she whispers, moving forward and erasing the few remaining inches between us, until she’s flush against my front, her nipples pressing through my still-wet shirt, fingers twisting into the fabric along my abs. The contact makes me hiss, my jaw clenched so tightly it might snap.
“If you’re not the kind of man who denies himself the things that he wants, then why do you keep denying this?”
I have to physically restrain myself from reaching for her, from dragging the tip of my finger along her soft, silky skin.
A girl like her has no business being touched by someone like me.
With the dirty hands of a man who has never thought about another living fucking person besides himself in his entire life.
The hands of a man that have been drenched in blood, that have beaten the fuck out of more men than I can count.
She’s too good. Too fucking pure.
All I’ll do is sully her up, taint her in ways that I don’t want to be responsible for.
Like she can read the thoughts in my head, I feel her fingers wrap around mine as she lifts my hand and slowly brings it to her chest, both of us sucking in a sharp breath when she curves my palm around her tit.
“Iwantyou to touch me, Wilder. I want you to stop holding back,” she rasps, her voice low and sultry. My cock twitches, and I have no doubt that she can feel it between us, hard and pressing against her. “Stop treating me like I can’t handle this. Touch me.”
“That’s not what I’m fucking doing, Maisie. Goddamnit,” I hiss, even as I slowly sweep my thumb along the peak of her nipple, feeling her shudder beneath my touch.
When she whimpers, the softest, sweetest fucking sound I have ever heard in my life, I nearly lose it.
I realize in this very moment how supremely fucked I am.
How the fuck am I supposed to be strong enough to resist the girl I’ve been so goddamn obsessed with that I can’t think straight when she’s naked in front of me, putting my hands on her andbeggingme to touch her?
There’s not a man on this fucking planet who could say no to this, especially not a self-serving piece of shit like me.
I’ve never had an ounce of self-restraint in my life. Clearly, or I wouldn’t be here in the first place.
And I’m so fucking done.
“Goddamn it.Fuck it,” I grunt, my palm sliding up to her throat and curving around the delicate slope tightly as I haul her flush against me. She weighs next to nothing, like a little doll in my hands, and fuck, it makes me even harder that she’s so responsive, so pliable.
My lips slam against hers, and something sweet, innocent, so goddamn forbidden explodes in my mouth as my tongue pushes past her parted lips and I taste her for the first time in weeks, taking my first drink of water after being desperately parched for so long.
She moans against my mouth, her hands traveling up the front of my shirt to slip around my shoulders. Her fingers tangle in the hair at my nape, and she pulls hard, drawing a grunt from me.
Surprising us both.
Mmm.
