Page 120 of Watch Me Burn
“Lying to me. Deciding what I can and can’t handle. Making choices for me.” I take a step back, needing distance. “This is exactly why our relationship will never work. Because you won’t be honest with me. You’ve never been honest with me.”
“I’m trying to protect you—”
“By keeping me in the dark? By making me more complicit in your activities?” My voice rises despite my efforts to stay calm. “Don’t you see how screwed up that is?”
“I won’t put any more of this burden on you. You need to trust me.”
“Trust you?” The words taste bitter as I repeat what I said the other night. “I don’t know if I’ll ever trust you again.”
“I hope that’s not true, because I can’t let you go.”
The familiar possessiveness in his voice makes my pulse jump. Even now, even standing here with our entire world crumbling around us, he can still affect me with nothing more than the tone of his voice.
He closes the distance between us in smooth, deliberate strides, moving the way he always does, like he owns every inch of space his body occupies, like the air itself parts to let him through.
“I love you, Luna. I know you’re hurt, I know you’re angry, and you have every right to be. I’m trying to honor your request for space, but my patience is wearing thin. I can’t lose you. I won’t.”
The declaration sends warmth flooding through my chest. After everything, after all the lies and betrayals, he still has the power to make my heart race with just a few words.
“I don’t know how to trust you again.” The admission rips open wounds I’ve been trying to keep closed. My throat constricts and my eyes burn.
He’s close enough that I can smell his cologne and see the fine lines around his eyes. “Give me another chance to prove that you can. No more secrets between us, Luna. No more lies.”
But even as he says it, his voice carries that familiar note of command, that expectation of obedience that’s always been part of our dynamic. He’s not really asking. He’s demanding because that’s who he is.
“There is no us, Damien.”
“Yes, there is.”
“No, there isn’t. It’s too much. I need time and space to process everything.”
His jaw clenches as he struggles with my answer. Patience has never been one of my wolf’s virtues.
“How much time?”
“I don’t know.”
He studies my face for a long moment, then nods. “Fine. But don’t take too long, Luna.” He steps closer, and I’m aware of how much bigger he is, how he seems to fill the space around me. It makes my pulse spike with adrenaline. “I’m not a patient man. And I’ve already given you more space than I can stand.”
He leans down, bringing his face close to mine, and his breath caresses my lips. Every instinct screams at me to back away, to maintain the distance I’ve worked so hard to create. But I can’t move, caught in the gravitational pull of his presence.
“Damien—”
His mouth crashes against mine, swallowing whatever protest I was about to make, and it’s like a dam breaking between us. A whimper escapes my lips before I can trap it. Every wall I’ve constructed, brick by painful brick, crumbles in an instant. The anger and hurt that have been burning holes in my chest transform into hunger, raw and desperate and clawing at my insides like a living thing. I should shove him away, should remember all the reasons I’m furious with him, but my hands betray me by fisting in his shirt and pulling him closer, kissing him back with the same fierce intensity, the same reckless abandon that got us here in the first place.
His fingers thread through my hair, gripping tight enough to anchor me to him like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he loosens his hold. Desperation pours off him in waves. I can taste it on his tongue and feel it in the way his body molds against mine as if he’s trying to merge our bones. His hands drop between our bodies, sliding under my coat, and his fingers tug at the front of my shirt with impatient urgency. This hunger, this wild need that consumes everything in its path and leaves nothing but ashes—this is what I’ve craved from him since the beginning.
Every cell in my body screams for surrender, but my mind wages war against my flesh, demanding I remember why this can’t happen. It takes everything I have, every scrap of willpower I can gather, to wrench my mouth away from his.
“Damien, no!”
Sex, no matter how earth-shattering, won’t heal the wounds between us, no matter how it might burn away the pain for a few hours. It won’t resurrect the trust he shattered or erase the months of manipulation and lies that brought us to this moment.
His hands fall away from me, but I’m too stunned to move away.
I glance down to find two buttons from my shirt scattered on the floor, victims of his desperate hands. I pull the fabric closed over the gap he created before lifting my gaze back to his face.
His eyes have gone black. Pain swims in their depths alongside bitter disappointment. The mask of desire that consumed his features moments ago crumbles and falls away, leaving his face naked and wounded.
