“What’s wr
ong with me?” The fury that blazed in his eyes when he threatened Greg still burns almost as fiercely now, and it takes everything I have not to shrink back in the face of it. “I think you’re asking the wrong person that question, angel.”
“Oh, really? I’m not the one who just beat the shit out of a perfectly innocent man in a fucking alley!”
His expression darkens, the blue and brown of his eyes churning. “He’s not innocent. He tried to take what isn’t his.”
The conviction in his voice wraps around me like a vise. It squeezes my lungs. Compresses my heart.
I shake my head, forcing the words out. “I don’t… belong to you.”
Marcus’s expression shifts. The hard lines of his features soften a little, and he lifts one hand from the wall to brush his fingertips down my face. Memories of the way he touched me last night erupt through my body, visceral and intense, and despite everything, I have to fight down the instinctual, bone-deep urge to lean in to his touch.
There’s a tiny cut just above his cheekbone, and the beginning of a bruise from where Greg got his lucky shot in. The small streak of dark blood glints in the dim light as he shakes his head.
“That’s where you’re wrong, angel. I’ve been inside you. You’ve taken my cock. You’ve taken my cum. You’re fucking mine.”
My nipples harden at his words, as another wave of memories pours over me—through me. My pussy clenches around nothing, remembering the thick girth of his cock as it split me open.
Goddammit. Why do his words feel so fucking true?
But they can’t be.
I can’t let them be true.
My ill-fated plan to show Marcus and myself that I’m not his possession may have failed, but I still have to do something. To fight against the magnetic pull that draws us inexorably together. To at least put up some resistance to my slide into oblivion.
So I do.
I do the only thing I can think of.
Shoving his hand aside with my good arm, I slip out from between him and the wall, pivoting before he can stop me. Theo is standing right there, and I do what I never got a chance to do with Greg.
I wrap my arm around his neck and press my lips hard to his.
He’s bigger than me. Not quite as broad-shouldered as Marcus, but the tallest of the three men and made of solid fucking muscle. But he still staggers back a half step as I throw myself at him, surprise knocking him off balance.
His hands come up as if by instinct to grab my waist, steadying me, and for a moment, his lips are stiff and unyielding against mine.
Then they soften, and the automatic, instinctive grip on my waist tightens as he pulls me closer to him, wrapping his arms around me.
His lips move against mine, full and sensual, and when his tongue darts out, I welcome it, sliding my own tongue against his.
The faint cherry and oak smell I remember from the car last night infuses my nostrils as I breathe through my nose, unable to pull my lips away from his long enough to get a full breath any other way.
This was meant to be a quick kiss.
A kiss to prove a point.
A kiss to break something.
But instead, this kiss ignites something new.
As his mouth devours mine, hungry and sweet, I can’t remember what the point of it was anymore. I can’t remember why I wasn’t supposed to enjoy it.
If Marcus’s kiss is sin, Theo’s kiss is redemption.
His large hands are splayed over my back, holding me up and pinning me to his body as he nearly bends me over backward, fucking my mouth with his tongue.