Give Me a Reason (Redemption Hills 1)

Or maybe it was all me. This feeling like I couldn’t be anywhere else. That this betrayal was inevitable.

This girl fate.

In my arms because she, too, didn’t belong anywhere else.

“Eden,” I mumbled between the collision. Nothing but tongues and teeth and screaming souls. “Eden.”

Couldn’t deny her. Not any longer. It didn’t matter how wrong it was.

“I won’t let anyone touch you. I promise you,” I growled.

Eden swept her fingertips down my face, so soft compared to the madness of our mouths. My chest squeezed at the action, overcome with who she was. “I trust you.”

God. She shouldn’t. She shouldn’t. But I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard sweeter words than those right then.

This girl ruining me.

Breath by breath.

Whisper by whisper.

Touch by touch.

“I’m yours,” she said again.

Decimated.

Done.

No longer knew who I was. What I wanted. What I stood for.

One reason.

One reason.

Was it possible that this girl crashing into my life could change what that meant? That I could be better?

The demons thrashed at that. All the vileness of what I’d done clawing to be exposed. Like she could hold those, too. Believe in me even through all the atrocities I’d committed.

Our frantic movements slowed as I eased her onto the bed, laid her out in the middle, the girl the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen.

All that blonde, lush hair spilled out on my black comforter like a halo of light around her head.

She watched me like she could see all the way to the depravity of who I was.

Jud’s paintings covered my walls while this beauty was laid out in the center of my bed.

Felt like I was standing in the middle of a juxtaposition of evil and light.

I knew taking her was exactly that. A devil descending on an angel. Feeding from her beauty. Glutting on her grace. And I didn’t know how to be anything but the monster who was aware of it and did it anyway.

Emotion crested those lips that were swollen from my kiss. “I can’t believe I’m here…with you.”

“Feeling is mutual, Kitten.” It was a harsh exhale.

Shame.

I tried to put up a wall. Some boundaries. Mute this connection that was so loud I could hear it screaming in my ears.

She shook her head against my mattress, refusing it, like she saw that, too. “I never thought I’d feel this way again. Feel this way at all. Alive. Alive in your touch. Alive in your eyes.”

“Shouldn’t be the one.”

“But you are,” she breathed. “No one else, Trent…no one else has ever made me feel this way.”

There was sorrow in her admission. Meaning that shouldn’t exist. Felt the proclamation bounding around my room. Banging through the dense, dense air.

Lust and need and something more.

“You’re so fuckin’ beautiful, Eden. You have any idea? Any idea of the way I feel when I look at you?” It was a grunt as I took in the treasure lying on my bed.

She writhed, her breaths heaving and hips jutting. My insides twisted, watching over that sweet body that was nothing but a needy plea. “You make me feel that way.” Her words filled the space. “I feel like I found the one person who can see me after all this time.”

My chest tightened. Greed and a bit of that jealousy, thinking of her with another man.

So fucked up that I wanted her as my own.

And still understanding what she was giving me. What she was saying. There was something between us that neither of us had felt before.

My hands fisted as I cast out the confession. “I’ve been hiding in the darkness for all this time, Eden. Until you came and shed your light on me. Lit up something that’s never existed. Not ever.”

Her chest pitched, like she’d been impaled by the words. “And I don’t believe that’s by chance. Not for either of us. That’s what this is, Trent…this is our chance.”

God. She believed that because she was goodness. Because she couldn’t see anything else. No clue of the danger that might be waiting for her by tying herself to me.

“Terrified of it, Eden, what you could do to me. The way you make me feel.”

Fact this girl had a hold on me in a way no one else ever had.

The things she had me contemplating.

Autumn eyes danced in the shadows.

My brow curled. “Don’t wanna hurt you, Eden. My life—”

“Is scary,” she supplied, cutting me off. “It’s scary, Trent. I know it, and I’m still falling for you.”

Wanted to tell her not to do it. To stop right there. To give us tonight. That we could hold each other through all the bullshit that’d gone down at the club and then let this foolishness go.

But I was the dumb fuck who couldn’t seem to make those words form on my tongue, the ones I let go wholly reckless and faulty. “You’re mine, Eden.”