Page 171 of Sin Like the Devil

Licking his plump lips, Lennox’s stare bores into me. “It’s the people you choose to give a fuck about, through thick and thin.”

“You think it’s that simple?”

“I do.”

Considering this, I study the swell of his inflated cupid’s bow. “Then what does that make us?”

Lennox furrows his brow. “I don’t know. Probably not enemies.”

Don’t do it, Ripley.

But not even Holly’s whispered warning can stop me.

“How about allies?”

“Allies,” he repeats.

“What do you think?”

“I guess… I can work with that.”

The corner of his mouth twitches, not quite manifesting into a smile. We’re still staring at each other. Suspended in this flux-like state between life and death, our worlds torn apart, and futures gone. There’s nothing left to fight for. We both lost.

“Do we have to like each other to do this?” Lennox murmurs.

My breathing halts as his lips near. Lennox holds my gaze until his mouth captures mine, then nothing else matters but the feel of his skin on mine. Only this time, he isn’t trying to hurt me. This isn’t a punishment.

It’s a surrender.

A white flag.

An abdication.

My mouth responds to his without being told. I don’t know when hatred transformed into the most acute sense of need, but I couldn’t care less. We’re facing the unknown together now. At the end of this road, I can accept Lennox Nash for the monster he is.

He pauses to let me answer.

“No,” I breathe. “We don’t have to like each other.”

“Then I guess… allies it is.”

His mouth returns to mine, hard and insistent. The man who tried his damndest to kill me is breathing life into my lungs, one kiss at a time. I’m trapped in hell with an enemy, and disaster has never felt so fucking good.

Lips parting, I let his tongue seek passage. He tastes like blood and rage. Hope and fear. The perplexing tale of a man capable of inflicting so much horror in the name of love. But to Lennox, that is love.

Not the half-baked version of love that normal people proclaim. Nothing quite so ordinary or pedestrian. This is a man who will maim and kill to protect those he’s deemed worthy of his care. Those lucky enough to be loved in the fiercest of ways.

Not even the intensifying shrieks around us disrupt the moment. While some anguished soul loses his mind, I hand mine over to the devil himself. Yet even the devil once danced with angels. Lennox’s evil matches mine.

For we were both forged in the same hell.

And we’ll both die here too.

Our kiss breaks at the sound of the cell door being unlocked. Lennox pulls me in close, going on high alert. Footsteps enter before Harrison’s sneering voice shatters the morning’s relative peace.

“Well, isn’t this cosy. Survived the night, I see.”

“Afraid so,” Lennox retorts.

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