Page 11 of Worth Your Wild

There’s a sheen in her eyes by the time I’m finished. “I’m sorry.”

Oh man. That was the dead wrong thing to say. I don’t want her sympathy, because it makes me feel something. A stirring among the numbness I’ve been living with for a long time. It makes me feel like I’m a real person, instead of some famous guy on a poster.

“You’re sorry?”

She firms her chin and nods.

No. Absolutely not.

I fist her hair again, tugging her head back with a little more force than intended. But I don’t stop there, because I need to distract her from my moment of weakness. I lean in and speak directly against her mouth. “I don’t give a fuck if you’re sorry.”

“Too bad,” she breathes, her voice catching, those green eyes searching mine.

Seeing a lot. A lot more than I’m ready to acknowledge is there.

I don’t know what happens, then. I just lose it. I lose myself in her.

My mouth is violent with hers. A pit forms in my stomach right away, because her lips are so soft and innocent compared to mine, and my treatment is too rough. I’m licking into her mouth with too much audacity. Ownership. Aggression. I want her to slap me hard across the face and go back to looking at me like a soulless monster, but she goes boneless, instead, her mouth parting for me like she was born to offer me her tongue.

It’s a dangerous drug, the way this spitfire surrenders.

There are flames licking inside of her and she’s allowing me to experience the burn. It’s benevolence. It’s a privilege. She tastes so fucking good, my thoughts spin out like a car on black ice, crashing into the guardrails of my mind, and my hunger intensifies.

Fuck. Fuck. I am way too old to be kissing a college girl like this, driving my tongue in so deep that she’s starting to squirm in my lap, her whimpers going straight to my head. I’m going to hell. I’m going to the deepest pits of hell.

No. You’ve been living there all this time.

Now you’re dragging her in with you.

That thought is like a slug to the jaw. The impetus I need to do the right thing and tear my mouth off hers, but now I’m looking down into her flushed, beautiful, drowsy face. She’s the picture of overwhelmed, and Jesus…she’s looking up at me like I’m her hero.

“Don’t do that,” I growl at her.

“Do what?” she murmurs, her voice dreamlike.

“Look at me like I’m a knight on a white horse. All I’ll do is trample you.”

Her green eyes dance from one side of my face to the other. “You don’t scare me.”

My heart takes an elevator to my mouth. I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know how this twenty-year-old girl who I’ve never met before tonight can have such a profound impact on me. I don’t like it. I don’t want her under my skin. I want to fester in my self-imposed loneliness and cynicism. That’s why I lean in and say the worst thing I can think of to drive her away. To send her running, because I…

I don’t know if I could run from her.

“Brave girl, are you? That’s good because the rumors about my cock are true.” My laughter is ugly, and I hate the way it dulls the light in her eyes. “You’ll need to be brave when I fold you in half and use you like just another easy cum dump tonight.”

The slap across my face echoes through the tour bus.

But the only thing I hear is the pained sob in the back of her throat.

The only thing I see is her remaining admiration of me crumble.

Of course, the tour bus arrives at the hotel at that very moment and June bolts down the walkway before I can grab her around the waist. “June Bug. Wait.”

She doesn’t listen. Doesn’t stop.

She’s off the bus as soon as the driver opens the door, running straight into the lobby of the hotel. I stare after her, wondering why I feel so fucking devastated when her opinion of me shouldn’t matter. I forced her to back off. That’s what I wanted, right?

I look down and realize she left her purse behind, she was in such a hurry.