Page 41 of Scars of the Sun
She rolled her eyes and picked up the last half of her burger. “Just accept the damn compliment.” A grin stretched across my face, only to grow as I watched Ramona take a giant bite, nearly finishing her double cheeseburger altogether. Her cheeks were adorably round as she began to chew, but when I grabbed her jaw, she gave surprised and indignant mumbles before and after I planted a kiss on her puckered lips.
I licked a little ketchup off the corner of her mouth, letting the flavor swirl around my tongue while I waited for Ramona to furiously swallow. She stared daggers at me. “That’s so gross.”
I leaned in for another kiss, and as much game as she liked to talk, she melted for me almost immediately. Sure, some shifters could be persnickety, but I was not one of ‘em. I gladly licked my way into Ramona’s mouth, fighting with and forcing her tongue into submission while tasting the meal she’d been eating. Savory and salty and sour from her soda but sweet in the way she yielded to me. Her hands crumpled the fabric of my t-shirt, similar to the way she’d clung to me when I slid into her for the first time.
Her first time. I still couldn’t believe that.
What more did I need to see or experience with her to know that I was in deep, deep shit? Because every moment I spent with her was trying to convince me that she was mine.
A car honked its horn at us, making her jump in my arms, and I flipped them off while kissing and licking down her cheek and the side of her neck.
“Get a room!” the asshole shouted from their rolled-down window.
I had to remind myself to take a breath, otherwise I’d be crashing through their window, claws and fangs drawn. I was fully intending to curse the motherfucker out—really, they were stuck with cars in front of and behind them, so it was stupid to pick a fight in the parking lot. But Ramona beat me to it and leaned viciously over the table.
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself you piece of shit? Sit and wait for your food and shut the fuckup.” She didn’t yell, but her words rang with a cold promise to retaliate.
The guy sputtered, surprised at her reaction, but the drive-thru line moved, saving him from having to say anything. I, on the other hand, was now trying to keep myself from blurting somethingreallystupid like, ‘be my mate.’
Instead, I watched in awe as she smoothed her features, erasing them with an expertise that was at the same time arousing and unsettling. If I didn’t clock the flush on the tops of her cheeks, I could’ve almost forgotten she’d said anything.
Ramona angled her body toward me again, “What?”
She pulled at her sleeves yet again, a tick that revealed the limit of her collected facade. We’d both kept our shirts on earlier, so I hadn’t thought anything of it, but for all the times I’d appreciated those mile-long legs, I’d never seen her arms bare.
I ran a finger along her forearm and catalogued the flinch she tried to stifle while I did it. Interesting.
Her shoulders wilted a bit, like fearful acceptance of what was coming, and I swallowed the question that was bubbling in my mind. In its place, I scooted closer until she was where she belonged, plastered against me, and asked, “You wanna wait forthat fucker to pull around and watch me kick the shit out of him for you?”
She chuckled through an exhale, releasing the hesitance that’d been creeping up and straightening her spine. Rolling her eyes, she took another slurp of her soda. “You’d commit assault for a girl you barely know? Assuming you win the fight in the first place.”
How was it that I wasn’t deflated in the least when she insulted me? I leaned into her ear, brushing the shell with my lips. “Don’t let the glasses fool you, Princess. If I barely know you, you barely know me and the things I’ve done. If you want, I could crack open his skull, sever his spine, and gift you his brain before you finish that Sprite of yours.” I feathered a kiss to punctuate my threat. I’d done worse for far less, and maybe it was better she realized a taste of who she’d let inside her. Even if she thought it was a joke.
Going along with this whole theme of surprises, though, was the shudder andlustpouring off of her. It was one of the easiest things to identify with scent, and Ramona’s was like the richness of grapefruit that’d been reduced to a syrup I wanted to lap up completely.
I kept her pinned to me, let the heat between us fog up my glasses, “You like that? You smell like you want me inside of you again, Princess.” My fingers snaked their way between her legs that were slightly parted. I didn’t press on her clit, where I could already sense her heart beating, but high enough on her inner thigh to make her squirm. Her cheek brushed mine, pressing into it while she shifted in her seat to make my hand connect to where she wanted. “You like to spit a lot of insults, but I know you’re already a slut for me. Aren’t you.”
She retracted, leaning her face away from mine but not enough to relieve the pressure of my fingers. Those honey eyestried so hard to fake like they were freezing me out, but I knew her game, now. “If I’m a slut, then you’re a stupid fuckboy?—”
My teeth sinking into her lip stopped her short on a yelp, and I licked away the sting and taste of blood I’d caused. “You can do better than that, Princess. The way you cling to me when I’m fucking you is evidence enough that you’remyslut.”
A slender but strong touch wrapped around the base of my throat and forced me back, putting breathing room between us. Enough for me to take in the frazzled widening of her pupils, the irritated sneer of her swollen lips. “Fuck you,” the words were lacking heat or ice, and I smiled. Ramona swallowed, lashes fluttering before she whispered, almost tenderly, “What’s your favorite color?”
Like a record scratch, a hidden flavor of a lollypop, she switched so fast on me to reveal an almost… shyness.
When I was a boy, my mother used to discourage me from my tendency to maintain unflinching eye contact, saying that it was rude, that it made people uncomfortable. That it reminded her of my sister.
Sure, we both wanted to know, to see inside past all the bullshit, but where Mara wanted to twist and distort it to eviscerate, I wanted to understand. To learn. And what I’d learned so far about my princess was that she was a symphony of dichotomies. Willing to rip a stranger’s head off for shouting out a window, turned on by the prospect of me killing said stranger, but timidly sweet when I had my arms around her. She’d beg me to fuck her harder but look back at me now with the liquid gold stare and ask me one of the most innocent questions I’d probably been asked in my entire life.
“Red. Yours?”
Her tongue swiped against the last bit of blood that welled where I’d bitten her. “Black.”
Minutes passed between us, the muted bumping of people’s car speakers vibrating against the relaxing air around us. It wasn’t churning with sexual tension anymore, my hand on her thigh a still point of contact that now felt softer and more intimate. Hers on my throat flattened into a caress at the top of my chest where that string pulling me toward her was wound even tighter.
“You spending the night with me, Ramona?”
An adorable little wrinkle formed between her eyes that dropped to that space between us, and I gave her time, watching her mind work and turn over my question that I didn’t want to admit to either of us was a request.