I nodded as I tried to bring logic back into the equation. The house always won because the house didn’t have emotions.
If I wanted to win, neither could I. “You know, if you weren’t the villain in this story, I would have fallen for you. It’s such a pity I have to hate you.”
His lips brushed against mine, teasing me with another kiss. “You don’t have to like me to like the way I kiss, little fox. You can hate me. You can hate how good it feels. But you can’t deny how much it makes you wet.”
20
JUDAH
Saturday, May 24 | 12:15 p.m.
Iwas fucked.
21
JUDAH
Sunday, May 25 | 6:25 a.m.
Amelia was sleeping soundly as I removed the wood beam from the cabin door and turned the handle. I stole one last glance of her angelic face—blissfully resting without a care in the world—and slipped out.
The dawn air still had a crisp bite to it, but the lingering threat of humidity was right around the corner.
I shouldn’t have been going into the little town in the foothills. Our supplies were well-stocked. The first forty-eight hours after running were always the most dangerous. It’s when Valentine would have had the most men scouring up and down the East Coast for us. But I couldn’t help myself. Not after watching Amelia sleep between stealing short catnaps for myself.
I shouldn’t have kissed her yesterday. I should have kept my fucking hands to myself. I should have continued to avoid her.
But I couldn’t.
All night long, I had replayed the way her fingers in my hair felt. The rhythm of her breaths. The frantic and unpracticed way she kissed me.
It was messy.
It was pure.
It was my damnation.
I wanted to lose myself in her.
It had been so long since I kissed someone just for the sake of kissing, not as the preamble to a quick fuck in a back alley where we’d both get off and never see each other again.
That was how I had to operate. I didn’t do relationships. Frankly, I tried to avoid sex as much as possible. But sometimes I just needed something to take the edge off when it got to be too much.
But Amelia . . . We had kissed for the sole purpose of her experiencing something new—somethinggoodwhen everything around us was hell—and nothing more.
Frankly, I was the last person who should have been kissing her. And yet, I didn’t regret it in the least.
I’d spent all night dozing off on the couch, then waking when thoughts of her crept into my dreams.
Right before dawn broke, I decided that I needed to go into town one more time.
I could make it quick.
Well—as quick as I could when I had to off-road down a mountain as part of a two-hour drive to the nearest bit of civilization.
I cranked up the truck, waited to see if Amelia would peer out of the curtains, and headed down the mountain.
By the time my tires hit a properly paved road, the sun was bursting through the trees in sharp flashes of daylight.
