Page 50 of Two Sides of Sin

“Looks like you’ll have to take these off to dry,” he teased.

His hands moved to the hem of my soaked tank top. He gathered the fabric and pulled it over my head in one fluid motion, tossing it onto the rocks. The hot sun hit my bare skin, but it was nothing compared to the searing heat in Julian’s eyes. Next, his hands dipped below the surface, finding the buttons of my denim shorts and sliding them down my legs with an aggressive tug.

The playfulness in the air shifted instantly, replaced by a thick, heavy tension that made the water around us feel like it was simmering.

Chapter 37

Julian

The freezing water of the pool did nothing to extinguish the fever spreading across my skin.

Every single time my hands found her, it felt like closing my fists around a branding iron. But this? With her clothes discarded on the rocks and her wet, bare skin pressed seamlessly against mine? The ironclad control I’d spent years trying to perfect was fracturing into dust. My hands gripped her waist—hard enough to bruise, desperate enough to keep her tethered, as she wrapped her legs around my hips, her soft weight the only thing anchoring me in the current.

I had memorised every inch of her body, but having her here so exposed, was a lethal new kind of torture. The way the sunlight caught the water tracking down her bare shoulders, the way she looked at me with that raw hunger… it made a mockery of my restraint. Was any of our blood-soaked, ancient history worth the suffocating agony of not claiming her right now? The ache between my hips was a punishing, heavy weight, straining against the soaked fabric of my shorts and throbbing in symmetry with the adrenaline spiked pulse hammering in my throat.

She leaned in, the damp chill of her skin erased by the blistering heat of her open mouth finding the sensitive cord of my neck. Her tongue tracking seductively over my pulse pulled a dark, broken groan from me.

Her hand slipped beneath the surface of the water.

Fuck.

All the oxygen vanished from my lungs the second her fingers curled around me. Her grip was firm and utterly intoxicating. She pulled back just a fraction, looking up at me through her wet seductive lashes with a dark, defiant glint in her eyes that made my knees weak.

Blindly, I walked us backwards through the water until my spine slammed hard against the rough, moss-slicked rock of the cliff face, pinning her against my chest. She didn’t let go. The second she began to move her hand, I had to bury my face in the wet crook of her neck and bite down hard on my own lip just to keep from shouting her name. She shifted, grinding her heat against me, her pussy slick and inviting, sitting at the very tip of my now throbbing cock. She started to press down, trying to take me in—to finally end this growing distance between us.

The need was a physical roar in my brain, screaming at me to just let it happen. Take her. Forget the rules. Forget the Ritual altogether.

“June, wait,” I choked out, my hands flying to her shoulders. With a surge of willpower that felt like tearing my own heart out, I pushed her back. “Not here.”

The rejection hit her. Her expression shattered into a mask of sudden fury. She scrambled out of my arms, splashing back to create some distance, her chest heaving as she stared at me with dagger eyes.

“I’ve had enough, Julian!” she bit out, her voice echoing off the stone walls. “I’m done. I don’t understand why you do this! Why do you always pull away? Do you even want me? Because it feels like you’re repulsed by me!”

“June, that’s not⁠—”

“We aren’t children anymore!” she yelled. “What are you waiting for? Some sign from the heavens? Another girl? What?!”

My irritation flared, fuelled by the physical ache she’d left behind. I swam towards her, my shadow towering over her as I narrowed my eyes.

“Do you ever stop to wonder how I feel?” I barked back. My tone making her flinch. “Look at me. If you can’t tell by the fact that I’m practically bursting out of my skin with how much I want you, then you’re blind. I don’t know what else I can say to make you understand that it’s taking everything I have not to pin you against that rock and fuck you until you physically can’t take anymore.”

She went quiet, her bottom lip trembling. “Then why?”

I ran a hand through my wet hair, exhaling a defeated breath. I couldn’t tell her about the Ritual. So I gave her the only truth I could offer.

“Does it ever occur to you that maybe it’s my first time, too?” I said, my voice dropping to a low, vulnerable tone. “And maybe I want it to mean more to both of us than just an afternoon in a lake because we couldn’t keep our hands off each other?”

The anger drained out of her instantly. Her eyes widened, her mouth parting in a small o. “Wait… so you’ve never…?”

“Never,” I cut her off, the admission stinging my pride even as it felt like a relief to say it.

“But why?”

I reached out, cupping her face with both hands, forcing her to look directly into my soul. “Because for as long as I can remember, there’s only ever been one girl for me. I knew she’d be my first for everything. And I’d be hers… if she let me.”

Her expression finally softened. “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I just assumed… you know, that you were like your brother.”

I let out a dry laugh. I pulled her back into my arms—carefully this time, mindful of how small she felt against me. “And what? That I slept with anything that moved?” I shook my head, my fingers tangling in her wet hair. “Nah. Not my style.”