Page 554 of Lessons in Cruelty

I want to fuck her so badly, I can barely breathe.

Not because I’m horny.

But because I can feel how much she wants me to.

Her desperation, her eagerness, is as forceful as that day under the maple tree when she was sixteen.

I felt like a dick avoiding her away all those years ago. And all because I was scared I’d be teased. Or, even worse, judged.

A freshman dating a high-schooler.

A Hillsider banging a Riversider.

But that wasn’t it.

I was scared of my feelings. How intense they were, even though I’d told myself I didn’t like her anymore.

But the moment I saw her waiting under that tree, knee length black dress and wavy hair like she was trying to be sexy, my insides twisted into a fucking knot.

It all came crashing back.

Every time she’d made me laugh when all I wanted to do was cry. How she made me chase her through the woods until I was so tired, I didn’t have the energy to throw stones at people’s windows on the way home.

That’s what I was running from that day. What I was still running from when I turned and saw her standing outside Rooke’s class, that dopey, hopeful smile on her face like she was willing to forget every second of the time we’d been apart and just pick up right where we left off.

I didn’t hate her.

I could never hate Haven.

But I hated how easy it was for her to just shrug off the pain.

I try to keep my sticky hand out of her hair, clamping it on her hip instead, forcing her to grind harder against my dick as I kiss her until we’re both breathless and panting.

I can’t go back and change it. Any of it.

I’ll just have to make it up to her.

My lips slide to her jaw, her ear, the side of her neck. She arches for me, hands on my shoulders, her hair sliding over my face as she twists and turns to move my mouth where she wants.

Just below her ear. The shadow under her jaw. The hollow between her collarbones. I jerk her oversized cable-knit sweater down one shoulder, using lips and teeth and tongue on every inch of that exposed skin.

My lips find the scar between her tits from when we both almost drowned in the creek.

I feel her shiver, but instantly reject the thought of going back inside.

This is where we belong.

Out here, in the wild.

She gives a petulant moan when I twist away to reach for the other blanket I brought, and then sighs into the side of my neck when I throw it over her shoulders and bundle her up against me, warding her from the cold.

I cross my legs, her ass slotting in perfectly in the gap between my thighs.

“I need to fuck you again,” I mumble against her mouth as my hand slides down between us.

When she says nothing, gives me no fucking indication if she’s on the same page as me, I hesitate.

I want her enough to pin her down on the blanket and take her, whether she fights me or welcomes me.