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“Ask me to kiss you, Faye.”

I’m not just hot now. His words free a spill of molten lava. I’m burning up from the inside out, but if this were a way to die, I think I’d go willingly into the bliss.

“Kiss me, Tate.”

His lips twitch, his green eyes spark. “Say please.”

I moan at the rough dominance in his demand. “Please,” I beg. “Please, kiss me.”

His lips fall to mine as his hand curls around the side of my neck, cradling me in the strength of his calloused hands as he angles my face, taking the kiss deep right from the start.

It’s not sweet and soft, like our first kiss began. This kiss is hot and hard and hungry.

He slips his tongue between my lips, groaning a rough sound that calls gooseflesh to the surface of my skin. His tongue strokes against mine as his scent invades all of me until I’m a shaking, quivering mess.

I want to pull him over me. I want to feel him against all of me. I want—everything.

Tate breaks the kiss and I gasp breath into starved lungs. He still cradles me in his hand, like I’m small and delicate and precious to him. But when he drags the pad of his thumb across my kiss-swollen lips—I feel ruined in the most decadent way.

He makes a low noise in the back of his throat. It’s a thing of feminine dreams and it does dangerous things to me.

But then he says gruffly, “Happy New Years, sweetheart.”

My mind reels as he releases me with another teeny tiny kiss, before he flops back against his pillow to settle in for sleep.

Now? After that?

I want to scream, and I want to cry. I don’t know that I’ve ever been this—this turned on.

He has to know what he’s doing to me.

Is he trying to kill me?

I pout into the darkness as his breathing turns even. Then I wrestle with my own depraved needs for the rest of the night as I fall in and out of sleep.

It’s agony. Every single minute of it.

24

WHAT DOESN’T KILL ME

MARCH 2010 – 20 YEARS OLD

Faye screams a scream that does it’s best to rip ribbons from my soul. Tears stream from her eyes, and her face is red with exertion.

She shakes her head from side to side. She cries, “I can’t do this. Please.”

She’s never begged me for anything that I wouldn’t give her. I would do anything for this woman. Hell, I’d find a way to pluck a star from the very sky if she asked me—but I can’t do this. I can’t stop this.

And it’s killing me.

I press my lips to her temple, tasting her exertion. “You’re doing so good, sweetheart.”

“It hurts so—” She makes a pitifully heartbreaking noise as another contraction rips through her body. “Oh, my God, this can’t be right. This can’t be right. Make it—” she grunts around another wave of pain. “Stoooooop.”

Her grip on my hand tightens to the point where I really think she could break it.

I’d let her.