Page 76 of Shades of Grey & Gold

This girl is light. My light.

The light I didn’t even realize I needed until it was too late and she was gone.

As I crest the last step, the white walls leave little to distract me as the dark reasons I needed this light play like a movie inside my head.

Blood.

And bodies.

I stop. Leaning her up against the wall, lifting her higher. I press my forehead to her bare chest and close my eyes as the edges of my vision mist over and my chest gets tight.

Having to do the violent things she should never know about.

Touching her with the hands that hurt people.

My hands shake slightly.

Touching her with hands thatkilledpeople.

“Cal, if I’m too heavy just set me down, you’re panting like you just ran a mile.” She squirms and I tighten my grip on either side of her hips, pressing her harder into the wall.

“It’s not—” the words are interrupted by a deep breath as I attempt to steady myself. “I just need a second.”

“I—I’m sorry.” Her body is stiff and her words are small.

I stop breathing completely, that sentence ripping me out of my thoughts and putting me solidly back in this moment as I look up at her eyes.

“What was the promise you made to me about apologizing?”

Her eyes are looking away from me, and I reach up, grabbing her chin and pulling her face, purposefully letting her bare back slide down the wall a few inches to make her eyes level with mine and press my erection into the wet heat of her center again. She breathes in deeply, her eyes shutting for a beat, before she opens them again.

Her expression looks worried, like she did something wrong, as if she could ever be any one of my problems.

Hell, she could fix every single one just by touching me.

Make them all disappear just by loving me.

I could fucking kill Patrick for making her think she is the problem at every turn. I could kill him for making me think about him in this moment.

I still could kill him.

“What did I tell you about apologizing to me, Maxine?” I repeat.

Her eyes dart up to mine when I say her full name and I see the fire returning to them slowly. “You told me not to.”

“Because nothing,” I run my thumb down the center of her lips, purposefully pressing into the bottom one and pulling it down as I tilt her chin down. “Nothing you could ever do or say to me would require an apology. In fact, nothing you ever do to anyone should require an apology. Not as long as you are with me.”

Her chest rises and falls in rapid succession as I speak, “So promise me, again, and mean it this time.”

I feel her legs loosen around my waist and I press her into the wall with my chest, wrapping my own arm around her legs behind me, my other hand still holding her chin between my fingers.

My cock presses into her, the need in my core that was previously interrupted, back in full force. Her back arches against the wall and she tries to hold in a small moan as I rock myself gently, slowly against her.

“Use that pretty voice, Sims, and promise me again.”

I rock my hips up and then down one more time, my fingers trailing up her leg from her ankle to underneath the curved line of her calf. Finding the tension firm behind her knee, I continue to slide my palm up the soft, warm back of her thigh, then the inside, my fingertips grazing the edges of her wetness.

I curve my palm up her ass—full, gorgeous, lethal—and I dig my fingers into her hip.