Page 96 of A Dark Fall

“Is this about Mark? Or my friends? Or is it about me?”

He sighs softly. “It’s always about you, Alex.” For the first time in what feels like hours, his eyes flicker with something warm.

“Can you stop being cryptic, just once, and talk to me?”

“I am talking to you.” Some lazy smile plays over his mouth, and my temper rises further.

“Seriously? This is funny to you? Tell me what the fuck is going on, Jake, or I swear to god ...”

He hesitates for a moment before moving toward me, strides long and determined as he crosses the kitchen. An instant later, he’s pressing me against the counter with the front of his body, and I practically vibrate from his closeness. There’s a definite hardness at his crotch, and he pushes it into the front of my body. He still wants me physically anyway. There’s comfort in that, I find.

“Not a lot of people dare talk to me like that, baby,” he says in a low tone. He doesn’t sound angry, just a little dazed. Aroused too. He leans in, eyes closed as he touches his forehead to mine. He pushes his hips into me and groans softly.

On my tiptoes, I reach up to bring our lips close, but I don’t kiss them. I want him to be the one to kiss me. No—Ineedhim to be the one to kiss me.

Suddenly, he grabs my chin and tilts my head back away from him to stare down into my eyes. He looks turned on now, and I feel my entire body weaken with need, my legs quivering as they try to hold me up. The fact I want him with this kind of ferocity scares me half to death. I doubt I will ever feel like it for anything ever again. What has he done to me?

With his eyes open, he leans down to kiss me. Except he doesn’t kiss me; he just licks hotly into my mouth, his tongue sliding over my lips and then inside. When he finally closes his mouth over mine, I moan softly against him. He does the same.

I marvel again at how perfect our mouths feel together—the delicious slide of our tongues, the quickening pace of our breaths. It’s terrifying to me that he could ever think he doesn’t fit with me. Needy, my hands travel up his body around his neck, tangling in his hair. Using his knee to nudge open my legs, he lifts me up to settle me on the counter and stands between my spread thighs, crotch pressing into the needy space.

His moans turn deeper, dirtier, more desperate as he pushes his tongue farther into my mouth, tasting every part of it. I reach between us to grip hold of the hardness between his legs, stroking him through the soft fabric of his trousers. He bites down on my lip and grips my face tighter, a tremble moving through him. For a while, I lose myself in the feel of him, in the noises that escape from him, at the need radiating from him, until suddenly, his mouth is gone.

He lifts his head up but doesn’t move away, meaning I can still stroke my hand along his thick length where I sit. So, I do.When he talks, his voice is a tight whisper.

“You should do yourself a favor, baby, and tell me to leave right now.”

“No,” I reply as I stare up into his eyes. As I thumb over the tip, the head. I ignore the tortured look in his eye and reach my mouth up to his again, capturing his bottom lip softly between my teeth before kissing him almost desperately.

“I’m serious, Alex,” he says against my mouth. Yet he doesn’t pull away even an inch.

I move to kiss the corner of his mouth, soft licks of my tongue across the seam as I stroke my hand over his length. He’s painfully hard now. Hot and thick and leaking slightly between my fingers. There’s a physical ache inside me from how much I want him to make love to me.

“Alex, you need to stop ... fuck ...” he protests. But again, he doesn’t move away, and so I don’t stop. He groans louder, steps in closer, and wraps his arms around me to pull me into the heat of his body. “You have to be the one, baby.” He almost sounds in pain now. I’m so bloody confused. “You need to finish this. Tell me it’s over.”

I drop my hand and lean back to look at him, cold, sobering confusion settling over me. “Why would I do that?” I ask. It’s a genuine question. What would ever make me tell him that? “I’m never going to do that, Jake. Ever.”

I love you.

He gives me a lost look and steps back, out of my touch. Then he turns his back to me and pinches the bridge of his nose, his shoulders high and tense. When he spins to face me, his gaze is dark again. Dangerous almost. I’m not afraid though. I’ve never been afraid of him. Being without him is the only thing that scares me now.

“You seriously don’t have any fucking clue what you’re doing, do you?” He shakes his head. “You never have ...”

I match the ferocity of his gaze with my own. “I’m not a bloody child, Jake. Of course I know what I’m doing.”

“No, Alex, you don’t. This ...”—he motions between us—“this is a fucking terrible idea, and you need to end it right fucking now, before—” He cuts himself off.

I can only stare at him dumbly as the words sink in. As my mind catches up. As it processes what I’m certain he’s saying. I feel sick. But more than that, I feel stupid. And angry.

“You pursuedme, Jake, remember?” I say, anger flaring again. “I tried to stay away from you, tried to listen to all those good-girl reasons that told me this would happen eventually, but, Christ, you wouldn’t bloody let me, would you?”

He looks guilty now, and I’m glad of it. I slide down and fix my dress, run a hand through my hair.

“You could have said no, you know?”

“What?”

“To dinner. Tonight. If that’s what this is about. If this was all getting a bit too serious for you, why say yes? I gave you an out, didn’t I? I didn’t force you to come. If you wanted this to be something else, something that was just about sex, you should have said no.”You should have told me that’s what “us” meant. I could have prepared.