Hold You Against Me (Stripped 4)

“It’s better that way,” he says sharply. “Dying is the easy part. Coming back…it hurt her.”

I think she wasn’t the only one hurt. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You were gone for a long time.”

He laughed shortly. “I didn’t go far.”

I put my hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. So steady, so sure. Such a miracle, after believing he was dead. It still feels miraculous, even if I’m not sure I like who survived. “They hurt you.”

The sight of those whip marks are burned into my brain.

“Do you feel sorry for me?” His question is harsh, angry.

Yes, but he wouldn’t want to hear that. “How long?”

“Does it matter?”

“You were gone long enough that your mother believed you were dead. She loved you. She wouldn’t give up in a day. A week. Not without a body to prove it.”

“Three months.”

Everything in me comes to a halt, the world slowing down around me. Three months. I saw those whip marks. They beat him for three months. My stomach clenches, and it takes everything in me not to turn my face to the dirt and throw up. No wonder he’s changed.

With trembling fingers I reach up to trace the shape of his face, to run my fingertips along his clenched jaw. A miracle, not only because he’s alive. He survived three months of torture. God.

And then I don’t care if this makes me weak. For this one moment, I don’t care if he’s my kidnapper. I have to be close to him. I have to touch him.

I push up on my toes, but it’s still not far enough. I have to wind my arms up to pull him down. He comes, barely, lowering enough that I can press my lips to his.

He lets me kiss him, moving my lips over his, the gentlest caress.

A low rumble runs through him. “Don’t,” he says, his lips moving against mine.

I pull back enough to meet his dark, turbulent gaze. “Why not?”

He grasps my arms and gives me a little shake, more meaning than violence. “I’d rather have your hate than your pity.”

I want to hate him. I want to pity him. But I’m afraid that I love him instead, that I never stopped loving him, not even when he died, not even when he came back to life. No matter what happens tomorrow or in the days after, he deserves a kiss from me—a real kiss, as a woman who knows what she wants. Maybe I deserve that too.

So I shake off his hold and reach for him again, pressing my lips to his in unschooled abandoned. As if unable to resist any longer, he groans a refusal before kissing me back. His lips move over mine as if he were part of the shadows around us, reaching every part of me, velvet and sure.

His body pushes against me, insistent, backing me up. Soft dirt cushions my feet, and I know I’ve stepped off the path. A wall curves behind my back, ivy tickling my neck, and I know I’m well and truly trapped. I’m breathing harder now, taking in more of that earth-dampened air.

He looks down at me, his face a mask of shadows. “So beautiful,” he says roughly. “I dreamed of you like this. Dreamed of touching you, tasting you.”

So did I. “Is it like you dreamed it would be?”

Slowly his head shakes. “I haven’t tasted you yet.”

I would ask what he meant, but he shows me instead. He bends his head to nip at my neck. I squirm away from the sting before pressing back for more. He doesn’t give it to me, though. Instead he works his way down my neck with too-light kisses, a brush like the leaves of ivy. It inflames me, making my body burn hotter than I knew it could. For all that I felt grown up at age fifteen, I was still a girl. I’m a woman now, with all the strength and desire that comes with it.

His mouth opens over the exposed skin of my breasts, the soft slope left bare by the dress. Without thought, without intention, I press myself toward him, offering myself, begging. As if to torment me, he pulls away. I moan with frustration, with unsated arousal.

Then he drops to his knees in front of me.

I haven’t tasted you yet.