Beneath the Stars (Falling Stars #4) - A.L. Jackson Page 0,83

took the fingers she kept running over my face and twisted them with mine. “Yeah.”

Wistfulness danced around that mouth. “What was she like?”

My lips tweaked with the sadness. “Sweet. Kinda like someone else I know.”

I went to brushing back a lock of her hair, needing to do something with my hands before I had them running over her body again. Fingers itching to get lost in all that bare, gorgeous flesh.

Then Maggie had to go and press even closer.

Right there, ready to hold my words.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been bein’ so upfront and honest. Just…laying it out like this. Another girl would slap me across the face. Rightly so. But I didn’t know how to be any other way with Maggie. Not with this girl who got me in a way that no one else could or ever had.

Even her.

Genny.

All blonde hair and shy smiles.

“She was young. So young. Barely eighteen.” I blinked through the memory. “It was years ago. Carolina George was just makin’ a name for itself. We were in this spec of a town in Tennessee, the bar nothing but a dive, but the crowd ate us up like we were the best thing they’d ever experienced. We were all soarin’ that night. Might have been the first time we all knew we were on to something. Like we could feel the promise of success trembling around us. And there she was, out in the crowd, off to the side, hovering in the fringes. Nothin’ but nerves. Wide eyed. Like she hadn’t even known a place like that existed.”

Truth be told, she hadn’t really. She’d snuck out with her best friend since she hadn’t been allowed to leave the house unsupervised. Her family so fuckin’ twisted.

Not allowed to make her own decisions.

Kept under lock and key.

And I’d been ignorant enough to think for a second that I’d been purposed to be there with her that night. That it hadn’t been an accidental encounter.

That maybe I could make a difference.

“So of course, I’d gone for her. Always after what I shouldn’t want.” I shifted our twined hands and ran my knuckles up the angle of Maggie’s jaw.

“It’s hardly a crime to love someone, Rhys.”

“But sometimes you commit one crime, and it trickles down through your entire life, destroying everything you touch.”

So you spent your life dabblin’ in the insignificant. Never dippin’ your fingers deep enough to make an impact. Making sure you never connected on a level that mattered.

Shiny on the surface, your life appearing nothing but fun and games.

Easy smiles and passing, forgettable faces.

Then someone slammed you from out of nowhere.

Unanticipated.

Their very existence threatening that precarious balance.

“And I’m terrified of doin’ the same to you.”

Those eyes traced me in the night. Sketchin’ a picture. Like she somehow found beauty in my ugliness.

“What happened to her?”

“I set out to rescue her from her chains, and instead, I dragged her straight into mine.”

A frown pinched between Maggie’s eyes, and I knew more questions were coming, questions I couldn’t face or answer, so I scooped her into my hold and climbed to my feet.

She looped those sweet arms around my neck. “Where are we going?”

“Shower.”

Had the sudden urge to clean myself off this girl before it seeped in and I poisoned her more.

I carried her into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I held her against me while the water heated and steam filled the room.

Vapors.

Mist.

A hazy dream that I wanted to step into and never reemerge from.

When I was sure the water was warm enough, I eased us into the massive shower. “Good?”

“Perfect.”

Carefully, I set her on her feet, though I kept a hand on her. Truth was, it didn’t matter how much I’d fucked up, taking her when I shouldn’t have, I didn’t know how to let go.

I nudged her chin back so I could wet the long length of her hair.

Maggie sighed, watched me with those eyes.

I squirted a gob of shampoo into my hand, that shampoo that smelled exactly like her and almost sucked me straight into a trance.

I shifted her around so I could massage it into those locks.

Girl bare and so damned beautiful.

My teeth clenched.

Fuck.

“What?” she whispered, sensing my hesitation.

“Your ass is spectacular.”

She giggled a slight sound, rocking said ass into my dick that’d gone hard as stone.

A tease.

A treat.

My fingers tangled up in her hair, massaging the locks, her scalp, her neck.

She moaned and leaned into my touch.

I rinsed her hair, then I grabbed her sponge and lathered it up so I