The Isle Of Sin And Shadows - Keri Lake Page 0,111

soft feathering of his fingers across my breast, his gaze shoots to mine. Not a breath later, he wraps his palm around my jaw and pulls me to his lips.

The kiss is fireworks and chaos on a hot July night, and the wet spray of water that dribbles between our lips has me sucking it from his skin.

He pushes me away, disgust painted in the harsh edges of his expression. “You frustrate the absolute fuck out of me,” he growls, releasing my jaw. “Savor the kiss, moiselle. It’s the only one you’ll get.”

I’m too drunk to process what that even means, my focus wholly shifting to staying upright on my feet without tipping over. With harsher hands than before, he flips the water off and lifts me out of the shower, wrapping me in a towel. A soft plush surface presses into my back when he lays me down on the bed, and covers me with a blanket.

“I’m sorry I made you mad,” I whisper before the blackness tugs at me.

“I’m not mad at you, chère.” The tickle of his fingers down my temple sends a calm through me. “I’m mad at myself.”

25

Thierry

Every cell in my body is on fire right now. From the moment I walked through the door, I could feel that the atmosphere had shifted, the pressure dropped, the way it does before a hurricane. The way she looked, bent over the stove, in my shirt, would’ve been enough for me to wrangle her to the floor, if not for the unearthly level of restraint I’ve developed over the years.

Giving her more alcohol was a means of distracting her from the need to pop a pill tonight, and to serve as a barrier between us, as well. After all, nothing tamps down the libido quite like listening to drunken babble. But now, seeing her passed out in my bed, her dark, wet hair fanned out over the sheets, breathing in the scent of clean skin, knowing that nothing but a poorly wrapped towel separates me from what I’ve obsessed over all day, I feel as if I’m about to ignite. The plan to turn me off this woman has backfired tenfold, and something much more sinister has awakened inside of me.

Her little fortune telling session earlier was fairly spot on for me, except for one thing: aside from my mother and sister, I’ve never loved a woman in my life. That’s because men like me, as she so boldly categorized, only live for ourselves. Always on the fringes of a world that isn’t meant for us, we take selfishly and savagely, because she’s right, there are no guarantees. No happy endings. My timeline will end as a lonely old man, or with a bullet in my skull. There are no in-betweens. And indulgences, like Céleste, don’t happen that often.

I peel back the blanket and find the towel only half-wrapped over her body. The supple curve of a breast peeks out from beneath, and my fingers itch to touch her.

What if I did?

What if I slid the towel away and made my own personal feast of her body, licking and sucking and fucking her for hours, while she lay unconscious?

Every muscle in my body hardens with the thought. How easily I could take advantage of her, ease the tension churning inside of me, and get her out of my head during the day. Because honestly, how many times have I hooked up with a woman, only to find the buildup, the fantasy, was ten times better than the real thing?

Too many to count.

The talking and pouting afterward, the yearning to cuddle, when all I want is to wash their smell off me and leave. It annihilates the beauty and simplicity of a quick fuck.

But the absence of that sweet moaning sound she made in the shower, or never hearing my name on her lips when she comes? It’d be an absolute travesty of what makes the mirage of her so thrilling.

My gaze snags on the scar on her leg. Unless she was playing me, which would’ve been far more difficult to pull off in her drunken state, she didn’t seem to recognize the word Antitheus. It’s only my guess that the inverted ‘A’ symbolizes it, and it’s possible she has no clue who, or what, they are. I’m betting it’s one of the answers she drove all the way from Michigan to find, but for now, I’m keeping it under wraps. I don’t intend to feed her anything