Page 17 of The Next Lie

His eyes open. “Then tell me what you want.”

There he is. Still making me say it. Still refusing to do the thing where a man pretends a woman’s pain is consent because it is convenient and he is horny. It should irritate me less than it does. It irritates me because it matters. It irritates me because he is right to make me use my voice when half the people in my life have spent fifteen years taking it away.

“I want you inside me,” I say.

His nostrils flare. “And tomorrow?”

I frown. “What about tomorrow?”

“When the shock wears off and you hate everyone again.” His thumb moves against my hip, slow and careful and infuriating. “Are you going to hate me for this?”

I stare at him. Then I laugh once, sharp enough to hurt. “Shiloh, I’m twenty-two, emotionally unstable, and currently straddling you in a bathtub after finding out my dead sister has been alive this whole time. I am absolutely going to hate everyone tomorrow.”

His mouth twitches despite himself.

“But not for this,” I add, and his expression sobers. “I need this,” I say, and the honesty makes my throat feel scraped raw. “I need one thing tonight that I choose. One thing that isn’t a memory or a secret or some old dead woman with a title deciding which little girl got to live.”

Something hard moves through his expression. “Mother Superior is not dead,” he says.

“Don’t ruin my phrasing.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No,” he says. “I’m not.”

I almost smile. It breaks before it gets anywhere useful. He sees that too. I hate how much he sees.

“I’m here,” I say, because he needs it and maybe I do too. “I know what I’m doing. I know who you are. I know where I am.”

His hand slides up my back. Still holding. Still not directing. “Say yes,” I whisper.

“Yes.” The word hits lower than it should. I kiss him before he can add a clause, a warning, or a morally responsible footnote.

It starts ugly. Teeth and wet skin and full on mouth-to-mouth collision. Shiloh groans into me and braces on the side of the tub like he needs something solid to keep from grabbing too much too fast.

Cute. Unnecessary. I reach between us, wrap my fingers around him, and stroke once.

His whole body locks. “Jesus, Yank.”

That voice. That wrecked little edge in it. God help me, I want to bottle it and drink it on days when I feel too dead to be mean. I lift up on my knees and guide him to me. For one tiny, stupid second, I pause. Not because I’m unsure, but because the whole world seems to narrow to this. My hand on his shoulder. His cock pressed against me. His eyes on mine, no charm left in them, no easy smile, none of the pretty armor he wears because it usually works.

And that scares the hell out of me.

“This is...this is just... I'm going to fuck you,” I rasp. I'm not sure who I'm telling, him or me.

His jaw flexes. “Take what you need, Yank.”

So I do. The first push steals every clever thought I have ever had. I sink down on him, and my body opens inch by inch, tight and slick and so alive it almost hurts. The water shifts around us, warm against my thighs. Shiloh’s fingers dig into my hips and then ease because the man is still trying to be sweet and chivalric while I am actively impaling myself on him. Honestly, rude.

“Stop being noble,” I breathe.

His laugh breaks on a groan. “I’m not sure this qualifies.”

“You’re thinking too much.”

“That’s usually your job.”