Richer Than God - Amelia Wilde Page 0,7
away. Not completely. “On the mouth. Kiss me on the fucking mouth.”
She doesn’t hesitate, hurrying now, stepping forward and reaching up because she has to. I let her get her hands into the front of my jacket and pull. I let her feel how much bigger I am. Still, she doesn’t hesitate until her mouth is on mine, the movement tremulous and uncertain and so, so innocent.
What a fucking liar. I’m not naïve.
She’s as naïve as they come. Worse, because she’s come here for some reason she hasn’t admitted to me yet. I can taste it on her lips. Clear, sharp desperation. What would make a little thing like this so desperate? I’d ask her, but I can’t begin to formulate a question. My balls have drawn themselves up tight and are ready to make a scene, right now.
I slip my hands around the small of her back. No pressure—I’m not holding her there, just balancing—because I have to know how far she’ll take this on her own. Her tongue darts out clumsily to test my lip, and I choke down a mean laugh.
This is the worst kiss.
She has no skill whatsoever. But it’s also the best, most earnest kiss, and I want a thousand of them. A million. A fucking infinity of this first-kiss nonsense.
No one has ever toyed with her before, I see. She really must be a virgin.
My pulse has gone wild, my heart bucking and seizing and dying for this, and the hairs on the backs of my arms rise, the skin on the back of my neck hot and then freezing. What the fuck, what the fuck? I’m not this kind of man. I was never this kind of man, even when I had the chance. I don’t get taken in by innocence.
I was made to crush the life out of it, over and over until I could do it without flinching, without a pang of guilt.
None of that seems to apply now.
I push her away with the back of my hand, my knuckles brushing against that fabric rosebud, and for a split second, she doesn’t know what’s happening. She doesn’t have her guard up, and her pupils are blown out with the heat of the kiss, so black that it hauls up an old habit. It’s so old that it feels ancient, feels like one of those reflexes that should have been bred out of existence long ago. I put my hands on her shoulders and steady her, searching her eyes. “Sit down.”
She startles, and I let go—hot—and she touches her lips like it was the hardest, roughest kiss she’s ever had. Maybe it was the only one. “The other girls…”
“You aren’t going with them.”
“What do you mean?”
I straighten my jacket to cover my erection. “You don’t pass inspection.”
Panic darkens her eyes. “What? Why? Is it something I did wrong?”
“It’s more what you didn’t do. Listen… what’s your name, girl?”
“Brigit,” she supplies, worry threading itself through her voice. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. Please. Tell me what else to do. I’ll do it.”
I tug at my cuffs and my collar and smooth down the nonexistent wrinkles on the jacket. And I break my own fucking rules by telling her the truth. “You’d be better off on the street.”
A look over her shoulder—at what? “I wouldn’t,” she argues, and I’m impressed in spite of myself. Nobody’s ever fought so hard to be one of my whores. “I was—I was mouthing off, I know. I probably shouldn’t have.” Fucking probably not. “Please. Let me kiss you again.”
I let her dangle there long enough that she has the audacity to reach for me.
The need for her to touch me is so strong that it squeezes the air from the bottoms of my lungs and tightens a band around my chest. No. I catch her wrists in one hand, pinning them together, and her eyes go wide again, locked on the place where I’ve trapped her. It’s like trapping a fucking hummingbird. She could fly away, her heart is beating so quickly.
“Yes.” Even from three feet away I can taste her innocence on my tongue. I can taste her desperation. What has terrified her so badly that she needs this job?
Eyes on mine, pulse beneath my fingers. “Yes?”
“You can try again.” I turn her toward the door and push her away from me, hard enough that she stumbles, light enough that she doesn’t fall. “Later. For now, go get settled in.”
The little thing dares to turn