Page 132 of My Unhinged Alphas
The darkness makes us braver. Or maybe more honest. There’s no room left for performance in a motel room after midnight, only whatever survives after everything else has burned off.
I reach up with my other hand and touch his face.
Not the untouched side first.
The scar.
My fingertips graze the uneven skin of his cheek, the pull of it, the place where pain left its mark and stayed. He goes rigid for one second, then not rigid at all. Like he was braced for pity and got something else.
I stroke over it slowly.
His eyes close. “Don’t,” he says, but there’s no force in it.
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“No,” I whisper. “I know why you think I should stop. That’s different.”
His hand tightens once against my chest, a reflex, a fracture in all that control.
I lean in and kiss him. Soft at first. Not hunger. Not yet. Just my mouth on his, warm and slow, giving him time to pull away. He doesn’t. He takes one breath through his nose, rough and unsteady, and then his lips move against mine like he’s been holding himself still for too long and can’t quite manage it anymore.
The kiss deepens by degrees.
Careful. Then not careful at all.
His hand comes up to my jaw, holding me there, thumb brushing the corner of my mouth like he’s trying to convince himself I’m real. I kiss him again, harder this time, and he exhales into me, low and broken, and that sound goes straight through me.
I shift closer.
Our legs tangle, his on top of the covers, mine beneath. His body is warm through his clothes, all hard muscle and restraint, and when my thigh brushes the heavy outline of his cock, he jerks like I touched a live wire.
“Lena,” he says again, voice wrecked now.
I kiss the scar at his cheek. Then the corner of his mouth. Then his throat.
“Let me,” I whisper.
His fingers flex hard against my hip. “You don’t know what you’re offering.”
“Then tell me no.”
The silence after that is hot and alive.
He doesn’t tell me no. I take that for what it is.
My hand slides down his chest, over his ribs, feeling the controlled rise and fall of his breathing, then lower to the front of his pants. He’s already hard. Painfully. My palm closes over him through the fabric and he groans into my mouth, low and helpless in a way I’ve never heard from him.
“Fuck.”
I rub him slowly, just enough pressure to make his hips twitch.
His head drops back into the pillow. In the dim light, his scar makes him look wrecked and holy at once, like something dragged out of a church and taught how to sin. My body goes hot all over at the sight of him giving this up, piece by piece, for me.
I kiss down his throat while I work him through the fabric. “Still feel guilty?” I murmur against his skin.
His laugh is a rough, ruined thing. “You’re cruel.”
