He gripped me by the back of the neck, our chests pressed close, the thunder of our hearts the only quickening in the room.
He rocked forward, slow and somehow desperate.
A soft moan fluttered from between my lips.
Those bottomless eyes latched onto mine in the darkness, his mouth a breath from mine.
He pinned my wrists over my head.
His body worked a steady beat, a frenzy barely kept at bay.
A raging storm contained.
Our pants leapt into the air.
“Lyrik,” I gasped out.
He swayed and pitched, buried his face in my neck as he released my wrists. My arms were around him, holding him close as he rocked and drove and pled. “Blue…what have you done? What have you done?”
“Lyrik…please…” It was a petition unnecessary, because I was already rising to the top where pleasure gathered fast.
“Blue.”
My body stretched tight beneath him as I came undone.
Lost.
Where I floated in the darkest skies. Where I drifted through clouds that rumbled their threat. Where I glided through the danger of this building storm.
The buzz before the strike.
Lyrik jerked and his mouth dropped open, this volatile boy clinging to me. Unhinged. Fingers dug into my skin.
Almost painfully, the words came from his mouth like distress.
“You sing my soul.”
So quiet.
Yet deafening.
You sing my soul.
Everything froze. The spin of the room and the hammer of my heart and the panicked boy who lay stock-still on top of me.
It was unmistakable.
The grief that suddenly poured into the room, seeping from his pores and from the shattered breaths from his lungs.
“What did you say?” I didn’t mean for it to come out so needy, but I couldn’t stop it from fleeing the confines of my mouth.
Because I needed to know.
I tried to edge him back. To see his face.
He jerked his head to the side. Jaw rigid. Throat tight.
Still refusing to look at me, he slowly rolled out of bed.
Nothing was said as he slipped on his underwear and jeans, the silence suffocating as he buttoned them.
He snatched his shirt from the floor and yanked it over his head.
The whole time I lay there with his sheet clutched to my chest. Shocked. Stunned. Both joyed and terrified.
“What did you say?” I begged again.
“Nothin,” he mumbled with a rake of his hand through that dark hair.
I clamored off the bed. “Don’t tell me it was nothing when we both know it was something.”
He looked at me. Hard and furious. “Said it was nothin’. Drop it.”
I grabbed his arm. “Lyrik.”
He shook me off and headed for the door.
What the hell?
I dressed as fast as I could, on his heels as I chased him down the stairs.
Ash and Zee were just coming through the front door as we hit the landing.
Shit.
But I wasn’t letting this go.
I refused to let go of this rigid, impenetrable man who was so obviously broken.
Because God, maybe he needed me just as badly as I needed him.
Maybe he needed a little saving, too.
It didn’t matter who was there to witness it.
I didn’t care.
Because what I cared about was him.
What I cared about was what he said and what it meant and where it would lead us.
“Lyrik, please,” I begged as I grasped at the tail of his shirt.
Lyrik spun around. The words he spat from his tongue were low and vicious and vile. “Please, what, Red?”
He was looking at me like I was garbage.
Dirty.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what this was,” he continued. “Two months and you got what you wanted. You fuck like a pro. Congrats.”
A strangled gasp wheezed into my lungs and I recoiled. Mortified. Slammed with a misery so great it nearly dropped me to my knees. After everything I’d revealed to him. After what I’d trusted him with. And this was his response?
My hand cocked back before I could stop it, and I barely registered the force of it as it flew through the air toward that too-fucking-pretty face.
Guess I was right all along.
Lyrik West was nothing but a bastard.
THERE ARE TIMES IN your life you know without a doubt you’re doing everything wrong.
When you know you’re nothing but a liar and a bastard and a cheat.
Hands down, this was one of them.
It was like watching everything go down in slow motion while your mind’s still set to real time.
Taking everything in while there’s not a fucking thing in the world you can do to stop it.
Especially when you were the piece of shit who’d set it all into motion in the first place.
I could see it coming, and I braced myself for the bitter bite of her hand.
Welcomed it, really.
Hate me, Blue. Hate me.
It was the only option we had left. Not after I’d fucked it all up.
The crack echoed off the walls.
Vibrating with the magnitude of the wound I’d just inflicted.
Hate me, Blue. Hate me.
I knew those words would cut her deep. But they were the only ones that could maybe undo the words that had left me without permission upstairs. The only ones that’d maybe keep this gorgeous girl from looking at me as if I were her savior and her light and her life.