Page 52 of Tracked
Current of electricity?More like the charge of a hydrogen bomb.
Lara stood suddenly and I went still, my body bracing for a physical attack. She dragged her chair toward the corner of the tent and climbed up on it.
“What are you doing?” I spun the cap back on the bottle and shot to my feet.
“Seeing if I can turn it off.” She grabbed the speaker.
“The body knows what the mind denies,” Maxwell continued, her voice contorting as Lara searched for a switch.
“Probably not,” I replied and then cursed when she stood on her tiptoes.
In the span of a split second, I broke my tentative new tenet. Forget three feet—I put myself within three inches of her, worried she would lose her balance and fall.
“We will begin intimacy sessions tomorrow, but starting tonight, I encourage you to not censor your desires.”
“Lara, let me,” I growled as the chair wobbled on the unsteady ground.
“I think I found it.” She ignored me and shoved herself up higher, leaning forward.Big mistake.
“Lara!” I lunged just as the chair toppled, her feet sliding off the edge and sending her straight into my arms.
She cried out as my arms locked around her waist, catching her as the chair tumbled to the ground, forgotten by the time it landed.
All that was left was her in my arms. Her body against mine. Her lavender scent. Her face inches above my own.
“No matter what trials you face in your relationship, resisting or restricting the primal urge for physical connection is dangerous.”
We stared into our own destruction, face-to-face with our own lies. Maxwell’s warning dumped gasoline on our fire.
I gritted my teeth. Heartbeats scrambled through my veins like I was at the edge of a cliff. At the precipice of peril by the press of her softness. I couldn’t be doing this—shouldn’t be feeling this. But I did, and I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t contain it. No matter all my rules, she was their every exception.
Fuck. I should’ve let her fall.
A terrible thought, but she would’ve been fine. Eighteen inches off the ground wasn’t catastrophic; a big step rather than a fall. But this ... this wasn’t saving her. Maybe Maxwell was right: Resisting this was dangerous, but giving in would be destruction.
Still, I couldn’t let her go.
The soft pants of her breath drew me closer. The roam of her blush over her freckled skin and down her neck muddied my reason. And these clothes ... they concealed nothing. Not the hard peaks of her nipples, nor the stretch of my stiff cock.
“Surrender the illusion of control and the weight of society’s propriety.”
Lara’s hands on my shoulders began to move, sliding around the back of my neck and locking at my nape. Her deep-green gaze settled on my mouth.Wanting.And then her tongue slid along her lips, whipping a foreshock through me. A warning of something coming. A tectonic crash that only promised ruin.
“Welcome the wildness of want in all its forms. Sight and sound. Scent and the sensation of touch,” Maxwell continued like she was only speaking to us. To me.
I was already drowning in the feel of her, but every inhale of her soft lavender scent only threatened to swallow me from the inside out.
“When it grips you, hold it right back. Latch on to the beast and let it consume you.”
Was her goal of this to work everyone up? To send the campsite into a cacophony of cries and moans? Was that her power trip? Controlling others’ intimacies?
Instinct forced my breathing to slow.Control your heart rate, control your fear. Panic is a luxury survival doesn’t afford.The caution Cassius had carved into our bones reared its head now. Now, when I wasn’t in the wilderness. When I wasn’t facing a threat of nature or weather or beast. When the only danger I had to fear was my attraction to my ex-girlfriend’s younger sister. Electric like lightning. Thudding like thunder. Drenching like a downpour. And gnawing as though made of the sharpest teeth.
“Here in the wild, there are no rules. Here in the wild, there is no propriety. Here in the wild, you can take what you want.”
Lara’s gaze unspooled into mine, netting us in a moment of stillness as her head drifted lower, her mouth on a clear trajectory for mine. A path so unmistakable, it might as well have been etched in stone.
What if I took one kiss?One taste so I would know how to survive this? How to survive her ...
