Her hair was wild, cheeks all burning. She squared up with me, eyes blurry-bright and pissed like she wanted to bite my fucking throat out. My heart hammered. The heat between us flared, suffocating. I didn’t back off, not one inch. Just glared down,knowing she’d buckle first. Always did.
I dragged my palm, rough, up the side of her throat. She flinched, breath hissing through her teeth. “What, you scared I’m secretly planning on killing you?” I crooned it low, bending so my face hovered barely an inch from hers.
Her mouth trembled, lips parted. “I’d like to see you try.”
Fuck. The way she looked at me. Hell, nobody looked at me that way. Not even my old man, and he was the king of cruel.
She shoved back, but it just pressed us together, root to rib. I felt the outline of her tits through the thin shirt, her chest fluttering like she was on the verge of screaming. Or something else.
She scraped nails down my forearm. “Get off me, Caiden.”
“Nah,” I whispered, letting the word land cold on her lips. “You’d miss me.”
She rolled her eyes, but the glare was softer, shaky. Her pulse beat against my thumb, crazy-fast. I loosened just enough to let her breathe, but kept her close, locked in my shadow. I didn’t trust myself to let go yet. Didn’t trust her to not spit in my eye, or worse, beg for more.
She tried to twist, but I pinned her. Just long enough to let her feel what I could do if I wanted.
“You always so mouthy when you’re about to eat dirt?” I taunted, letting my grip slide down to the bony point of her hip.
She stilled. I could feel her breathing. Shallow, furious, nothing left to lose. Some part of me wanted to break her completely. The other part? Didn’t know what the fuck it wanted.
She smirked. Lips bloody, nose flaring. “I’ve got more stamina than you, soldier. This what you learned in the Army? Bullying people smaller than you?”
I laughed. Couldn’t help it. The sound came out raw. “You think you’re small? Princess, you’re impossible to miss. Like a siren for suffering. I could spot you in a war zone.”
She kicked out, caught my shin, not hard but enough to sting. “Serves you right,” she bit out, chin stubborn and high even when she could barely stand. Always more venom than blood in her veins.
She limped past, like she wanted to prove she could outpace me. Nothing but bone and spite, that girl. I watched her hips and the mess of her hair swinging wild. Too wild. Too pretty, like she could slice me open if I stared too long.
The bush snagged my shoulder as I followed, wet branches lashing my face. I pushed harder, crowding her back.
She noticed. Could see it in the way her shoulders tensed, in how she threw looks at me over her shoulder like daggers. Didn’t care. I liked the way she bristled when I was close, like she’d claw my eyes out or kiss me just to shut me up.
She didn’t know how close I was to taking her up on both.
I resented every atom of awareness she roused in me.
This wasn’t desire. It was a malfunction: hunger, cold, adrenaline, the desperate reality of danger. My instincts betraying me because she was the only other living soul within reach. Just that.
I repeated it until the words rang empty.
I hated it. I hated it with a depth that bordered on pain. Hated how effortless it was for her to make my guard slip; how she did it by simply existing, by not even noticing the havoc she was waking inside me.
No softness. No longing. No surrender. Wanting her was disaster. The edge of a cliff, the heart of a wildfire I could never smother if it ever caught hold.
She was everything I’d spent years barricading myself against, the wound at the root, the very reason I had built these walls. And now, she was here, shivering and alive at my side, and I could feel my control eroding, fiber by fiber.
I forced my body to stone; forced my mind blank. Forced myself to resurface every reason why caving to this feeling was a death sentence.
THE PRESENT
AMELIA
Being stuck out here in the Colorado wilderness was a nightmare. An actual nightmare. It had been a few days since the kayak accident, and I feel as if we were wandering the woodlands in circles, never actually coming any closer to civilization.
The tension was insane. We couldn’t go a few minutes without bickering and arguing. There were maybe a few civil moments, but not enough.
The two of us could be bridged by friction alone, by the heat generated from scraping two ruined things together until they caught.
