Page 124 of Stolen Summer

Something primal and dark flashed across his eyes, and it had my blood singing.

I wanted this. Wanted him. That blind need had never been clearer, but was it just lust, just my body reacting to his? Or did this thing go deeper? Love? Did I love Crew?

“You should have left when I told you,” he whispered.

My fingers moved to his face, gliding over the bristly side of his jaw. “What do you want from me?”

“You,” he groaned. “I want you. I can’t get you out of my head, Killer. I’ve tried everything. Drinking. Fighting. Fucking. Nothing works. You destroy my illusion of restraint. You destroy me.”

My heart did the unthinkable. Betrayed me, cartwheeling in my chest. I had to find a thread of sanity. Something to hold on to before I lost myself in everything Crew. His intoxicating scent. The pleasure of his body. The texture of his voice. The depth of his words.

My fingers curled into the wrinkled sheets as he rubbed the cool hoop of his piercing along my feverish lips. The bed was still warm, and Trish’s face flashed in my head. The girl he’d been with before I interrupted him. “Did you sleep with her?”

Dazed, he blinked, his gaze focused on my mouth. “Who?” he murmured, his head dipping, and I knew he was about to take possession of my lips.

“Have you forgotten the girl who was in your room before me already? Did she mean that little to you?” I hurled the words at him with such strong pain and venom I felt like a cobra striking at him with words. The question smacked with jealousy, but the truth of it was I boiled with that red-hot emotion.

His lips twitched. “On the contrary, Killer. Trish is someone I care about deeply. But she isn’t you.”

“If that was supposed to make me feel better, feel special, it didn’t. So, you were just using her as a substitute for me?” My voice was cold and clipped.

“Stop jumping to conclusions. Did you sleep with Cole?” he countered, a lick of anger merging with the heat still in his eyes.

I recoiled under him. “What? No. Of course not.”

Silence frosted between us. “Have you thought about it? If fucking him would feel like having me inside you?”

There was no questioning who him was. Cole. I knew what it was like to torment myself, and I couldn’t stop my fingers from brushing aside a strand of dark hair that had fallen in his eyes. “The only person you’re torturing with those images is yourself.”

Crew gave me a long, suffering, intense glance. “Do you know how hard it is seeing you with him?”

I swallowed, letting a single finger trace down the side of his face, somehow unable to stop touching him. The urge contradicted the practical side of me. “You have no one to blame but yourself.”

His eyes softened. “Perhaps, but you took me by surprise. I hadn’t expected…”

“What hadn’t you expected?” I prompted, desperate to hear what was going through his head. “Did you think I’d be different than other girls because of how I grew up, because of where I came from?”

He looked at me in a way that made me feel too seen. “You are different, just not in the way you assume.”

“How so?” I asked, genuinely interested. How did Crew see me?

“Most of the world is driven by three things. Greed. Fear. And stupidity. But not you, Killer. I’ve never met anyone with such sheer determination. I admire that quality in you. You want freedom, but you don’t know how free you really are. Money has its shackles, and I’d give it all up for something real.”

“Crew,” I whispered, my gaze drawn to his lips, to the hoop at the corner, and before I thought about what I was doing, I leaned up and kissed him.

His mouth pressed deeper against mine, and he kissed me back but not in his usual untamed and possessive way. There was a softness to his lips, to how they moved over mine, slowly coaxing the response he wanted from me. I was powerless to do anything but kiss him back.

He captured my wrists and pinned them above my head against the bed. “Arie,” he groaned into my mouth, the metal of his lip ring grazing the corner of my lip. “I need to hear you want this.”

I could see what it cost him to give me the opportunity to leave. I had many regrets, but sleeping with Crew no longer was one of them. I knew what I wanted. My chest rose, lifting my breasts higher against his chest. “I want you, Crew,” I murmured before nipping his bottom lip gently.

It was either the words or the sound of his name that unraveled something in him, and our mouths collided.

Finally. My entire body sighed.

This kiss wasn’t like the first but was hard and hot, and the switch robbed me of breath. Then my body soared, aching heat scorching me from head to toe. My legs wound over his, keeping him pressed into me. I tried to reach for him, forgetting he still had my arms pegged above my head. I wanted my hands on him.

His lips yanked away from mine, moving to my neck. “God, I missed you.” I arched into the kisses he lavished from my ear to my shoulder.