Page 116 of Facing Off
Blood roars harder in my ears as heat moves through me. Does he expect me to believe what I think he’s trying to say? That he thinks about…me…?
“I-I don’t care,” I stammer. A flimsy, weak defense that’s a complete lie, but the only one I have left to protect me.
His chest caves. That answer seems to completely devastate him.No, he doesn’t get to look like that!
I claim that emotion. It’s my sanity that fell apart when I saw him with other women…
“You’ll be fine,” I snap. My voice is loud. I’m the image of anger—as long as you ignore my quivering chin. “Go hook up with someone else.”
“I don’t want anyone else.”
I freeze. It’s the way he said it, so miserably. That and his blown pupils burning into me like he’s begging me to understand.
There’s also not a lick of evident shame or self-consciousness that he’s kneeling like this. Almost as if he could stay on his knees forever.For me. Like he’s willing to wait for as long as it takes while I make up my mind. That it’s up to me whether he ever rises again or not.
My head spins. He looks sosincereandwreckedthat I waver and question,Does he mean what he’s saying? Is it me he wants? Only me?
I get closer, bend down, and clutch the front of hisshirt. “You’re going to listen to me,” I say, feeling so out of control. My fingers are shaking. “You don’t get to sleep with anyone.”
Anyone else, a voice inside me finishes.
His jaw ticks. “And you can’t dance with Saros,” is his blunt answering demand. So possessive. Demanding. Insistent, yet desperate.
We both nod at the same time in frantic agreement.
“He’s not your soulmate,” Adrian repeats, holding my gaze…then briefly dipping his eyes down to my mouth once.
“Okay,” I murmur. “Sure. Whatever.”
I glance down and look at his mouth. Then back up at his eyes.
Even in the dim lights, I see it—the flood of his relief. Every muscle in body seems to release this invisible tension, like he can finally breathe properly now.
I’m not sure who moves first.
I’m launching at him at the same time he’s rising to grip the back of my neck.
We collide.
Adrian’s hands are callused and trembling. They ensnare my waist and I’m lifted off the ground. He’s walking me backward, backward, backward…
Until my body rests against a hard surface. As soon as my feet touch the ground again, I rise on my tiptoes and his face lowers to mine. Distance evaporates and we’re kissing. Actually no, it can’t be called that. We’re devouring each other.
My vision blanks.
Mouth against mouth, neither of us needs air. Like this is more important than breathing and what we’ve spent more than a lifetime waiting to do. Without pulling my lips away, I wrap my arms around his neck. Adrian’s handmoves up until it holds the base of my neck. His other arm has my waist crushed against him tight.
I can’t believe how soft his lips are in comparison to the hardness of his body. It’s a starved invasion as his tongue pushes to meet mine. I open my mouth and let him in, and the intimacy ofthatnew sensation—another barrier breached between us—has my nipples firming up and my toes curling. I’m on fire. My back arches as I lose myself.
We keep kissing until our lungs complain and force us to pull apart. Now we’re panting heavily. Sharing the same air, passing it back and forth, as fingers start to move. I’m brushing the pad of my thumb across his generous mouth. He’s sweeping his over my cheekbones, then skimming down my neck.
Gently, very gently, both of us with our eyes open, we watch as our mouths descend again, closer and closer until they bridge the gap. My lips part, some attempt at sucking in air because my head hasn’t stopped spinning. Adrian sucks on the lower one and groans, such a guttural sound that it lights voltages of pleasure inside me. I can’t think. I don’t want to. All that matters isfeeling. Right now—and for longer, much longer, because I could keep kissing Adrian for more than tonight, even for…ever?
“No,” I moan against his mouth, because that last thought pokes through enough to make me double back. Did I really think that?Forever?
Adrian brings his hand around to hold onto my jaw. “N-o?” He feeds the word back into my mouth before it finally registers. When it does, he pulls back. “No? Why…?”
How do I tell him that I’m in another world? That we shouldn’t be kissing because it’s too…too addicting. Luscious. The ground beneath my feet no longer feels solid. I’m having the strangest of ideas go through my mind.
