Page 10 of Mating Theory
He turns away, not waiting for gratitude, ready to disappear into the night.
“A kiss,” I manage to say, and he stops.
Chapter Five
Sutton
I’m turned away from the Den, my hands into my pockets, head down. The night is caught somewhere between rain and clear. Beads of moisture gather on the sleek black fabric of my suit. Fog mutes the sound of my dress shoes on pavement.
The entire world narrows to the woman behind me. A kiss.
Leave. Walk away. Don’t fuck a girl that broken.
I know about the underbelly of Tanglewood. And I know better than to think I can solve problems that thick. A few Benjamins aren’t going to change her life. But there’s a difference between not helping her and actively using her. Touching her, even the lightest brush of my fingertip across her cheek, would cross a line.
She doesn’t want to be here. There are women who choose sex work without a dark history but none of them do it this way. Only the most crude and dangerous men would shop for a woman here. Men like me, apparently.
The brick wall holds her up. She looks fragile against the city. Small and fundamentally breakable. How am I supposed to leave her here? But how can I take her with me? There’s only the thinnest thread between the beast inside me and the man I pretend to be. My true self, the bastard who loses everyone he loves, has never been this close to the surface.
She looks at me with unfathomable dark eyes. There’s pain hidden in the depths, but I don’t see that right now. I’m only looking at trust. Undeserved trust.
The corner of her lips hitches up in a private smile.
It seals her fate.
I back her up against the wall, crowding her, stealing her air.
Her eyes go wide like a doe caught in the headlights. That’s me—a fucking truck. I’m going to break her to pieces. I’ll break myself, too. I lean down to breathe her in. I’m not even touching her yet. I don’t have my hands on that pale skin or my cock in that sweet cunt. No, I’m scenting her now. It’s a fully primal move. Every veneer of civility has been stripped away. This suit is a goddamn lie. I’m an animal, getting ready to mount her, getting ready to mate.
A kiss, she said, not knowing what she tempted.
My lips brush her forehead. It should be ridiculous with my cock like iron in my slacks, but it doesn’t feel ridiculous. Tenderness moves inside me, sharp enough to make me grunt. I drop my lips to the bridge of her nose. Even this much is wrong. Wrong when the woman doesn’t really desire me. Wrong when she wouldn’t be wet if I shoved two fingers in her pussy. I’ve never had a woman who was anything less than enthusiastic, but I want her too much to walk away. She stands very still as I reach her mouth. That full, pretty mouth with the garish red lipstick. I nibble away the waxy layer, searching for the dry, chapped, realness of her.
When I pull back her eyes are wide. Her nostrils flare where she breathes hard. I haven’t even gotten started yet, and she already looks ready to bolt. “What was that?” she asks, her voice shaky. I want to pull her hair and spank her pretty little ass. I want to spread her legs and ride her until she sobs her climax into the sheets. And she looks shocked by a single kiss.
Anger swells inside me, inky black. “You ever have a boyfriend, Ashleigh?”
“Yes,” she says, but it’s so clearly a lie it makes me want to laugh. Or cry. “I know how to kiss. I know how to—how to fuck. But that wasn’t a kiss.”
The word fuck sounds completely foreign on her lips. It sounds like a made-up word. A Dr. Seussian exaggeration. “That was the way you kiss someone you care about.”
Defiance in those brown sugar eyes. “You don’t care about me.”
“No,” I say, even though I’m the one lying now. I’m the one exaggerating to prove a goddamn point. “I don’t give a shit about you, but I never learned to kiss any other way.”
That small point of a chin rises. She may not have a lick of self-preservation, but she has pride. And God, that makes me want her more. “Then maybe I can teach you something.”
Grim amusement curls my lips. “You just might.”
I came outside because I needed some air that hasn’t been breathed in and exhaled by Harper and Christopher. I wanted to smell dirt and grass and the weather foretold on the wind. Nothing in the city can come close. Except for her. I breathe her in, and the same sense of rightness, of coming home fills me. She’s like the goddamn earth—sweet and elemental.
