Page 87 of Torn

Merry makes the same mistake, her gaze tripping over his rippling body. Her fingers curl into fists. She takes a single, retreating step before he’s in front of her, cupping her jaw in his palms.

“Leave, Anger,” she hisses, rolling her face away. “I want you gone.”

“Merry,” he rasps. “Please. You don’t mean that—”

Her hands slap his chest, pushing him. “You shithead! I’ve meant everything I’ve said! You’re the one who hasn’t!”

“That’s not true,” he hollers back.

“Name one thing—,” her voice cracks, “—one single thing that you’ve actually meant!”

“Everything you heard at the library. All of that was real!” he belts out, his words shoving through the maelstrom. “I once loved her, but I never befriended her. I watched her, but I never missed her. I never slept beside her. I never shared myself with her. She never perplexed me, never gave me peace, never gave me strength. Love was never a safe place, not even a happy place. But you are.” He grasps her face again, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. “I mean this: You don’t need to be someone else. You don’t need to be a love goddess, or any goddess—not in order to know that gift, not in order to have it. You’re loved. You’re loved!”

It takes every drop of willpower to stand upright, to lower her voice, to keep it steady. “Well, you’re not loved,” she says calmly. “Not anymore.”

His fingers flinch as if scalded, as if it’s possible for him to blister. Droplets collect on his lashes, and his features contort. Merry gulps the residue of those words, letting them curdle in her womb.

Lightning shrieks through the sky, splitting it in half. It’s a selfish moment in which she savors the anguish staring back at her. And then it’s a broken moment, because she’s lying. She’s lying to him, and to herself, and that’s not her.

Thisis her.Thisis them.

Anger’s nostrils flare. He knows her far too well, like she knows him.

Merry leaps at the same time he does.

She hurls herself at him, just as he snatches her waist and hauls her forward. Her breasts slam against his wet chest, and his lips descend, and hers launch.

Their mouths catch. Slanting, they crush themselves into a kiss.

On a groan, Anger grates his lips against hers, his fingers raking through her hair. Merry clings to his nape, holding on, holding on, lest she get swept away by the yammering wind.

His tongue pumps inside her, punching out a rhythm that makes her head whirl like a tornado, rending her lips wide for him. And wider still as he licks through her, flicking until the ground tilts beneath her bare feet.

While the sky floods them, beads drip from their bodies, their doused clothes sliding together. Her nipples peak, taut across his torso. The friction causes tremors down her tailbone and a rush between her thighs. Up in that deep place, she begins to throb, a hard pulse beating its wings.

She’s wet, not merely from the rain. The dress is an agitation, and she wants it shredded from her flesh, but she wants him naked even more.

Anger’s hands quake downward and grope her ass, mashing her softness to his firmness. She feels both, his solid form and her supple form coiling around one another, molding and fitting.

As he pulls away, his abs hammer for oxygen. His gaze collides with her mouth, then writhes across her body. It’s that look of zephyrs and passions, as urgent and hectic as a pounding drum. The sensations ooze from her flesh, akin to the liquid texture of a melted candle.

Merry leans in and nips his lower lip. “Here,” she says. “Now.”

Cursing, he takes her mouth again. His tongue thrusts, striking between her lips, its velocity wracking her to the core…to the very core. She feels his tempo at the slick center of her body, causing her pelvis to buck, a teasing motion that makes them shudder.

He palms the backs of her thighs and hoists her off the floor. Merry dissolves into this archer, hitching her legs around his waist, still kissing him, still kissing, stillthis. He strides into the gravel path, into a tight passage flanked by ferns, until he finds a gap and deposits her atop the ledge. It’s low enough for them to face each other as Anger hooks onto her knees and jerks her forward, her thighs pitching around him.

His fingers rush up her limbs, slipping beneath the T-shirt dress, which has bunched around her hips. Searing his gaze with hers, he finds what he’s looking for and pulls. With a decisive rip, the flimsy material yields down her body, what’s left of the lace shivering across her skin and making it pebble. The tattered undergarment lands someplace on the gravel. And then she’s spreading herself, parting her knees for him, cradling his waist there. He shifts closer, his length pressing against the small, hollow swell, and it’s enough to suffocate them.

And it’s more than enough to get Anger stripping himself bare. Cranking his arms behind his head, he tears off the shirt, peeling himself free. Vulnerable to the elements, waterlogged and wild, the sinuous bluff of his olive flesh glistens. Her fingers long to climb those joints and muscles, to watch them flex against her touch.

So that’s what she does, with her body steepled around him. Her palms travel, bumping over pecs and ribs. Their foreheads press together, observing the effect.

She reaches for his jeans, and suddenly, it’s ravenous. Her fumbling with the zipper, him burrowing his head into the crook of her neck and sucking, so that she throws her head backward into the abyss. She arches over the building’s edge, suspended high above the streets while his arms encase her, securing her there.

At first, she’s too shaky to manage the closure, but she wants to do this. She wants to undress him, to dismantle him until there’s no place left to hide.

He lets her. He lets her take control while he tastes. His tongue swabs her clavicles, then draws on the cove under her jaw, his nails biting into her bottom.

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