Scorch (Virtues & Lies 2)

He doesn’t.

Straightening, he levels me with his dark, piercing gaze. It’s a hit to the gut. There’s so much rage and hate in his eyes that I stumble backwards. Stalking me with his angry strides, he herds me against one of the lampposts.

My hands hold on tightly to the post at my back as he presses his body against mine. His arms bracing above my head, I’m completely surrounded. There’s no escape as his face lowers to mine, lips skimming my cheek all the way to my ear.

“You can’t what, Arabella?”

His voice is so hard that he sounds like a completely different man.

“Go on.” Sneering, he pulls back, nostrils flared and a grimace twisting his handsome face. “Tell me. What is it you can’t?”

I’m clinging and clawing at the wrought iron beneath my hands. But really, all I want to hold on to is him.

“You want someone else? Is that it?”

He bends lower until the tip of his nose is touching mine. I can smell his sweet, vodka-kissed breath.

I could never want any other man, not the way I want him.

“You want another man to touch you?” Growling, he winds a hand into my hair as the other cups my face, eyes boring into mine with hurt and disgust. “Does it feel better than mine?”

My entire body trembles as his words sink to the pit of my stomach. My chest constricts all the organs within it; it’s strangling my heart in such a way that it might just pulverise it.

His eyes are dark as he marks me with his hooded glare. They’re glossed with loathing. His words settle, pushing through the loud ruckus of my heartbeats. And I realise why he’s looking at me like that.

He saw me.

Tears fill my eyes, and I have to force myself to keep them wide open through the sting, because I will not cry. I won’t. Not in front of him. Not like this.

Chuckling at my shaky exhale, his lips ghost mine. “Do you want him to kiss you better?”

If he believes that another man’s kiss can fix me, I don’t know what to think, or what it means for us.

Maybe we are beyond repair. Perhaps our bridge isn’t one that can be mended.

I’ve made too many mistakes. Cost us too much. And now our love and all our promises aren’t enough.

He swipes the flat of his tongue across my lips with a raspy growl. “You still taste mine.”

Because I’ll always be yours.

Pinching my mouth open with the V of his hand, he licks inside, tugging my hair to tilt my face to his roughly. The moan that erupts from my gut is deep and needy. It’s a plea for him to take all that’s left of me for himself.

Tugging and pulling, his fist twists in my hair so tight that he might actually rip it all out. His tongue fucks my mouth just like he used to fuck my body—senseless. And he feels so good that my body is bending backwards to get as close as it can to his.

Slipping to my sides, my hands clench around the fabric of my coa

t. I want to touch him so badly. It takes every ounce of me not hold on tight and squeeze him until I’ve wrung every single one of his feelings from him. Until I’m drowning in them. His hurt and anger. But mostly the hate and disgust he’s devouring me with, because if anything it means he still loves me enough to care.

Christopher is relentless. He licks and tastes and groans so deep and so coarsely that it feels like he might actually eat me up.

I want him to do it. I don’t want to be me anymore. I don’t want to be this person. The mother who was too weak to protect her child. The wife who was too selfish to serve her husband.

Just as I sag into him and my tongue twirls over his, he pulls away. I can barely hold myself up as the evening chill freezes me to the core.

“You want to go? Then go. But know this: I’m always going to be right behind you. Even when you can’t see me, I’ll be there. And it will be me you will crave. It will be my touch you yearn for. My kiss you need.” Bringing his thumb to his lips, he swipes it over them before sucking the bottom one into his mouth, glaring at me with heaving breaths and barely restrained greed.

That’s how it’s always been between us. Lust and greed and all those basic human wants and needs that are so natural, it’s impossible for our fates to have ever been apart.