Page 124 of Josephine and Clay

That’s all it takes.

I lean in.

As our lips collide, her hand lifts to my chest, fingers curling in my shirt, and the careful part burns away. She kisses me as if she’s been fighting herself all night and finally lost. I kiss her because I’ve been lost for weeks and just found the only solid ground in Buckhorn.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Josephine

JUNE 30TH

The door clicks shut behind us.

“Josie,” Clay gasps, his eyes flaming with need. “You have no idea how bad I want you.”

He’s already undoing his belt, lips trembling and eyes big, greedy.

This is completely insane, and somehow that only makes me want him more. I push the crutches aside, hear them tumble onto the carpet and click together like dropped bones.

My hands are shaking. I’m wild with wanting. The smell of him—sweat and clean cotton—sets my body ablaze.

He yanks me against him too fast and immediately swears under his breath when his bad leg twists wrong.

I grab his shoulders before he can lose balance completely.

We’re both breathing hard already, him from pain, me from wanting.

I feel the way his veins are standing up under his skin. I feel his teeth nip my jaw, and then his tongue is in my mouth, and it’s all so wet, mean, and perfect.

He’s trembling so hard I wrap one arm around his torso just to hold him still, to stop him from tipping over, but also, I think, to keep myself from floating away.

His skin is cool under my hands, charged tight with tension.

I drop to my knees, mouthwatering with the need to taste him deep before rationality comes back to me. I hook my fingers into his waistband and drag his jeans and briefs down to mid-thigh.

His cock’s already hard. The head flushed, angry, bobbing with his pulse. I breathe hot across the tip and watch it twitch.

“Fuck,” Clay gasps, bracing one hand flat against the wall to keep pressure off his leg.

I flatten my tongue against him. Salt, heat, the sharp bite of his skin. I slide my lips down, let him drive into me slow, then all at once.

He bucks forward once, then hisses when the movement jars his leg.

“Jeez,” he mutters, laughing breathlessly at himself. “Worth it.”

I steady us. There’s no artistry, no teasing, just hunger, his and mine, braided together at the root.

He grabs my hair and moans, all garbled vowels and consonants, a language built from pain and want. Each thrust sets a tremor running up my jaw, each pull at my scalp, this raw, primal feedback loop.

His body is so big, so much denser than mine, but against my tongue I can feel the tremble, the surrender. I’m already past shame, past hesitation. I want every drop of it, want to turn roughness into worship and let him splinter apart in my throat.

“Josie,” he gasps as he tucks his hands under my armpits. “Too fast. I want to devour you too.”

“Then do it,” I tell him, and sink my teeth into his thigh, savage, helpless with wanting.

I know I shouldn’t, but I want to leave a mark. To claim a patch of him that’ll ache under wool slacks tomorrow, a badge of my hunger in a world where mine is always the one that must be hidden, regulated, denied. I want him as messy as me.

He grips my biceps and tries to haul me upward, but the second he puts too much weight on the bad leg, his face tightens.