He breathed a curiously satisfied sigh as Faye remained still, allowed him the freedom to experience her silky skin, to feel the blood rushing beneath her pulse that was slowly turning her pink with desire.
The hunger that had taken hold of him since that morning intensified, rampaging through him like a wild animal. Slowly he nudged her chin with his thumb, tilting her head up to his.
‘Why the hair colour?’ he asked, finally giving in to his curiosity.
‘Because it makes me happy.’
Such a simple answer. And yet so alien to him that he froze. When had he done something for the simple reason of pleasing himself? Not since before he’d woken up from hell and found himself inhabiting a nightmare.
‘And the henna tattoos and the unconventional clothes? They make you happy too?’ he pressed.
‘Yes,’ she murmured, subtly leaning into his touch.
Maceo didn’t think she was aware that she was doing so. Dark satisfaction flared higher within him.
‘Life is dreary enough without helping it along with boring clothes.’
‘Such a simplistic thing to say,’ he answered, but in some deep, dark part of him he acknowledged that he was...endeared to her.
Temporarily.
Faye Bishop had layers he couldn’t afford to be sidetracked by. Not when he sensed there were secrets she strove hard to hide.
She shrugged. ‘I am what I am.’
He indulged himself in another stroke of her skin. Felt her tremble and his own groin pulsate in response.
‘But you’re not, cara, are you? There is much more hidden beneath, isn’t there?’
‘I’m not sure exactly what’s going on here, Maceo...’
He stepped closer, breathing her in. ‘Say my name again,’ he commanded.
‘Why?’
‘Because it pleases me.’
Shame slammed into him at the admission. But he didn’t...couldn’t...take it back.
‘Do you always get what you want?’ she asked.
‘No, I do not. If I did my family would still be alive.’
The starkness of his answer froze them both and he saw the beginnings of softness in her eyes. He wanted to lap it up and at the same time reject it. He did neither. He simply continued to caress her, the hypnotic forbidden thrill of it seeping deeper into his blood.
‘I’m sorry you lost them,’ she murmured, with genuine sympathy in her eyes.
He inclined his head, accepting the words but then dismissing them before they wound themselves around places he would swear weren’t vulnerable.
She opened her mouth again. And against his better judgment and every vow—perhaps because he was suddenly wary of her expertise in confounding him—he stalled her by the most direct means available to him: lowering his head and kissing her.
This was by no means his first kiss, but it was his first since that moment he’d opened his eyes to a whole new world. A world whe
re his parents were no longer alive. A world where guilt and cruel might-have-beens resided.
One simple touch of her lips and Maceo’s senses detonated in an unrelenting force so potent and yet so pure it sent him reeling. She moaned, and the sound only intensified his hunger. Her sweet, supple body swayed into him. He wrapped an arm around her waist, drawing her closer. A gruff sound was unleashed from him as her softness moulded to his hardness.
It was as if he’d been uncaged.