Her beautiful little face with its delicate features and those huge green eyes was a mask of hurt and uncertainty. She was already fearing his reaction, so sure of another rejection.
The most awful part was the painful way he wanted her. He always had, in a subconscious way. She was a pretty girl, and he was male, after all. That much was natural. But now he desperately wanted to smooth all her fragile sharp edges in the only way he understood how.
Selfishly, he wanted it for himself, too. He wanted something besides a semi-willing groupie looking to punch another hole in the Lean Dogs belt.
He wanted, if he was honest – and being this drunk, he could shoot straight with himself – to be something besides the angel of death for once. And for this girl, he could be. For her, death would be the most precious gift, a gift that would make her…
Love him. He knew that. Given all her trauma, she was the sort of girl in grave danger of falling in love with her savior.
He’d deal with that when it happened.
“Holly, I want you to do something for me.”
She straightened, tension coiling through her. “Yes?”
“I want you to keep all this between you and me. You can’t breathe a word about your family to any member of my club. Do you understand? They can’t know you’re related to them.”
She shook her head. “I would never tell.”
She would never reveal that connection to anyone. Not anyone but him, because he was The One.
“And I need you to trust me, okay? And do what I say, when I say. None of my brothers can ever find out that I killed them.”
Her eyes widened, and then flooded with tears. “Oh…” she whispered, voice a quavery, broken breath of sound. “You mean…you mean you will? You’ll do it?” She started to tremble all over. The tears glimmered at the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over.
“Yeah, I’ll do it.”
In a fast flurry of movement, she rose up on her knees, and leaned across the couch cushions to get to him. She pulled up short, gasping a little, with her hands braced on his shoulders, their faces just inches apart. Sudden flash of fear in her eyes. Uncertainty.
Keenly aware of her closeness, and the warmth of her skin, he said, “What were you going to do?”
She dampened her lips, let her gaze fall downward, lashes dark fans against her cheeks.
His voice sounded coarse and alien to him. “It’s alright.”
It wasn’t what he’d expected; it was so much more delicate and stimulating than that.
She laid her small, soft hands on either side of his face, against the harsh lines of his cheekbones, and her eyes fluttered shut in the last second before she placed her parted lips against his. It was a gentle, hesitant, virginal kiss, and he realized something truly terrible before she pulled back a fraction and told him, “I’m sorry. I’ve never kissed anybody before.” A blush stained her face, deep embarrassment.
She’d been raped countless times in her short life, but never kissed. A tragedy.
Michael caught the back of her head in both hands and drew her in close. She stiffened one brief second, and then softened, her mouth opening under his as he kissed her.
She tasted like Crown and she had no idea what she was doing, but she kept opening wide, giving and giving, letting him in.
Once he started he couldn’t stop. He was starving for her, and for this. Her lips had the most feminine shape and movement to them. Her tongue flexed when he stroked it with the tip of his.
Dimly he was aware of pulling her into his lap, of the silk of her hair sifting through his fingers, of the warm press of her breasts against his chest. She was melting, falling against him, her neck going limp between his wrists as she surrendered completely.
He felt both her hands on his forearm, and she tugged, pulling his hand from her hair. As he kissed her, she guided his fingers to her chest, the oh-so-soft skin at the tops of her breasts. He knew he shouldn’t, but she was urging him into her shirt, and so he dove, reaching down into her tank top, working under the lace of her bra until her breast filled his hand, the nipple a hard pebble against his palm.
Holly made a sound against his lips, a gasping, crying sort of sound, and Michael broke the kiss, pulled back so he could see her face.
Her eyes were heavy-lidded and drowsy, her face slack save for the little crease of tension between her brows. She was turned on, and she didn’t know what to make of that, and she was a little bit frightened too.
Michael’s gaze went to where his hand was, the shapes of his fingers stretching the black fabric of her shirt from inside, the pale exposed slope of her breast.
He gave her a gentle squeeze. “Are you scared?”
