Page 68 of Defiant
I didn’t push off the dresser and storm out of my room. No, I whirled on her, faster than I could blink. “You,” I whispered, my hands finding her face, tangling in her hair, tilting her head up to me. Her skin was soft, her hair falling over my fingers in waves. “Why do you make me feel this way?” It was a question I doubted either of us knew the answer to, and yet I asked anyway.
She had to know she drove me crazy. Of course she did. Like I’d said, she knew what she was doing. Jaz knew how to wrap us helpless men around her finger like it was nothing. I was at her mercy, now. I teetered on the edge, ready to jump off even though I knew nothing good waited for me at the bottom.
This would not end well. There was no way it could. Jaz and I…we could never last. She was eighteen, had her whole life in front of her. She’d move on, to bigger and better things, and I…well, who the hell knew where I’d be.
Frankly, this was a disaster waiting to happen, and yet, as I stared down at her, as those big, chocolatey eyes stared up at me, I found I could not look away, even knowing all that.
I leaned my forehead down, resting it against hers, feeling her warm breath on my face. My eyelids closed, and my fingers tightened their hold on her hair, tugging gently. “You make me so weak, Jaz,” I murmured, our noses touching.
This would not be like our last embrace. This was not us arguing, not us coming together in the heat of the moment.
This was us being drawn together, regardless of everything else. This was Jaz and I no longer being able to pull back when we should, the inevitable union of feelings that should not exist but did in spite of it all.
“How weak?” she questioned, her voice humming in her lungs. My body huddled around hers; I felt her lean against me, our noses grazing. Her hands found my sides, holding onto me gently, as if she was afraid to hold on any tighter, lest she break the spell she had over me and cause me to pull back.
Fuck. At this point…unless she told me to, I didn’t think I could.
“Weak” was all I could get out before my lips found hers, my body taking over.
She should stop me. She should push me away. After all, she was only here because she’d been attacked. How was this appropriate at all, age difference aside? She came here to learn some moves, not for me to corner her in my bedroom and finally know what she felt like under me.
Damn it.
Jaz didn’t stop me. She made no moves to, her lips molding against mine as I took whatever I could from her mouth. Her whimpers, her sounds, the breath right out of her lungs. I kissed her like I’d never kissed anyone else, like no one else in my life had ever mattered before her. Heat exploded within me, the blood in my body rushing between my legs, making me hard. Making me crave this girl in ways I shouldn’t.
God, she tasted amazing. Just as good as I remembered her being, her lips ridiculously soft and supple, the perfect mouth to kiss. I never wanted to stop, never wanted this moment to end.
I tore my lips from hers, already breathing hard. My hands dropped from her face, and I glanced to the bed behind her. The sheets were rumpled, unmade. I never made my bed; didn’t see the point, seeing as how I was always going to crawl back under them the next night. I would feel embarrassed, but I didn’t think Jaz cared about the state of my bed…she only cared that it was there.
With eyes half-lidded, Jaz grabbed my hands, stepping backward and pulling me with her. She crawled onto the bed, eventually resting her head on my pillow, her thick black hair the opposite of a halo. She was no innocent; she never pretended to be, and as I crawled over her, as my body leaned down upon hers, I knew why.
Jaz was not born an angel. She was born a devil, a demon, a temptress. I’d known she was bad news from the get-go, and yet I still found myself in her web.
My dick was rock hard now, practically throbbing in my pants as I found her wrists, moving to hold them to the sides of her head. I brought my mouth to her ear, whispering, “Tell me to stop. Tell me you don’t want this.” Basically, one last-ditch effort to do what was right and keep myself from her.
This…this was the point of no return, and we were about to pass it without looking back.
Jaz breathed out, “Don’t ask me to lie.” Her words were as telling as they could possibly be, and I felt myself lose what little restraint I still had.
My mouth found hers again, and without words I told her how badly I wanted her. How conflicted she made me feel. How my whole body was on fire feeling hers under mine. I’d never wanted someone so badly before, never yearned to feel another’s skin on mine quite like this. This was urgent, desperate, needy in every way.
Fate had always laughed at me. I’d thought I’d finally started a new chapter in my life, done something good with it, and then I lost everything I worked so hard for. My job, my respectable position in Midpark. Now I was nothing…but in her hands, with her, I felt like I could be anything once more.
Hope.
She gave me hope where I had none. I prayed my newfound hope, my heart, wouldn’t get shattered by a girl who thought this meant nothing.
This, it truly did mean everything. I did not do what I was about to do lightly, not ever. Jaz was about to see the truth of what I was, though she had no idea what it would mean.
I released her wrists, kneeling over her as I reached for the bottom of my shirt, hoisting it up and over my head, tossing it to the floor. The giant scar on my torso was plainly visible now, the white, puckered skin telling a story I never did. It wrapped around my abdomen to my back; a good portion of my body scarred with it.
It was ugly. It was my truth, my lie, my shame. It was everything I never wanted anyone to know, the reason why I shut everyone out.
My eyes sat on the floor, where my shirt was, for a few moments. For whatever reason, I did not want to look at her right away. Maybe I didn’t want to see the disgust in her eyes. Maybe I didn’t want to see the questions that would linger there—after all, a scar like this, a scar that took up this much of a body, didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Scars like this had a story, and it was one I had never told a soul before.
The Fitzpatrick twins…somehow they’d known I was hiding something, but they’d been the only ones to ever suspect something was wrong with me.
Something warm on my stomach caused me to snap my eyes to Jaz, come back to reality. She’d sat up, reached for me. Her hand laid flat on my stomach, touching the scar. Beneath it, my body was muscled and strong, but when it came down to it, the scar was all anyone could see.
