Darkmore Penitentiary 2 - Caroline Peckham Page 0,199

the surface until we're all with him and I don't trust Gustard to wait for us. But if they all end up above ground before Dante is ready to take out the fence when we're all there then the guards in the watch towers might spot them. I need someone I can trust to take charge of them and make sure they wait for me, Sin and Ethan to catch up."

"Pudding and Sonny can-"

"No, Roar," I demanded, grabbing his hand and tugging him around to face me. "I don't trust them. I don't trust anyone in here. No one but you."

His lips parted as he looked down at me and my pulse raced at the way his golden gaze seemed to be drinking me in. For a moment, my own gaze fell to his mouth and the aching, yearning, pining need that I felt for this man surged up in me so much that I was certain I would drown in it.

"Take this," I breathed, pulling a shank from my pocket which I’d made using a broken wall bracket from one of the bookshelves last week. "Gustard is dangerous and unpredictable. If anything happened to you, Roar, it would kill me. I can't-"

Roary caught the front of my jumpsuit and yanked me towards him, his mouth meeting mine in a blaze of fire that was powerful enough to consume me.

I gasped as the shank fell from my fingers and for a moment I didn't even kiss him back, I just fell apart in his arms, every wall and barrier I'd tried to construct around my shattered heart to keep him out falling down like it was made of nothing but sand.

And then my lips parted for his tongue and a moan of purest need and longing escaped me as I was destroyed for him in the best possible way, winding my arms around his neck and pushing my hands into his hair as he held my face between his big hands.

A deep and endless ache rose up inside me, only to be filled by him and everything I'd always wished and dreamed he'd be to me.

There were so many words passing between us in that kiss, so many moments that we should have shared and were promising to share now. All the things we were always meant to be to one another.

Roary pulled back, tilting my chin up so that I was looking at him and I almost flinched, expecting him to tell me not to read into that, that it didn't mean anything and I was still just a dumb kid, or-

"I love you, Rosa. I love you in all the ways I thought I shouldn't and I'm sick of being afraid of that. I'm sick of wanting you and not having you. Of needing you and not owning you. I meant it when I said I wanted to run away to a desert island with you. But I'd stay in Darkmore for the rest of my life if this was the only place where you were too."

"Roary," I breathed, my heart pounding so fast that it deafened me as energy skipped and thrummed through my limbs and I tried to figure out what the hell I was supposed to say to that.

"It's okay," he growled. "I'm not asking you to say it. I just had to stop lying to myself, to you. I needed to tell you in case-"

"I've been in love with you since I was fourteen years old, Roar," I said, laughing at how fucking stupid that made me sound. "When I was just a dumb kid who annoyed you and you were this irresistible life-force that drew me in with every single thing you did. I used to look at you and tell myself you'd see me one day, that I'd stop being some silly little girl and maybe you'd look my way and see..."

"Everything," he finished for me, leaning in and kissing me again. "I see everything, Rosa. I'm just not sure I deserve that much."

The others had already headed off into the tunnels and time was ticking by and no matter how much I may have wanted to stay there in that moment forever and drink in the way he was looking at me and really seeing me, I knew we had to move.

"You need to go, Roar," I breathed, sliding my hands back down his chest as I tried to find the strength to move out of his arms. But I'd waited