“Buck? No! He used to be my friend. My only friend. Now he’s just an asshole who works for the sheriff.”
His jaw was set in a hard line, a muscle by his temple jumped and his throat was tight with tension. Bear suddenly pulled over to the side of the road and put the truck in park. He lunged at me, my back still smashed up against the passenger door he set his hands above my head on the window and glared down at me. “He laid his hands on you. You screamed. He didn’t stop. I would kill him without blinking. I almost did.” Bear’s eyes darkened, gleaming with intensity. “If he ever touches you again I am going to do just that. You got me? Fully expect me to break his fucking wrists or end his fucking life, but I get to choose which. Not you. Is that understood?” I nodded, not because I agreed with him, but because I knew he meant every word. “Good girl. This shit between us? I got no clue what it is, but it’s something. That’s why I gave you my ring back. You know it too, and that’s why you didn’t hesitate to put it back on.” At the mention of it, I felt for the skull ring beneath my shirt. “But, Ti, I’m dead serious when I tell you that if you need someone shot, it’s me who does the fucking shooting.” He ran his nose along the line of my jaw. “Is that fucking clear?” he asked, pulling away, cupping my jaw in his hand, searching my eyes for the answer.
“Yes,” I whispered, lost in what it was that I was agreeing to because my thoughts were mostly on the fact that Bear was only inches away from my face.
From my lips.
Which was where his eyes went when my tongue darted out to wet them.
“Good, now fucking kiss me,” Bear said, crushing his lips to mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Thia
Bear’s lips on mine wasn’t just something amazing. It was an event. It was downright magical.
Which is why it needed to stop.
All of it needed to stop.
I pulled back, but he didn’t move, hovering over me, breathing hard. His lips glistened from our kiss, his hair fell into his face. His muscles bulged as he braced himself on the window above my head. His sapphire blue eyes mirroring the raw lust I knew he had to see in my own because it was so overwhelming I felt like I was about to bust out of my own skin. “You can’t do this again. I won’t let you. If you plan on kissing me and walking away just so you can prove some sort of point about how much of a joke I am, then stop now because I won’t be toyed with.”
Bear growled. “Is that what you think happened when I left you by the fire pit? That I was playing some fucking game?”
“Yes.”
“The only game I was playing was good guy, which I admit is extremely hard to play and I don’t fully understand all the rules.”
“Good guy? You walked away because you were playing the role of the good guy? What does that even mean?”
“It means that I walked away because you were battered and bruised and me kissing you, tasting you, was a mistake.”
“Oh.”
“Not in the way you think, Ti. It was a mistake because I was seconds away from bending you over the fire pit and ramming my cock into your tight little perfect *. I walked away because it was the right thing to do, which is new for me. I thought I was supposed to feel good about making the right decision but I didn’t, I regretted not taking you. I fucking ached that night.” I reached up and pushed his hair out of his face that had fallen into his eyes and he leaned into the palm of my hand. “I’m still fucking aching.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“And you don’t get to say shit you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Because let me tell you something, Ti. If I didn’t give a shit about you, I would have stayed after that kiss, after I tasted you. I would have fucked your virgin * until you couldn’t walk straight, see straight, fucking think straight. I would have made you see God if I thought such shit existed. But I did care. I do care. So I left you the fuck alone and walked away.”
“So what now?” I asked, overwhelmed by his confession.
“I’m done leaving you alone.” Bear tangled his hands in the back of my hair and tugged my lips down onto his. “I want you. Still fucking want you, more than I’ve ever wanted anything. Been a dead man walking with a price on my head and I’m walking around with a fucking hard on all day thinking about being inside of you. That first night when I saw you in that bed hanging onto my ring like you were drowning and it was your life preserver, I just knew.”