Bad Romeo (Starcrossed #1)(27)
Author: Leisa Rayven

He’s nailing it.

“Do you honestly think we stand a chance?” he asks. I can feel his intensity from across the room. “We don’t. You know it. I know it. Your country club bitch of a mother knows it, and she’s the only one with enough guts to say it out loud. Stop fighting the inevitable. The inevitable always wins.”

My voice is small but simmering. Anger floods me. He’s wrong. As usual.

I crawl into Sarah’s skin and make her reactions mine. “When did you become such a coward?”

“About the same time I found out I knew nothing about you.”

“You do know me! You know the only things that are important.”

“Bullshit! I knew the person you were pretending to be, and lady, you’re one hell of an actress. You had me completely fooled.”

The room is humming with tension. He’s looking for an out. I’m not going to give it to him.

I step closer. “Sam, I know you love me. I know it like I know the sky’s blue and the world’s round. If you leave now, you’ll wake up in five years and wonder what the hell you’ve done, because people search their whole lives to find what we’ve got, and you’re throwing it away. Don’t you see that?”

My anger is filling the air, making it thick and hard to breathe.

He can’t even look at me. A wounded animal about to go to ground.

“I can’t be your project, Sarah. I’m not something you can fix.” He turns to leave.

“Wait!” The torment in my voice stops him. “You were never a project to me. And you’re not leaving until you tell me you don’t love me.”

His shoulders slump, and he mutters a curse word.

“Say it!”

He turns. His expression is full of conflict. Brimming with pain.

“If you want to ruin us,” I say, my voice tremulous, “then at least do the job right.”

He’s struggling, but I won’t back down. “Say it.”

He takes a breath. “I don’t love you.”

I can practically hear his heart cracking through the pain in his voice.

I order him to say it again. He does, but quieter. I’m breaking him, so he can’t walk away. He has to stay and be broken with me.

I tell him to say it one more time, and he can barely breathe with the effort. “I … don’t … love you.”

His attention is focused on the floor. Shattered.

“Do you believe it yet?” I ask.

When he looks at me with eyes full of agony and saltwater, I feel like I’m drowning.

“No,” he says, and before I have time to think, or prepare, or run, he’s striding toward me, and his hands are on my face. His touch makes me gasp. As the air rushes into my lungs, he covers my mouth with his.

Everything explodes. My body and mind seize. Senses overload, and three years disappear in a blinding millisecond.

His lips are just as I remember. Warm and soft. Delicious beyond words. He inhales sharply, and his hands tighten, one on my cheek, the other at the back of my neck. He makes a small sound in his throat, and heats flood me. My body is against his, and my hands are in his hair, and every single reason I should stay away melts as our mouths open to each other.

It’s rough and desperate and full of passion I don’t want to feel. But this … this is where all the best memories of him live.

This is what we should have been. Always. Mouths and hands on each other, breathing each other’s air. Reveling in our soul-deep connection, not running from it.

His hands trail over a trembling body that hasn’t felt this fire for far too long.

This is why I haven’t had a long-term relationship for the past three years. It’s why I sleep with men once and never call them again. Because they don’t feel like this.

I desperately want someone else to ruin me the way he does, but they don’t even come close. This is the first time I’ve truly felt aroused since he left, and I hate myself for it.

I pull my mouth free and manage to gasp, “Ethan,” before he mumbles, “God … Cassie,” and kisses me again.

My body can’t get enough of him, even if my brain knows it’s wrong. Every part of me craves him.

The noises he’s making are plaintive and desperate. Hands pull me closer. Arms wrap around.

I can’t believe that in the world of wrong we’ve created together, this can still feel so right.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Marco says before clearing his throat. “Let’s stop there before we need to get you two a room. Good job. Excellent chemistry.”

The spell is broken, and as I pull back, Holt’s eyes snap open. “Cassie…”

I push him away. He can’t kiss me like that and say my name with that tone, and completely own me without my fucking permission. He steps forward, but I can’t cope anymore. Before he can touch me again, I slap him.

He steps back, his expression so confused that for few seconds, I feel bad for doing it.

I shouldn’t. This is his fault. He knows what sort of power he has over me. He counted on it, and he exploited it. Now my body is pounding and aching. Needing him in ways I can’t deal with.

I hate that he can still make me feel like this. That with one kiss, he can demolish every single defense mechanism I’ve ever had against him.

I hate him for doing it, but I hate myself more for wanting him to do it again.

Six Years Earlier
Westchester, New York
The Diary of Cassandra Taylor

Dear Diary,

After all the crap he’s put me through in the past two weeks, Holt admitted he was attracted to me.

Well, he said reading my diary made him hard, which I guess is the same thing.

Why do I even care? He’s a rude, egotistical, apology-phobic ass, and nothing good would ever come of us hooking up. Except maybe some mind-blowing sex.

Oh, the sex. I can just imagine.

I can’t deny it anymore. I want him, even though he drives me insane.

And now that I’ve admitted that to myself (and to you, dear diary), I’m absolutely terrified he’s going to read this, because according to him, it’s inevitable. As soon as I write down something highly mortifying, the universe is going to find a way to let him see it.

Well, in that case: Hey, Holt! Yeah, you diary-reading jerk! I want to grope you. Wanna have angry sex and blow my horny, virginal mind?

I drop my pen and rip the page out of my diary before scrunching it up and throwing it at the trash can. It bounces off the edge and joins the other seven balled-up pieces of paper littering the floor.