Cruel Intoxication (Underground Kings 4)

“That’s not like you, Owen. It’s like you were wanting to get hit by not paying attention. Is that what you want? Are you that careless now?”

“I don’t know!” he yells at me. “I don’t know, Jolie. I might have killed my best friend. I wasn’t trying to walk out in the middle of the street with a car coming; my mind is pretty preoccupied!”

“You can’t do that!” I cry. “You can be in your mind, and you can be quiet, but you can’t be careless with yourself.” Rain begins to pour, patting against the ground in steady beats. Of course it’s pouring, god forbid, it sprinkles instead, but that wouldn’t make sense with the series of events.

Would it?

“Why? You’d be better off without me. You wouldn’t be in the position you’re in if you didn’t know me, neither would Heaven. You’d be safe from the man who…” His brows furrow as he finds the right words. “A man who raped you constantly and beat you. Yet, he’s alive because once again I failed to protect you, and he wants you back. He wants you back because of me, and he’s going to torture more women until he has you back, probably to kill you. So he can hurt me all over again.” Owen chuckles, but the sound isn’t funny. It isn’t the kind that makes me smile, but the kind that fractures my heart.

“What…” I push the wet hair out of my face and lick my lips, drinking the rainwater trickling into my mouth. “What are you saying? Are you breaking up with me?” I’ve never been broken up with, but that’s what it sounds li

ke.

“No. Yes. No. I don’t know. I want you more than this ground needs this rain, but I would never forgive myself if you get hurt or killed because of me, Jolie.”

“You’re hurting me now.”

“Yeah, but you can heal from that.”

“I can’t.” I take a step forward to get closer, the need to be close to him now more than ever. “I can’t heal from you. I’m healing my cuts and bruises, my nightmares, my fears… I’m working on them. I’m fixing myself up, and all the repairs are being made, Owen, but I can’t repair what you break.”

“Jolie…”

“No, no! I can get through a lot of things, Owen. I can heal, but I can’t heal from you. I love you. If you want to leave me, that’s up to you, but I’m going to tell you right now, you aren’t someone that can be swept under the rug or forgotten. You’re in me, Owen. You’re a part of me. I can’t repair what isn’t there, and if you want this, if you truly want this, then you need to know, you’re going to take a part of me. I love you. I’ve fallen in love with you somehow, in some way, in this fucked-up world, and with everything that’s going on with me, I love you. I don’t know how it happened, but I do, Owen. If you are going to leave, then you need to know that.” I wipe the rainwater, or maybe they are tears from my face, I don’t know. I can’t tell.

He stares at me, his hair is sticking to the top of his head and his shirt is wet, giving me a see-through show of his defined torso.

“What?” I snap and shiver when it suddenly becomes cold. “Why are you looking at me like that?” Yet he doesn’t say anything. “What, Owen? What?” He stands there like a deer in freaking headlights after I poured my heart out to him. I lift my hands and drop them to my sides. “Okay, I’m going to go get a hotel room. You can stand here in the rain.” I give him my back and put one foot in front of the other to get away from him so I can nurse my wounded heart.

I’ve never experienced rejection, but it hurts like hell. I meant what I said.

I can heal from anything else, but I won’t be able to heal from him. Owen isn’t the kind of man someone puts a band-aid on and moves on from.

Something wraps around my wrist and spins me around. I don’t have time to ask what he wants when Owen slams his lips down on mine, kissing me until I’m on my tiptoes. It takes me a minute to figure out what’s going on, but then I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him back. I kiss him within an inch of my life.

I don’t hesitate. There isn’t anxiety or fear stopping me from sliding my tongue in his mouth as his hand wraps around the tendrils of my hair to pull me closer. Rain falls into our mouths, sliding between our lips to make it slick.

“Say it again,” he says.

I swallow, confused, and wanting his lips on mine again.

I actually want him all over me, everywhere. I want his lips trailing down my neck, and I want his hands squeezing parts of me that a man hasn’t explored before.

The guy who abducted me, he always took what he wanted, but he never touched me the way I know Owen wants to. Owen holds back so he doesn’t hurt me or send me into a mental breakdown, but honestly, if I don’t feel what it is like for someone to touch me with love, I think it’s a disservice.

I deserve what it’s like to make love to someone I’m in love with.

“I love you, Owen.”

A huff of breath leaves his nose, and he grins from the side of his lips. “I love you too, Jolie. I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

“How about you get me out of the cold rain? And we can continue this conversation inside where it is dry and warm.”

“I’ll do whatever the woman who loves me wants to do.”

I’m blushing, not that he can tell because I’m so cold and the rain is coming down too hard for him to see. He wraps an arm around my shoulders, and this time he looks both ways before we cross the street.

There is a car outside the front doors, lights on, and windshield wipers swiping up and down. We pass it and hear arguing coming from the inside of the car. Automatic doors open to allow us in, but my focus is on the couple in the car. The woman is yelling, gesturing something with her hands, and there is a kid in the backseat, miserable.