Page 51 of Desperate People

Balor reaches for them first, and I let him.

There’s a charged silence between us, thick with everything we’re not saying.

I’m not trying to tease him.

I’m offering myself.

Not just my body.

All of me.

And I’m waiting to see if he’s finally ready to take what I’ve always known he wanted.

What I want.

Him. Only him.

Because if he doesn’t want me after this, tomorrow I’ll leave—I swear I’ll go away and bury my head in the sand for a while, lick my wounds in privacy, maybe on a beach somewhere—and I will never darken his door again.

But I have to know—it’s truth time now.

Does he want me like I want him?

Chapter Nine-Balor

I’m hanging on by a fucking thread.

She’s standing there in my shirt—my shirt—and nothing else, bare ass, long legs, and all that soft fucking skin within reach. Finally.

Her plump lips are parted just enough, those wild eyes wide, pupils blown. And it’s enough to make me lose my goddamn mind.

Oh, I see her. She’s watching me.

Not afraid.

Not unsure.

Wanting.

Just waiting to see what I’ll do. And I know it’s because I was a fucking idiot before. I turned her down.

Still, this isn’t a game.

It’s not a tease.

She’s giving me a choice.

This beautiful Diamond Girl is actually asking me to decide.

Me? Can you believe that?

Only, it doesn’t feel like a choice to me. Not anymore.

It feels like gravity.

Like a force is pulling me straight into her orbit and I can’t possibly resist.

God knows, I’ve been trying. But maybe that’s why this ache I have, the one with her name on it, is so damn big.

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