Beneath the Stars (Falling Stars 4)

That maybe I could make a difference.

“So of course, I’d gone for her. Always after what I shouldn’t want.” I shifted our twined hands and ran my knuckles up the angle of Maggie’s jaw.

“It’s hardly a crime to love someone, Rhys.”

“But sometimes you commit one crime, and it trickles down through your entire life, destroying everything you touch.”

So you spent your life dabblin’ in the insignificant. Never dippin’ your fingers deep enough to make an impact. Making sure you never connected on a level that mattered.

Shiny on the surface, your life appearing nothing but fun and games.

Easy smiles and passing, forgettable faces.

Then someone slammed you from out of nowhere.

Unanticipated.

Their very existence threatening that precarious balance.

“And I’m terrified of doin’ the same to you.”

Those eyes traced me in the night. Sketchin’ a picture. Like she somehow found beauty in my ugliness.

“What happened to her?”

“I set out to rescue her from her chains, and instead, I dragged her straight into mine.”

A frown pinched between Maggie’s eyes, and I knew more questions were coming, questions I couldn’t face or answer, so I scooped her into my hold and climbed to my feet.

She looped those sweet arms around my neck. “Where are we going?”

“Shower.”

Had the sudden urge to clean myself off this girl before it seeped in and I poisoned her more.

I carried her into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I held her against me while the water heated and steam filled the room.

Vapors.

Mist.

A hazy dream that I wanted to step into and never reemerge from.

When I was sure the water was warm enough, I eased us into the massive shower. “Good?”

“Perfect.”

Carefully, I set her on her feet, though I kept a hand on her. Truth was, it didn’t matter how much I’d fucked up, taking her when I shouldn’t have, I didn’t know how to let go.

I nudged her chin back so I could wet the long length of her hair.

Maggie sighed, watched me with those eyes.

I squirted a gob of shampoo into my hand, that shampoo that smelled exactly like her and almost sucked me straight into a trance.

I shifted her around so I could massage it into those locks.

Girl bare and so damned beautiful.

My teeth clenched.

Fuck.

“What?” she whispered, sensing my hesitation.

“Your ass is spectacular.”

She giggled a slight sound, rocking said ass into my dick that’d gone hard as stone.

A tease.

A treat.

My fingers tangled up in her hair, massaging the locks, her scalp, her neck.

She moaned and leaned into my touch.

I rinsed her hair, then I grabbed her sponge and lathered it up so I could wash her back.

She leaned against me.

Her hair in my face.

Jasmine and vanilla.

Sweet, sweet, sweet.

“Maggie.” Might have been a problem that I literally groaned her name. Bigger problem when I burrowed my nose in her hair and inhaled. Then I got really greedy with pressin’ my lips to her shoulder. I ran them across the delicate, delicious length. Wanted to devour every inch.

She angled farther, twisting her head to look back at me.

That was all it took, and we collided.

Because fuck, now that I’d kissed her, I didn’t know how to stop.

My left hand fisted up in the wet mass of her hair, while the other wrapped around to take her by the chin so I could control the kiss.

This one fierce.

Scorching.

Red hot.

Any trepidation the girl’d felt before obliterated in my touch.

I didn’t know how I was supposed to make it through this without losing my cool. Without crossing another line there would be no returning from.

Before I fuckin’ slipped and fell right over the side.

Because she was my perfection.

Knew it.

Wanted to run from it almost as much as I wanted to hold it and cherish it.

Like I felt the fullness of all I was supposed to be starin’ back at me.

This connection I couldn’t quite make sense of. That didn’t matter in the least because she still held me in the palm of her gentle, lust-inducing hand.

She was a spark in my spirit that I needed to stamp out before it set fire to my entire world.

Could feel myself getting burned, anyway.

Incinerated.

Done for.

She shifted around, and the girl was kissing me like it was the only way she could breathe.

“I’ll hold you, too,” she promised into the kiss that she dragged over my beard and down my chest.

Her whisper moving to my heart.

Her tongue licked out.

Stroked my flesh.

“Sweet Siren.”

That’s what she was.

A song in the storm.

Lulling me into peace when it was gonna be my demise.

Wanted to find her in it, anyway.

Need stampeded through my body when she kept kissing over my pecs and back up my throat.

“Maggie,” I growled out.

“I’m not afraid,” she murmured again. Girl giving no heed to a single one of my warnings.

Her fingers dug into my shoulders, and I was hoisting her into my arms at the same second she was wrapping those legs around my waist.