“No,” I beg and push him away. “We can’t.”
“Amelia,” he tries without conceding easily. His hand comes to graze along my jaw with ease, and I’m forced to keep my attention on him. He won’t allow me to look elsewhere. “You clearly feel something is worth saving or you wouldn’t have given this a chance. You wouldn’t have bothered calling. You’d have put up as much of a fight as you did the other day. I know how stubborn you can be, Amelia, so why did you really call me today? Be honest with yourself, too.”
On the one hand, I called so I could gauge some way of killing him. On the other, I wanted to spend time with him like I used to. That gaping void in me needed forgetting for one evening. I needed to just feel alive. It’s what makes this all laughable - Zane makes me feel so alive, but I’m the one who will, ultimately, steal his final breath. This is becoming a much more cruel existence to live in.
This is like when we kiss, a storm rises. It rolls through me before making an almighty, thunderous boom in my heart. The ash and dust it catapults around me are full of emotional rubble that I find to be toxic and too alluring. I want to remain in this explosive state, but I don’t want to deal with the aftermath that is to come.
“I fucking want you so bad,” Zane grounds out, and from beside me, he wrenches the door to the back of his car open. “I need to be inside you, Amelia. No one, but you. I want to be buried so deep in you that you forget what I ever did. I just want you to remember who really fucking loves you.”
I take this as my time to take some control. I grip onto his t-shirt and spin him around so his back is to the inside of his car. “Get in before I change my mind and don’t give you this opportunity.”
He listens and rushes into the backseat. He kicks his boots away and as he pushes himself along the leather seats, he undoes his belt buckle and forces it open along with his jeans. I kneel upon the corner and pull the door shut, and quickly getting rid of my shirt. Thankfully, the back of his car is bigger than the back of mine!
I crawl over toward him, trying to get him as aroused as possible with every given moment. I lick my lips with anticipation and straddle his barely covered lap. Toying with the hem of his shirt, I begin to push it up his body, displaying his ripped abs. As I push higher, I begin to lean forward and plant delicate kisses to him. I kiss his chest as I force his t-shirt over his arms and head and toss it to the front of the car. I course over his tattooed chest, kissing every inch of skin possible. I reacquaint myself to the inked images, and the warmth of his skin, and as I reach it, the heavy beating of his heart, I lift away, now noticing his tattoos have multiplied since the last time I was with him. He has a tribal pattern down his right arm and across his shoulder. However, before it never covered much of his chest, and now it does. Zane doesn’t move as my eyes graze the artwork, my fingertips following the same path.
Then I freeze.
My fingers stop right above his heart, where a new, simple tattoo sits etched into his skin as a permanent reminder that I was once his. My name is scrawled upon him like some adorned medal of honor, surrounded by the protectiveness of yet more tribal patterns and symbols. I struggle to inhale breath, and my eyes water. I look up at Zane’s face, and he looks at me with tenderness.
“It’s always going to be you,” he whispers and reaches out to cup my face. “I just needed that reminder of what a stupid ass I was. It’s there every time I look in the mirror as a reminder of what I let go.” He gives a tiny sad chuckle. “Of what I know I don’t deserve.”
My eyes water heavier than ever. “I’m the one who doesn’t deserve you.” My argument mirrors his, and I’m at a loss for words. We’re both in this sorry mess because we both felt like we wronged the other.
Sitting here, half dressed, my jeans undone ready to make love to Zane, my top discarded across the back of the driver’s seat, and I find myself attacked from all angles by my father’s fated duties. I don’t deserve this man’s love when I have one goal in mind – master the kill. I know it won’t happen here – not tonight – but it will and one day soon.
It’s a constant battle I have with myself.
I find myself needing to leave. He grips my waist pulling me onto him more, preventing me from moving far.
“We could be so different this time, Amelia. We were meant to meet up. Like fate bringing you back to me,” he says. The voice from within beckons forth and tells me it’s my father’s doing that we were forced to meet again, not fate. “Amelia, I’m a lot of things because of my wrongdoings, a lot of things I’ll admit to, but loving you is something I want to say I can do right.”