His eyes bore into hers. “I can’t do that either, Calliope Turner.”
Lord. Thisman.
How had he the ability to melt and freeze her at the same time?
His eyes shifted to the bruise on her wrist again.
She had been carried from an unknown threat to safety, but safety was not what throbbed through her veins now. Oh, no. Need was what throbbed. A need for something in its truest form. Her lips confessed before she could stop them. “Turner is not my name.”
The words dropped between them like stones into a still pond, sending ripples she could not call back. Her nails bit into her palms. She had not spoken that truth aloud in the months since she started to use her mother’s name.
Maxen’s head lifted, eyes narrowing.
“I—” She swallowed. “I needed something else when I came to Brighton. A name that did not carry... everything from the old one.”
His eyes flashed, before he said. “I understand.”
“You do?”
“How do you think I and all my brothers, half brothers, bear the same name? We left behind our old lives to step into this one.”
Right. She’d almost forgotten about that. “A better one or worse one?”
He pushed off the doorframe, kicking the door shut with his boot,stalking up to her, each step purposeful, a predator closing the distance. His eyes burned into hers, black and searching, and she had the strangest impression that he could see straight through her, down to the marrow where she had buried every secret.
“That depends on who you ask.”
He stopped before her, the air crackling with danger. A danger she was more than happy to not run from this time. “You should not give me truths, Calliope.” His voice was a low growl, hoarse. “That will only make me want more.”
Her heart broke out in a little dance. “Can you handle more?”
“I don’t know.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. His hand lifted, then dropped, as though he warred with himself.
She reached out to trace the scar on his lip. “I don’t know anymore either.”
With a curse torn from somewhere deep in his chest, he seized her by the wrist, dragging her up against him in one swift motion while be arched his head into her palm, brushing his lips against the red marks. Her gasp caught in her throat, but it was swallowed the next instant as his mouth crushed against hers.
Sun and stars!
The kiss was nothing like the first ones. That had been reckless, impulsive. This was ruinous. A storm breaking its banks. Wildly welcome. His lips almost bruised hers in their claiming, his hand fisting in her hair, tilting her head back as though he could devour every tremor of breath she had left.
Calliope loved it.
She clutched his coat with both hands, holding on as if the world might vanish beneath her. His body pressed into hers, big and bulky, and yet she felt safer there than she had anywhere else.
The taste of him was desperation, anger, relief.
It matched everything she felt.
She had meant to confess, to explain, to offer him truth. Instead, she was drowning in him, in the fury and the hunger and the terrible, impossible comfort of being wanted this way.
He tore his mouth away with a ragged curse. His chest rose and fell, harsh and uneven against hers, his hand still a brand at her wrist. She expected him to step back and put space between them. He did the opposite. His forehead pressed to hers, breath ragged, his words came like a vow and a curse both.
“Push me away.”
“No.” How could she do that when all she wanted to do was pull the man closer? Stars, at this point he’d have to stop her from scaling him!
