Descent - Tara Fuller Page 0,58

skin. I did not focus on how badly I wanted to keep touching her.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

I lifted my chin to meet her gaze, and the sadness there made it impossible to look away. I wanted it gone. I wanted the girl who giggled at bad jokes and saw beauty in everything around her. I wanted Gwen.

“You’re welcome.”

“You want him to take me back, don’t you?” she asked, voice broken and weak. “I’m slowing you down. You could have had Tyler already if it weren’t for me, connection or not.”

I didn’t answer, and she looked away, lifting her hand to wipe a lone tear from her cheek.

“You should. Someone should lock me away, so I can’t hurt anyone else. If I’m lucky that’s all Father will do when I get home.”

“That’s a pretty stupid thing to stay for such a smart girl.”

She jerked away, anger flaring in her eyes, and stood on shaky legs. “It’s not stupid. It’s the truth. Something’s wrong with me. Angels don’t do the things I do. They don’t interfere and get pure souls sent to Hell. They don’t break the rules. They don’t want the things I want. They don’t want, period! And they certainly don’t fall in love with…with…”

I bolted to my feet and backed her against the wall. Her eyes widened, and her breath hitched. “With what, Red? They don’t fall in love with what? Say it.”

She shook her head, refusing to answer. I braced my hands on the wall of the rail car on either side of her head and lowered my face so we were sharing the same breath. My heart screamed in my chest with things unsaid. Things that needed to be said.

“They don’t fall in love with someone like me,” I said.

She boldly held my gaze, keeping her hands balled into fists at her sides. I should’ve given her some space. I didn’t. I wanted to hear her say it. I needed to hear her say it if I had a chance in hell of letting her go.

“They don’t fall in love with someone who is incapable of loving them in return,” she finally said.

I closed my eyes, hating what she was saying and the truth behind it, wishing I could be what she needed, what she deserved. Warm, soothing fingers touched my face, and I opened my eyes to find her watching me warily. “You don’t want to be loved by me, Red,” I said, solemnly. “I live in the dark. I’m always going to live in the dark. You follow me far enough and you’ll never make it back to the light. And you, angel…you belong in the light.”

She pressed her lips together, but her eyes said so much. So much she’d already laid out for me. So much I’d rejected.

I belong with you. I love you.

I kissed her. Hard and hungry and desperate for what was inevitably going to be taken away. I didn’t want to love someone who was going to be stolen from me again. I didn’t want to love anyone. Yet here I was. Loving her. Consuming her. Ruining her. And I couldn’t stop. I gripped her hips and hauled her up so her legs wrapped around my waist. Nothing had ever felt this good. This right. This wrong. Eventually I’d have to walk away, let her go. But not right now. Right now I was content to get lost in the mind-melting way her soft body pressed against me in all the right places. In the way her lips moved beneath mine, needing this just as much as I did. Her hands slipped up my neck and into my hair, pulling me closer to Heaven, closer to my end. I let her. I would have given her the world just then if I could have. But I only had me, and if that’s what she wanted, then I was hers.

Completely, irreversibly hers.

I was vaguely aware of the sounds outside. That only a thin wall of rusted metal separated us from the horrors of Hell. That Scout would be back at any moment. This was not the place to be doing this. Gwen sank her teeth into my bottom lip as if she were tasting it, and those vague thoughts evaporated.

Giving in to the need coiling around the base of my spine, I shifted my hips over hers. Gwen sucked in a sharp breath, letting out a whimper that I caught between my lips. Heat sparked between us and caught fire, and everything