Page 68 of Hell to Pay

“Tell me you don’t want me, Lilah,” he pleaded. “Please. Just tell me you don’t want me and I’ll go.”

(Save me, Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues…)

I clutched the knife so hard my hand hurt. “I… I can’t…”

He pressed his lips to my throat and it felt like a brand. “Please… I’m begging you.”

I lifted my free hand and threaded it through his hair. “It would be a lie, Rafe. It would be a lie.”

He lifted his head with a groan and then his mouth was crashing into mine, his tongue pushing hungrily into my mouth.

43

RAFE

She should have said no.She should have told me she didn’t want me.

Even if it was a lie.

Because now that I had her lips under mine, her fingers in my hair, I would never be able to let her go.

Never.

She tasted like vanilla and honey and I took her head in my hands and drank as deeply from her as I could, my tongue exploring every hidden corner of her mouth.

And here — now — she was no wallflower. She met every sweep of my tongue with one of her own, pressed the soft curves of her body into mine until I thought my cock might explode from wanting her.

I broke away long enough to tug on her full lower lip with my teeth, then smashed my mouth into hers again like a man who’d been without water finally drinking from a clear deep well in the middle of the desert.

I traced her cheekbones with my thumbs, traced the curve of her slender neck, lingered over the pulse throbbing at the base of her throat.

Lilah’s heart wasn’t broken. It was perfect, like the rest of her.

I didn’t have a stethoscope like Nolan, but I wanted to stay there forever, feeling the pulse of her life under my thumb, knowing her heart was beating, hoping that maybe it was beating for me.

I angled my head to take the kiss deeper and she smoothed her hands over my shoulders, trailing them over my chest, down my stomach.

I wasn’t even surprised when she reached for the button on my jeans. Lilah had tried to hide once, but she wasn’t hiding now, and I was fucking here for it. I groaned when her hand brushed against my cock over my jeans, then broke our kiss to tug at the elastic holding her hair back in a ponytail.

It fell around her shoulders like gossamer strands of silk and I reached for her sports bra to pull it over her head, half expecting her to stop me.

She didn’t.

She lifted her arms, still clutching her knife, and let me pull the sports bra over her head. I tossed it aside, then kneeled at her feet to tug off her leggings, taking her underwear with them.

I looked up at her, fully naked and standing over me like an ancient warrior goddess, her knife still in her hand. Freed of its ponytail, her hair was long enough to tease her nipples, pink and hard, begging for my mouth.

My teeth.

Her eyes were glassy, her lips parted to reveal the gap between her front teeth, her tits rising and falling with each shallow breath.

Her waist was narrow compared to the pillowy fullness of her hips, the solid strength of her thighs.

Lilah wasn’t small, and I fucking loved it. Had always loved it. She’d tried tomakeherself small but even her body had rebelled. She wasn’t meant to shrink into the background, had never been meant for that.

She hadpresence, something those fuckers in high school had been too fucking stupid to see. It had just taken Lilah a while to realize it.

To own it.

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