Unmistakable (13 page)

“You were gone, Stella.” His face contorts in pain and he’s forced to choke out his next words. “Even if I had found you...I was afraid that you would still be gone.”

I can’t completely deny his accusation. I did disappear. I was gone. I just never expected him to let me stay that way. The blur of emotions—regret, anger, blame—become too much. I bury my face in my hands.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“It’s not your fault,” he snaps.

I can see the rage lying just beneath his skin. I’m powerless to take away his anger. Jack, my beautiful, blond, gloriously blessed brother, had always been the one who could talk Luke back from the edge. I was usually the one who drove him there. But Jack isn’t here, and he’ll never be here again.

Luke paces back and forth across the tiny room, and as I watch him, my eyes catch on the reverse side of his forearm. There’s intricate, black script running up and down his skin, but the darkness obscures my vision, and I can’t make out the words.

I take a step towards him, willing to do anything to stop his mindless pacing, but without my heels on, I barely reach his the bottom of his chin. I’m afraid of his thunderous temper, of what might happen if I push him too far, but I can’t stop.

Proximity changes everything. I’m enveloped in a force field of our own creation, and the air pulses with a tingling electricity that overtakes both of our bodies. The shock in his face tells me that he feels it too.

“Don’t do that, Stella,” he whispers sharply. “Back up.”

He’s not even bothering to disguise the pain in his face anymore, and that display of naked emotion shatters my final defenses. I would do anything, be anything, to take it away.

“Luke, stop. Stop. It’s going to be fine. I’m sorry. I am so sorry for everything. I should have...”

I bite back my words, because there are a lot of things that I should have done. But ultimately, these are all things that I didn’t do. I can’t wind the clock and force time to play in reverse, no matter how much I might wish for it.

“You should have what?” His voice is low and soft and dangerously vulnerable.

“I should have...” I stumble over the words, so long unsaid to anyone but myself. “It should have been him, not me,” I say eventually.

Although he must know what I mean, I clarify my words.

“You should have saved his life and not mine.”

There’s a violent struggle in his eyes, a second of indecision, a moment where I think he’s going to lose the crusade to ebb the flow of his rage. I run my fingers up and down his arm, trying to comfort, to heal, to help in some small way, but he winces as if I’ve burned him. His eyes wild, he pushes me away.

“Stella...” His voice is strangled and strangely beautiful. I want him to say it again, just like that.

“Luke, please. Please. I’m so sorry.”

He buries his head in his hands, barely muffling an animalistic groan, and his fingers grip his hair as if he wants to eradicate himself from the spot. Finally, he slides down the wall until I tower over him.

“I’m so sorry,” I repeat.

When he looks up at me, there’s no sign of the torture he’s just put himself though. I can tell that whatever battle he’s been having, he’s obviously just surrendered. I open my mouth to apologize again, to offer an explanation, a real one this time, but he shakes his head fiercely, locks his gaze on my face, and hauls himself up to his full height.

In one smooth, effortless motion, he pulls me into his arms, tangling his fingers into my hair and pressing my face tightly to his chest. I can’t see anything, feel anything, do anything but breathe in the sweat and whiskey-scented skin. There’s no softness to his body, just the rigid strength of muscle and flesh stretched tightly against solid steel. He could crush me, body and soul and spirit, with just one blow.

I can’t tell where I end and he begins, at least until he bends my head back and crushes his lips to mine.

There’s nothing gentle about his bruising, powerful mouth, or the seemingly unbreakable stronghold he has on my body. He’s resolute, his hands wrapped around me so tightly that I don’t think he ever plans to let me go.

It’s the last thing I expected him to do. And, I realize suddenly, the last thing he expected himself to do.

Still, there’s no hesitation, no gentle fumbling, no yield to his strength. Even when his lips brush against mine, they’re rough and wild and harsh, his tongue twisting against my lips. Forcing them open.

I part my mouth slightly. He was right—he doesn’t need an invitation, and he’s not asking for one. As his lips vibrate against mine, I wrap my legs around him and kiss him harder, needing the fierceness of his embrace, the full measure of him.

I turn my head to the side and shift my body so that we’re again wrapped so deeply into each other that it’s impossible to disentangle myself. I run my fingers through his slightly damp hair, smoothing the rough edges and then mussing them again, grasping for any part of him that I don’t already have. He runs his tongue over every inch of my mouth, brushing his lips against mine again. It’s too brief, and I let out an involuntary moan, mournful for the loss of the certain weight.

Being here, with Luke, is like falling into a void that I’m not sure I can ever crawl out of. Despite the knowledge of that, there’s no choice for me, not in this. I lose myself in his darkness.

Just as abruptly as it began, I lose him, too. His arms loosen and he spins around so that I can’t see his face. I’m too afraid to make even the faintest noise, out of fear that I’ll break whatever spell possessed him to do this.

Kissing has always been on my list of life’s grand disappointments. I’ve kissed boys and there have been mutually agreed-upon moments where kissing was totally expected and natural, but they’ve always been gentle, kind, chivalrous, as if demanding more could actually break me. “I’m not a porcelain doll,” I’ve screamed, at least in my head. Luke’s kisses are neither kind nor chivalrous. Instead, they’re laced with a dangerous desire that threatens to eat me alive. I should be glad that he stopped. I should be, but I’m not.

When I realize that I am, in fact, made of flesh and bone and I haven’t been transported to some other world where nothing exists but the two of us, I make a decision.

For the last three years, I’ve built a fortress of dispensable things—except for Izzy, everything in my life can be replaced. It’s safer that way. Luke is not dispensable. Possessing Luke’s lips, feeling the heat of his body against mine, is the one thing I’m not willing to let go. He is not leaving this room until I get all of him.

I slide my arms around his back. The thickness of his muscles provide a rebuff to my advances, but I refuse to lose. I fit myself into the space between his body and the wall and I take his face between my hands, his beautiful face that has unbearable pain written in every crease.

The aloofness that once dominated his expression has transformed into a depth of understanding, the knowledge of loss and evil and never-ending sorrow that I’ve never been able to put voice or even thought to. It’s the worst kind of pain—a throbbing ache that never abates, never breaks, never stops its endless thundering.

I know it, I’ve felt it, I’ve lived inside its skin.

I’m a selfish monster. I’ve thought about Luke every day. I’ve imagined his lips possessing mine in the tiny moments of tenderness that hide beneath all of his bluster, but it never occurred to me that his agony might be as great as my own.

There’s only one gift that I have left to give, one thing that he might not be able to reject. Without thinking, I plunge myself headfirst into madness.

“I love you.”

It’s my hail mary. I never meant to say those words. I didn’t mean to feel them. I have no hope that he will reciprocate. I know that he doesn’t love me, maybe not at all, and definitely not in the way that I want him to. Loving and being loved aren’t the same thing, unless you were born under a lucky star. Despite all of the reasons why I shouldn’t have said it, the love I have for him is a gift and not a burden, and if he understands nothing else, I have to believe that he will understand that.

I had to say the words aloud. For a fleeting moment, the snake of fear in my stomach loosens and I feel blessedly free. And then my instincts for self-preservation kick in. Despite the unending truth of my words, I know that I’ve laid my heart bare in front of him. He will rip me into tiny shreds. I cover my mouth with my hands, like I could swallow my declaration whole, and I look up into his eyes.

I expect unrelenting, merciless, brooding mockery, but his blue eyes have melted into a softness that leaves me completely undone.

His face darkens. He’s going to scream and rage and pretend I didn’t say it. My words stick in the air between us, but he can’t find the right contradiction, the right insult. Instinct tells me to keep my gaze steady. Finally, when I can’t stand the silence for one moment longer, I tilt my head and give him a helpless shrug.

I love you. I’ve tried to stop, I’ve tried to beat my love for you out of my head, but I can’t. And I won’t.

When he crumples before me, I know I’ve lost. I’m not even going to get the satisfaction of a carefully targeted verbal dagger. He is going to run and I will never see him again.

T
he softness in his expression has disappeared into darkness, and before I can truly register the fact that he’s no longer on the ground, his powerful hands are everywhere. His arms reach, touch, and conquer. We’re again wrapped together in our inescapable dance.

I should be completely at his mercy, since he now knows that he can break me with a single word. So, why hasn’t he done it?

My vision clears, and I see well beyond my experience and uncover the truth—the tables have turned. I’m no longer the comforted, but the comforter. The only question that remains is what he plans on doing about it.

His lips, hot and aching, slide over my temple, my jawline, my neck, until he gets to my mouth, which he claims in a torrent of greed and unchecked desire. He slides the green dress from one shoulder and rains kisses on my collarbone, each one tender and wet and soft and loving. I lean my head back and lose myself in sensation.

I have my answer. He plans to conquer me, my body and heart and mind and soul. I could have told him that he’s had all of those things, for longer than I would ever want to admit.

I’m greedy, pulsing with need and want and unending desire. I slide my hands around his waist and force his lips to cover mine again, but this time, I dart my tongue in between his teeth, needing to know every curve of his mouth. Lost in discovery, I let out a little moan, which only serves to enflame him further. His skin is taut over his muscles and I run my hands over every part of him that is bare.

He dips his fingers below the heavy beading on my other shoulder, and the dress slides entirely from my frame. When I kick it away, it hits the wall opposite us and slides to the ground.

He pushes his hands through my hair, holding it back from my face and gripping my jaw with his palms. My bones feel fragile in the grip of his strong hands, insubstantial enough that he could pound them into dust.

“You are infinitely beautiful,” he whispers, the stubble on his chin grazing my ear.

I shiver, from his words and his touch and the knowledge that he is everything I have ever wanted made beautifully real.

His heavy-lidded eyes skate over my neck and torso until they reach my breasts, and a tantalizing shiver runs up and down my spine. His mouth, wet and generous, closes over one nipple, tugging and licking and driving me halfway to insanity and back. Luke doesn’t seem to notice that I am dangerously close to combustion—he just continues his relentless teasing, up and down my ribcage until I can’t take it anymore. As hunger overtakes me, I arch my spine and push against him.

“Not so fast,” he murmurs, running long, guitar-hardened fingers over my skin. “You were always in a hurry.”

I am in a hurry. I catch his chin in my hand and beg him to hasten the inevitable, but he merely shakes his head and gives me a long, languorous look as he runs his fingers through my hair, which has become a belligerent tangle around my head. I toss my head to the side, wanting to be free of it. He slows down even further, wrapping a curl in his fingers and waiting for it to spring loose.

When I dig my nails into his shoulders, his eyes widen in shock, as if he’s just realized that I am a participant instead of an observer in this particular game. His smile, the one I know so well, is wicked, and he shoves me against the wall so fiercely that I know the paper-thin drywall will crumble from our weight. The whole room shakes, but he merely gives the ceiling an amused glance before returning to his ministrations on my body. I’m held prisoner, captivated by the multitude of ways that his fingers can drive me absolutely insane.

With just one finger, he slides my panties from my skin. I flex my body against him, wanting his hand to linger in my heat. He shakes a finger at me and I can feel his grin as his tongue returns to my breast.

He gets to taste, to touch, to feel, and I have nothing to hold onto but my tenuous grip on reality. It’s not fair. I yank at his shirt, needing to cause as much torment as he is causing me. I manage to touch more bare skin, and I groan as I see the perfectly toned muscles rippling beneath the buttons. He catches my hands before I can rip the shirt entirely from his body, pinning both behind my head with one of his. He moves his head to the curve of my neck and sucks gently on my delicate flesh.

When I capture his mouth with mine, he emits a guttural groan. It’s a diversionary tactic, and while he isn’t paying attention, I slide my hand under the buttons and pull his shirt free. The feel of his bare chest rouses an animalistic need for more, so I thread one hand into his jeans and slide my palm around his full length. He strains against the fabric even as he tries to push my hand away, but I know exactly how much he wants me—he’s impossibly hard, almost bursting against the buttons.

“Stella.”

I curl my fingers into his hair and maneuver my body so that our flesh is indistinguishable, so that we are almost one.