Make Me - Tessa Bailey Page 0,25

not knowing if you’ll want to hang out with me again.” She rolled her right shoulder back. “I know I took advantage of you. But I apologized, Russell. And to be perfectly honest, I think you’re taking this silent treatment a little too far. And now I find out you have this whole other life—”

“Back up.” She’d written and deleted messages to him. Messages that would never reach his phone. That knowledge was a shotgun bullet right in the gut. “What was that first part, again?”

“I took advantage of—”

“Yeah. That part.” His booted footsteps created an echo as he approached her. “Don’t ever say or think that bullshit again. Are we clear?”

Her back pressed against the wall when he got close enough to touch, her brow wrinkling. “But it’s true, I—”

Russell laid his palms flat above her head, pulses pounding wildly all over his body. His temples, his chest, below his belt. “I’m warning you, Abby.”

That was the exact moment he showed his hand. And he didn’t know if he held aces or a deuce-seven off-suit. He only knew based on Abby’s curious expression that he’d just alerted her to the fact that a decision hung in the balance. It was hers to make, and the result was his backing off or going forward.

Or maybe there was no decision at all. Had it all been decided Monday night in her bedroom? The first time she’d walked out onto her building’s stoop and he’d sunk like a stone beneath a crashing wave? He didn’t know. But hearing her blame herself for their becoming physical simply wouldn’t fly. Not when he’d wrung his dick out nightly for the last six months, pretending like she was watching it happen, gasping in approval, and kissing his neck. Christ. His Abby had been defiled by him so many times, a number didn’t exist. She would take the blame for what happened between them over his dead body.

Long seconds of Abby’s studying his face had passed, as if she could discern what was taking place in his head when even he didn’t have a fucking clue. Those eyes were obscured a moment by her eyelashes, and Russell could feel that gaze move over his erect cock where it tented his jeans, then shoot back up. He expected surprise, maybe more confusion. Instead, he got relief and excitement. No. Not that. He couldn’t handle that.

Her sweet, ripe tits rose and fell on a shudder. “I’m sorry I used the situation to my advantage, Russell. It was wrong of m—”

He kissed Abby. Abby. He . . . kissed Abby. Sensation exploded in his head like an atom bomb, incinerating everything in its path. No, not everything. Only the negative, replacing it with optimism, relief, elevating him above anything that could touch him beside her. That’s how good—how right—she tasted. Like a beast that had been chained for centuries, and the second those imaginary chains fell away, he attacked without hesitation. Stopping now was a hysterical notion because her arms were around his neck, her body flattened against the wall . . . by him. Yeah, that was him grinding every inch of himself to her, branding her, imprinting the pattern of his muscles and flesh on Abby. He was kissing Abby.

The resonance of her name cut a path through the ringing in his skull. If he continued kissing her like this, her virginity would be as good as gone. Even now, her inexperience showed, her tongue testing itself against his. A tentative lick that almost sent him ejaculating against the fly of his jeans. He moaned into her mouth, telling himself one more minute, just one more.

Better make it count. Russell gripped a fistful of her hair and rotated it, wrapping the long strands tight and forcing her head back. With his other hand, he urged her chin lower so he could invade her mouth deeper, get another one of those self-conscious touches of her tongue because fuck they were perfection and misery all rolled into one. She gave one to him—yes, God—and he felt the stroke in his dick, as if that pulsing part of him were inside her mouth, rather than his tongue. A vision of Abby on her knees gave him no choice but to press her harder against the wall, lest he urge her to the floor. Goner . . . he was a goner.

He felt her hand flatten against his chest and push, then pat pat pat. Breathe. Shit, she needed to breathe.