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He narrows his eye at me. “What are you doing here?”
“I…” I don’t want to tell him the truth.
He steps into the room and closes the door again. When he turns to me, he has a strange expression on his face.
“While you’re here, I want to talk to you,” Stone says. He doesn’t seem to mind that I haven’t given him an answer as to why I’m in his room.
He takes a step toward me and stumbles, and I realize he’s been drinking too. We’re both drunk. What a pretty pair we make. We’re both fucked up and ruined by whatever the hell we’ve been through.
“What do you want to talk about?” I ask warily.
“Your dad.”
I shake my head. “I have nothing to say to you about it.” He thinks he’s such a saint. He’s trying to be a hero. But I’m not a damsel in distress, and I don’t need someone to save me, especially not someone like Stone, who can’t even get it right to save himself sometimes.
He comes closer to me, and there’s something in his eyes I haven’t seen before. It’s unsettling because it looks a hell of a lot like concern. I fucking hate it when other people start to feel sorry for me or start to pity me.
How Kat reacted tonight is different;she’sdifferent. When I’m with her, I can be myself. When I’m with Stone, I have to have my guard way up because he’s bad news.
He lifts his hand, and without thinking about it, I flinch.
The pain that flickers across his face is deep.
“I’ll never hurt you, Raina,” he says. “And I’ll kill anyone who will.” His voice is filled with hatred, and something inside me snaps.
“I don’t need you to save me,” I say. “I can do this on my own.”
“I know.” He tucks my hair behind my ear—the reason he lifted his hand in the first place. “I don’t need anyone to save me either, but it sure fucking helps when there’s someone on the sidelines, rooting for you to make it. And I’m rooting for you, Raina.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask, and my voice catches in my throat. The wine is making me emotional, and I’m pissed off at myself that I allowed Stone to see me in this state—vulnerable, raw, unable to put on the mask I wear every day. I stripped it all down when I talked to Kat, and I’m struggling to build those walls back up again.
“Doing what?”
“Why are you being so nice to me? You’re not a nice person, Stone. You’re a dick.”
He nods, and his eyes study my face as if he’s committing it to memory.
“You do something to me, Raina,” he said. “I feel something when I’m with you.”
“What?” I asked. He’s so close to me now, I can smell him—not the alcohol on his breath or the cologne that clings to his clothes, but something distinctlyStone. It’s something that makes him the man he is, the only man I’ve started to give a shit about.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “But I like it. I like being around you, and I want more of it.”
His eyes are the color of a stormy sky. He closes the distance between us, and his lips brush against mine questioningly. I’ve never known Stone to ask for anything—he gets what he wants, no question about it. But this time, he’s asking.
I kiss him back in answer.
He cups my cheeks, and the way he kisses me makes me melt into my panties. It’s slow and sensual. His tongue slips into my mouth, swirling around mine. The length of his body is pressed against me, and I feel the need for me in his pants. But this isn’t raging lust the way we’ve had before. This is a deep yearning, a need for each other that I’ve never felt before.
Stone takes my hand and leads me to the bed. He lays down on the mattress with me, and for a while, he just kisses me. His hands roam my body, but he’s not trying to get me naked. He caresses my body, pushes himself up against me, and I get the sensation that he’s drinking me in.
Not just my body, butme.
When he finally pushes his hands under my shirt, my skin is on fire. My nerve-endings are live, and I ache to have him inside of me. I want him as close as he can get.
I know it’s the wine talking. I know that I’m probably being a lot more emotional than I should be, and maybe he’s being this sweet, thisdifferent, because he’s drunk too.
But this goes a lot deeper than alcohol. I think about what they say: alcohol doesn’t make people do things they wouldn’t normally do. It only takes away the reasons they don’t do it when they’re sober. It’s already there.
