It should piss me off.
Instead I turn into him, breath coming fast, and fist a hand in his shirt to keep him close. The woods feel too quiet around us, the air thick and wet and charged, but all I can register is him—his mouth, his hands, the weight of him pinning me to the tree like he’s trying to make sure I’m real.
I slide one hand between us, over hard muscle and damp cotton, and he catches my wrist before I can get where I’m going.
His eyes lock on mine.
Dark. Blown wide. Barely controlled.
“Reva.” My name is a warning.
I smile anyway, mean and breathless, and rub against him on purpose.
His restraint snaps in his face before it snaps anywhere else.
And then it’s everywhere all at once.
Shattered.
Dragging me along with him.
Looks like you didn’t want to answer that question. That’s okay.
Some things are taken. Not lost.
There’s a difference.
And wishing doesn’t always get them back.
I won’t take any answer from you before you’re ready.
And you’re not wrong to feel the way you do.
—Ash
CHAPTER NINETEEN
REVA
He grabsmy leg and hoists it up to his waist, cupping my ass and grinding against me. His hardness presses against my core.
My gaze snaps to his, my chest tightening. Two seconds is all it takes for my gasp to break loose, but Ever smiles. It’s only a slash of a grin before he kisses me again.
I clench my thighs, already wet. Needy.
No matter how I feel about him at the bar or at the house, no matter how much lust and hate blur together until I can’t tell one from the other, right now he’s the only thing keeping me from shaking apart. There isn’t room to think. Not if I want to stay upright.
I want this. I want him.
Ever takes my mouth like he’s starving, grip hardening where he holds me. He drags me closer, fists flexingagainst my body as if keeping us both contained costs him something. It does. I can feel the restraint in him, the way he’s holding himself on a leash while I come apart in his hands.
When he pulls back, his eyes flash with something that looks too much like pain.
“Are you sure, Reva?” He grinds against me, slow and brutal, and I almost lose the thread entirely. “You have to be sure.”
He glances past me once, toward the trees, listening. That alone should cool me down. It doesn’t.
I catch his jaw in my hand before he can look away again. “What if he comes back?”
