Page 106 of Break Away
Aura liked making men chase. She liked maintaining distance so she could pretend every inch closed between us had been somebody else’s idea, but she moved over me now without a joke fast enough to cover it, one knee pressing into the mattress beside my thigh and then the other until she straddledme in my sweatshirt with the lamp still on and her mouth swollen from mine.
My hands settled against her hips as I tugged the sweatshirt.
She looked down at them, then back at me. “That’s bold.”
“That’s my sweatshirt.”
“Possessive.”
“My room.”
“Territorial.”
“My lap.”
Her breath caught.
I tightened my grip enough to make her feel it. “Mine.”
Her eyes flashed, but her hips rolled against me before she could stop them. The friction dragged a rough sound from my chest, and her fingers curled into my hair like she needed something to hold but would rather frame it as an attack.
“Don’t say shit like that,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because I’ll make you regret it.”
I leaned forward and kissed the corner of her mouth. “Liar.”
She turned her head, denying me her mouth, so I kissed her jaw instead, then the spot beneath it and the warm line of her throat where her pulse still raced beneath my lips.
Her fingers tightened in my hair. “Easton.”
I smiled against her skin. “Again.”
“Don’t.”
“You said no names.”
“I said don’t be an asshole.”
“No, you said no names.”
“That wasn’t tonight.”
“You brought the rules into my room when you walked in wearing my clothes and looking at me like you needed me to make the world shut up.”
She pulled back enough to glare at me, and fucking hell, she was beautiful like that—angry, wet-eyed, turned on, and terrified of how badly she wanted to stay.
I saw all of it and knew, with a certainty that settled deep enough to ruin me, that I was already gone for her. It wasn’t lust, obsession, or only the thrill of a woman that sharp choosing my bed when she wanted to stop pretending.
It was her, all of her.
The bitchy mouth, the impossible pride, the way she loved her girls like breathing and hated needing anything in return. The crack in her voice when she talked about Bliss looking small. The way she sat in my lap, trying to turn vulnerability into a dare because it was the only language she trusted.
I knew it there, but I didn’t say it because saying it would make her run. Instead, I gripped her hips harder and gave her something she could understand.
“You don’t have to be easy in here,” I said.
