Page 38 of Burn Like An Angel
I raise a hand, vaguely noting the way she no longer flinches in my presence. Not a single hint of revulsion as I trace my pointer finger across her lips to map the kissable swell.
How would it feel to be touched by her?
Held by her?
Perhaps… even loved by her?
I don’t know what that’s like. My mother loved her bottles of cheap, supermarket liquor far more than she ever loved me. I doubt she even loved the monster she allowed into our home. And there was certainly no love in the string of foster homes that came after.
Before Ripley entered my life, I’d never been gently touched. Held. Cherished. At least not without the expectation of pain. I have no clue how to earn her affections rather than plotting how to cause her pain.
“I doubt Lennox would be alive now if you hadn’t forgiven him,” I point out. “Why else did you save his life?”
“Because I’m not you.”
A smile pulls at my mouth. “Perhaps we’re not the people you think we are either.”
Still pressing into me, whether consciously or not, she speaks a thousand words with her body language alone. Her grimace deepens as she wrestles with the words she doesn’t want to say aloud.
“I want to believe that,” Ripley finally admits. “I want to stop seeing the triumph on your face when they wheeled my best friend’s body away. I want to forget.”
“Can you forget?”
Her lips pucker and roll. “I don’t know.”
Flush with anticipation, I can’t stop myself from acting on pure instinct. She’s slipping through my fingertips. I can’t have that. Whether she accepts it or not, Ripley Bennet belongs to me. She has for longer than either of us realised.
My mouth strikes hers without the pleasantries of a gentle reintroduction. I don’t intend to entice her with some long, elaborate scheme—I want her to fucking submit. To accept the sick bond that’s grown between us and join me in the torment.
I still want to own her. Break her. Shatter every last recognisable piece. But I also want to help her put those pieces together again. Her pain is no longer my obsession; instead, her will to survive against the odds is.
She hesitates for a moment before responding to my kiss. I wouldn’t begrudge her punching me. Last time I touched her, we collided violently. Her response is no less rough as she bites my bottom lip.
I lift a hand to her short curls and seize a handful. Ripley moans into my mouth when I sharply tug, positioning her head to devour her at a deeper angle. Her lips take the brunt of my determination, smacking together with each kiss.
Her body writhes against mine, trapped between my onslaught and the hard wall with no room to escape. I grind into her soft curves, my cock hardening at the feel of each rounded angle.
Gripping her ass tight, she’s pinned to my chest. I want her to feel the effect she has on me. A mere taste and I’m harder than steel. The sight of her crying out in ecstasy the night I saved her life has haunted me since.
I want that again.
I want her.
I’m ready to admit that.
Her desperate moans increase as I thrust my tongue past her lips, branding her mouth as mine. Our teeth clang. Lips wrestle. Breath intwines. The institute and all its madness fades into the background.
BANG.
Screams follow the loud crash. Ripley tears her mouth from mine, immediately on high alert. Two bickering patients race down the corridor, chasing each other to continue trading blows.
“Shit.” She touches her swollen lips, stained an exquisite shade of cherry red. “We should move.”
All I want is to bend her tight little ass over and roughly plough into her sweet cunt until she cries out my name in surrender. I swallow deeply and force myself to breathe instead.
“You’re probably right.”
“What about him?”
