Page 60 of Before You Fell

Then she says my name. “Phoenix.”

I cup the back of her neck and kiss her.

I take her mouth because asking politely is ridiculous after I’ve spent half my fucking life wanting her and the other half pretending I didn’t.

She kisses me back as if she’s been starving too. Her hands clench in my shirt, pulling me closer.

She tastes of gloss, heat, and every bad decision I have tried not to make since I was seventeen.

We kissed once before. One stupid, innocent kiss, back when my biggest problems were shitty grades and trying to make my hair look cool.

This is not that. There is nothing innocent about how I take her mouth. How she kisses me back. Or how one fucking kiss is enough to send my brain and my cock into a fistfight neither of them intends to lose.

This Willow has her tongue in my mouth and her nails digging into my chest. I am so fucking gone I can barely think past the need to get her somewhere private before some asshole with eyes ruins my mood.

I break the kiss just enough to breathe against her mouth.

“Jesus Christ, Willow.” My voice sounds wrecked and it fucking annoys me. I brush my mouth against hers again. “Let me make you feel so fucking good.”

Her lashes flutter and the tiny crack in her control nearly finishes me off.

She doesn’t say yes. She doesn’t need to. Her mouth finds mine again, rougher this time as her tongue slides against mine. That is all the permission I need.

I pull back and take her hand in mine before either of us can find enough common sense to stop it.

I push through the crowd, her fingers locked around mine. My blood is pounding so loudly it drowns out the music.

People move as I cut through the crowd. They always do. Perhaps it’s the fame or maybe it’s the expression on my face telling every poor bastard in my path that tonight is not the night to test me.

Right now, anyone stupid enough to get between Willow and me deserves whatever fucking consequences that decision brings.

We pass by the VIP section and Cruz notices the two of us.

He’s just back from disappearing with some chick who fluttered her lashes at him and laughed at all the bullshit that spilled from his mouth. He’s sprawled across the booth with a drink in his hand, looking every inch the arrogant bastard he enjoys being, but the second he spots Willow’s hand in mine, his grin slips.

Not completely. Just enough to sharpen his eyes. Enough for the biggest manwhore I know to suddenly appear almost sober.

That lands somewhere behind my ribs. I ignore it anyway.

Jett is on his feet before we even reach the booth. His gaze catches Willow’s swollen lips before dropping to my hand wrapped around hers. It then settles on me.

“Phoenix.”

One word. But Jett has always been annoyingly talented at making a single word seem like a whole conversation.

I keep walking.

Jax is halfway out of the booth, his easy grin gone for the first time all night. “Wills.”

Willow’s fingers tighten around mine.

That should stop me too, because they all know. Not just what I’m about to do.

They know how I fuck. They’re aware I take what I want and let women build castles from things I never promised them. They know there’s a graveyard behind me full of soft voices, angry texts, and names I haven’t thought about in years. Women I wanted to fuck then left behind.

The woman holding my hand right now has never belonged anywhere near that list.

They’ve spent years telling me to stop being an asshole to Willow. To let her go. To let her find somebody who wouldn’t make a mess of her. Who will love her the way she deserves to be loved.