I inched forward and pressed her closer to the wall. She looked up at me with wild blue eyes. They roiled like a tormented sky. I brushed my nose along her temple and inhaled. She smelled so damned good. A touch of cinnamon and a whole lot of spice.

This girl made me lose my head. Fuck. She made me lose my head.

If I were in my right mind, I would walk. I would turn right around and walk away and never look back. Just like I’d promised her I would. I knew it deep. Knew it like the setting of the sun that led me into the darkness night after night.

This was gonna end bad. Just the fact I was chasing her was evidence enough.

But right then? I didn’t care because I wasn’t close to feeling sane.

It seemed no matter how hard the two of us kept trying to fight it, pushing each other off when the other got too close, the next time we just got closer.

Closer and closer and closer until there was no going back.

I couldn’t.

Not anymore.

Sitting up on that stage and playing that song while watching the ripping expressions tear across her features had proven that.

For one night, I wanted it. I wanted her secrets. I wanted to sink my fingers in and take for myself. She was the exact kind of contradiction I craved.

The push and pull.

But this time the pull was too great to ignore.

I traced my thumbs along the delicate slope of her neck. Dragged them across the soft, soft skin. Her pulse was racing with a violent beat. I forced her to look at me while my entire body ran hot.

“Tell me what you want, Red.” It slipped out in a rough murmur.

In the distance, thunder rolled. Those blue eyes flashed. Flashed with courage and fear.

Something about it made me shake.

Almost defiantly, she lifted her chin, and she reached up with her small hands and grasped me around the wrists.

“I want you to kiss me.”

Motherfucker.

Leave it to Red to ask for the thing I didn’t want to give. Memories cut a path of panic through my consciousness. Reminding me of what I’d done. Of why I could never get too close.

Of where my loyalty truly lay.

Clenching my jaw, I gripped her tighter. My heart was giving its all to reject this. Screaming at me to wise up and to do it fast. To turn my back and walk away. No doubt, my feet had officially crossed into the forbidden zone. Out of bounds.

Red was trying to take me places I didn’t want to go.

On the inside, I struggled like a goddamned madman. Torn between lashing out like I’d done the last time she’d been tempting me with the need to sink inside her, to discover the countless secrets she had lying underneath, and gathering her up and letting her in on all of mine.

I was at an all-out war with my instincts. The fucked-up thing was I didn’t even know what those were anymore.

Not when it came to her.

Wavering, I rocked forward in indecision then rocked back. Getting closer to those full red lips with each pass.

Her attention flitted over my face. They jumped from my eyes to my mouth and back again. She fisted my suit jacket.

“What do you want?” she demanded, turning the question on me. Her voice was a brazen, needy mix of the siren who had no issue with putting me in my place and the soft vulnerability that kept seeping through.

My tongue darted out and swept across my bottom lip.

Dying for a taste.

“Fuck it.”

Figured she was going to kill me, anyway.

My mouth came down hard on hers. At the same time, I drove my hands into ruby-red curls.

Yes. No fucking question. This was what I wanted. Every hesitation left me.

I twisted her hair tight and yanked her head back to grant better access to the pouty mouth that had starred in more than just a few of my fantasies. I needed to take more of this girl.

Because hell, if I was giving in, then I was getting it all.

“Red,” I groaned as I edged back for a second. Diving back in, my lips closed over her plump bottom lip that’d been seducing me for months.

Goddamn, she was delicious.

I tugged and sucked at it, before I turned to the top and did the same.

A hard breath left her, and tiny pricks of pain just wound me higher as she dug her nails into the back of my neck.

Tamar was short, and I found myself smiling against her mouth as she pressed up on her toes to get closer to me, just as I was pressing her into the wall. Trapping her against my dick that had been hard for her for days—for a damned year, really.

But God, it’d been unbearable since I’d tossed her out my door two days ago. I’d been desperate to keep her out when I knew full well she’d been trying to break through. Back when I’d been a big enough fool to think there was a chance we weren’t going to end up right here.

Her tongue touched mine. Tentative at first. Like maybe it’d been just as long since this girl had kissed someone as it’d been for me. Like it was foreign and too much and too little, all at the same damned time.

Then she opened more. Needing more.

Her tongue flicked against the intrusion of mine. She moaned.

Sexy as fuck.

“That’s it…show me, Red,” I coaxed at her mouth. “Show me what you’ve got.”

My dick throbbed, and I yanked her from her feet so I could get her legs around my waist. Right where they belonged. And this fucking dress…this fucking dress that’d nearly brought me to my knees when she’d come walking through the church doors and down the aisle, was bunched up over her thighs.

With her pinned to the door by my body, I spread out my hands and let them slip firmly down her sides. One single target in mind. My thumbs flicked over the hard pucker of her nipples that peaked through the thin fabric of her dress.

Shit.

“Lyrik.” It was a gasp.

I groaned through a grin. My entire body vibrated with a fresh flood of lust. “Give me a few minutes, baby, and you’re going to be screaming that name.”

I was going to make sure of it.

Shivers rocked her, and I grasped her by that ample ass before I moved lower to take her by the thighs.

I was right.

This curvy bombshell fit perfectly in my hands.

My palm moved hot over that tat of temptation. The apple and the serpent painted on the outside of her thigh.

I wondered who of us was who.

I kept kissing her because she tasted so damned good, kept grinding up against the tiny slip of silk between her thighs. Winding us up tighter than we already were.

“So good,” she murmured almost in confusion.

The inflection of her voice? I wanted to swallow it down and somehow make it a part of me. Maybe just as bad as I wanted to devour her. Just as bad as I wanted to taste and take every inch.

Shit.

I felt like a dog on the hunt that had no clue he was about to get bit.

By a tiny red viper, nonetheless.

I pressed harder against her, aching in a way I hadn’t for years.

Maybe ever.

She was hot.

So damned hot.

Her tight little body radiated heat. Skin on fire.

“Red.” That nickname floated out on the delirious, lust-inducing need she managed to work up in me.

On that one single word, we lit.

We were suddenly a blur of desperate hands and straining bodies.

Mouths and tongue and teeth.

She ripped at my suit jacket, trying to get it over my shoulders in the same second I fumbled with the knob of her door.

I couldn’t wait to get in this girl.

I wanted to be everywhere.

In her mouth.

Her pussy.

Her ass.

I was taking it all.

For one night, I was letting myself get mixed up in this confusing contradiction of a woman.

Fuck the consequences or the feeling or the lingering regret. Fuck all the bullshit she evoked with a mere glimpse of vulnerability.

Like this blue-eyed angel got me in a way no one could.

Because right now…right now gone were the traces of soft and the innuendos of sweet.

And this red-headed demon had been tempting me for too long.

The door gave and it banged open behind her. Her weight was suddenly completely in my arms. I hiked her up higher and she clung tighter.

We stumbled in, and I kicked the door shut behind us and pressed her up against the nearest wall. “Fuck…Red…I need you. I need you in a way that’s just not right. You have me so messed up.”

I yanked her back, carrying her toward the hall.

“I know…I know…I know,” she chanted, still kissing me mad, two of us banging into walls as we went.

“Oh my God…this is crazy…what am I doing…what am I doing?” she mumbled into our frantic kisses.

“Taking what we both need. Taking what’s been coming. What’s been coming since the second I walked into Charlie’s and saw you behind that bar.” I kept moving, fumbling toward the bedroom that was just like mine. “Knew then I had to have you.”

A soft light glowed from above the partition wall that didn’t come up all the way to reach the ceiling, her room sectioned off in the back.

My heart was racing. Too hard. Too wrong.

Still, I continued on, carrying her into her room and tossing her onto the center of her bed.

She bounced on it and whimpered a tight, “Lyrik.”

Shit. I liked the way that sounded. Too much.

My eyes raked over the girl who was exactly my kind of perfection. Curves and big tits and round ass. Slender little waist just right for cinching my hands around.

Her head shook slightly on her pillow, and her chest lifted and fell in tiny quakes. For a second, her expression tripped me up, jumping through so many emotions I couldn’t catch up with them. Not when I couldn’t catch up with my own.

But tonight wasn’t about deciphering. It was about giving in. About taking. About surrendering for one minute when it was clear neither of us had a day to give.

I crawled over her. My hands slid up the outside of her thighs as I went.

Her head pressed back and she whispered a moan.

Everything rushed, my blood pumping hard.

Her nimble fingers freed my already loosened tie then tore through the buttons on my shirt. Shrugging it off, I went for her neck. I kissed at the snowy flesh, her pulse alive beneath my tongue. All the while I worked the zipper down on her dress and lifted it over her head.

As soon as I did, I pushed back onto my knees and flicked the snap between her tits on her strapless bra.

It fell free.

“Shit,” I hissed, taking a good look at the girl who I’d been desperate to have for the last year. She lay there shaking in nothing but her barely there panties. “You’re the best fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

Ever.

Tamar always looked like a pin-up. Exactly the kind I had pinned up on my walls when I was just making that transition from boy to man. When I was just getting an idea of what I liked. Girls who were red-lipped, sassy, and full-of-steam.

But this…this…

Her.

She was hard and soft. Tattooed and clean. Vixen and angel.

Dirty and pure.

The war I’d been fighting regrouped for another battle. Screaming at me to run. Because my stomach twisted and my heart fisted tightly. A foreign feeling I barely remembered formed in my chest.

Gritting my teeth, I forced it down and instead pulled the rosy-bud of one of those tits into my mouth. I sucked at the pink, pebbled flesh, rolling it around my tongue. Flicking and tasting and teasing.

She arched and gasped.

A growl rumbled in my chest. “So damned hot…fuck, Red…fuck…you are every girl I’ve ever wanted.”

I didn’t even know what I was saying. The words were a mumbled mess. Logic not quite fully firing from my brain. All rational thought had been stripped from me as I made a move across the tattoo on her chest and on to her other tit. I lapped across the top of the curved swell before rising up to take that nipple in my mouth.

Nails scratched at my back and her hips bucked against mine.

Begging.

When I couldn’t take it a second longer, I climbed off the bed and unbuttoned my pants, stripping myself to my underwear while I watched Red writhe on the bed. Eyebrows drawn and pulled up tight. Hands fisting in the sheet below her.

Knew I was about five seconds from setting off that bundle of fireworks that sizzled and burned.

I crawled back over her and knelt between her legs. They were trembling. Rolling with need and lust. I gripped her knees, her skin hot and flushed and making my mouth water. My hands slid down and my fingers traced over the serpent and around the apple on the outside of her left thigh as I watched her blue eyes flare.

At the contact, she released a tiny cry.

The sound had me straining harder. I leaned forward and bent over her leg so I could dip down and get a good taste of that tat. My tongue dragged over its lines, across her skin. I just kept moving, taking a path over the top of her thigh and to the inside. I sucked at the tender skin that met the edge of her panties as I gathered the tiny bit of material at her hips in my hands.

They needed to go.

I started to drag them down.

Red whimpered again, and there was something about it that sent a tremor of unease through me. Her legs clenched down around my sides.

Not to hold me close.

But to keep me at bay.

They were shaking. Almost as badly as her arms were shaking at her sides.

I jerked my head up to look at her face.

“Red,” I whispered urgently. At the sight of her expression, I scrambled back like I’d dipped my fingers in flames.

Blank panic.

Her eyes were wide and trained on the ceiling. But somehow I got she wasn’t really there. Not with me. Not anymore. Her body was rigid and tears streamed unchecked from the corners of her eyes and into her hair.

This time when she whimpered it sounded more like a sob.

“Red,” I whispered again. A whisper that was close to begging, because I’d beg if it’d bring her back from wherever she’d gone.

My heart pounded. Fuck. I was so far out of my element, I didn’t have a single clue what to do. I moved back enough to give her space.

To let her breathe.

But there was a piece inside that wouldn’t let me get far. Even under the warning roaring in my head to fucking up and run. It was the piece that urged me to comfort her. To soothe her. To take it away.

Some fucked-up piece that got all twisted and mangled when I looked at her like this.

When she was completely vulnerable and exposed.

Angel.

Innocent.

She rolled onto her side and drew her knees protectively to her chest. Her head just kept going deeper, burrowing into the pillow.

Her body wracked and shuddered, heaving with sobs that got louder as she curled tighter. Like she’d give anything to disappear.

Again, my heart fisted in my chest. Painfully. So tight I couldn’t breathe. Like this thing—like a monster inside me—was suffocating me. An inhuman swell of protectiveness I couldn’t afford to feel. Rage set up a slow boil just under the surface of my skin.

Get out. Go. Go. Go. You can’t do this.

Helpless, I climbed to my feet, searching her room. For what, I didn’t know.

An answer.

Or maybe a name.

Yeah.

A fucking name. Because I was pretty sure I needed someone to kill. To hunt down whoever had hurt her.

I looked back at the girl who was lying there half naked, shivering like she’d been left for dead out in the snow. I grabbed a blanket and covered her.

“Red,” I whispered. Cautious, I ran my fingers through her hair.

She flinched but didn’t freak out like she had before.

“Red, baby, Red. It’s me…it’s Lyrik, I won’t hurt you…I promise, I won’t hurt you,” I kept murmuring as I gathered her in my arms.

Crossing another line.

I carried her to the big plush chair she had in the corner of her room and settled her on my lap.

She kept crying and trembling in my arms.

“Red.” I rubbed my hands up and down her back. Rocking her. Shushing her. Anything to take it away.

To make it better.

Fuck. Why couldn’t she have just said no?

I’d begged her to.

Then neither of us would be here. Right where we shouldn’t be.

“I’m so sorry.” Her voice was a hoarse rasp. So desperate and small, I felt it rattle my bones. She buried her face in my chest and clutched me like I was her lifeline back from the dark. The brash, bitch of a girl who tossed drinks at a dive bar was long gone. “I’m so sorry.”

I ran my hand down her back and pressed a bunch of small kisses to the crown of her head, my voice lost in her hair. “Shh…don’t apologize. You’ve got nothing to apologize for. Nothing. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

“Lyrik.” It was pain. Torment. Regret.

“Shh…baby…I’ve got you…I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”

I cringed as soon as I let it pass from my mouth.

I looked to the ceiling and squeezed my eyes closed.

What the fuck had I gotten myself into?

“Promise?” she whispered like she was just a scared little girl.

“I promise.”

It was a lie.

Truth was, I couldn’t keep anyone safe.

Because guys like me?

They bred destruction.

I felt everything break apart while I held her. Held her until her whimpers trailed off and her tense body finally relaxed. Meanwhile, mine threatened to snap.

When I was sure she was asleep, I carefully carried her back to her bed. Cautious not to wake her, I laid her down in the center of it still curled in the blanket. A moan bled through those red lips, and she snuggled back onto her side. All that red hair tumbled out behind her.

I brushed my fingers through it and anger pulsed.

Unstoppable.

What the fuck was I going to do?