Page 69 of Wicked Promises
Margo is freaked out. Information overload, plus Robert in the hospital and learning that her mom is only a town away…
Yeah, I’d probably find any excuse to lose it.
But she doesn’t. She holds on to my hand hard enough to crush my fingers, and she sure does sound scared, but… she doesn’t look it.
On the outside, she’s strong.
I scoop her up and carry her down the stairs, and it’s then that I feel the way she shakes. It’s more of a shiver than anything else, but it doesn’t stop even when we’re downstairs.
Dusk has set my room in strange blue hues, making it seem all the more eerie. I turn on the lamp by my bed and lay her down.
“You always go straight to bed,” she comments.
“Seemed the most logical,” I answer. I pull the blankets up over us. “It’s your safe place.”
Her eyebrow goes up. “Is it?”
“After every incident, you come here—whether my choice or yours. It’s just habit now. You’ll relax.”
“It’s not your bed,” she mumbles.
It has to be. After I found her in the woods, and then when I was out with my friends instead of being here for her?—
“It’syou.” She lifts herself up. Defiance flashes in her eyes. “It’s not this bed, Caleb. It’s you and your presence and knowing that if you’re gone, you’re coming backhere?—”
Those words unravel my self-control.
I slam my lips on hers, pushing her into the mattress. I bite her lip, eliciting a fierce groan from deep in her throat. She fights back, surprising me by getting leverage under her and rolling us over.
I love the feel of her weight on me. Her hair falls around us, creating our own privacy curtain as she kisses me again. Deeper.
Her hips move against mine ever so slightly, calling my stiff erection to attention.
God, I need to be inside her. Right. Now.
She kisses my jaw, my cheek, up and over my eyelids and forehead. “You’re incorrigible,” she whispers. “And you aren’t perfect. So far from it.”
“I know.”
“And I hate that you keep secrets.”
“I know.”
She’s still peppering my skin with kisses, dragging her lips around. Her hands bury themselves in my hair, tugging my head back. She nips my earlobe.
“But there’s something you don’t know.”
I exhale in a huff when her tongue touches the shell of my ear.
“And that…” She stares down at me. “Is that I’m in love with you.”
My heart… yeah, it does something funny. Skips, twists, jumps for joy. Love? Me?
Sure, when we were kids. When my heart was whole. But that was innocent love.
This is… dirty. Raw. So painful I might just burst.
Fuck. Me.