Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 241
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
It should be freezing, but my blood is hot like I’ve been jogging around a crash site, uncertain about what to do with the wreckage.
I snatched a fuzzy white blanket for Luna though. She’s clutching her elbows, and goosebumps pimple her skin. I come up behind her. “I know your species has already perfected temperature control and all. But thought you could use this.”
She rotates away from the city and sees the blanket. “We haven’t…perfected it either.” She shrugs. “We’re no better than humans.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say in a near-whisper, my throat drying out. The cold isn’t helping.
Luna lets me tuck the blanket over her shoulders, so I’m thinking this hole I gotta climb out of might not be as deep as I feared.
And then she says, “You want in?” She opens her arms to welcome me into the warmth of her blanketed embrace.
It crashes into me. Her love.
Yeah…
I want in, and without listening to anything but my body, I walk into her arms. She’s gentle and sweet and everything I could’ve ever dreamed of having from a girlfriend during an intense…situation?
I definitely wouldn’t call it a fight. It’s a missed signal. She’s speaking Thebulan, and I can’t get the translation back fast enough, not any more than she’s been able to receive mine.
I wrap my arms around her shoulders out of the blanket, liking the cold. “I don’t see you as broken,” I tell her. “I promise it’s not that you don’t have all of your memories of me.”
Confusion crinkles her brows.
I try to read more of her expression. “Luna…”
She’s holding on to my waistband. “You said you don’t understand, but I don’t understand either.” Her eyes drift past me, filling with tears again.
I hate seeing her cry. Think a baby lamb dies every time Luna sheds a tear. It’s a million times worse knowing I’m making her cry. I’m slaughtering lambs. I’m making it hard for little kids to count ‘em to go to sleep. A generation of insomniacs—my doing.
“It’s starting to feel like rejection,” Luna whispers. “And I don’t want it to. I don’t want you to have sex with me because you feel sorry for me either. Or you’re only trying to fulfill my needs. I want you to want me—”
“You don’t think I want you?” My brows jump, my stomach in knots hearing that. “Most hours, having sex with you is all I can think about. I want inside you so badly, I’d rip through space and time just to get to you.” I cup the back of her head. “I had you lying on the pool table with your ass against me, and from my head to my toes, I wanted to fuck you tonight, Luna. I could barely stop—”
“Why are you trying to stop?” she cries, tears falling down her cheeks. I’m about to wipe them, but she brushes at her face before I can.
“I can’t bear the thought of…” hurting you. I cut myself off from saying it. ‘Cause I am hurting her. I thought prolonging sex would help her in the long run, not cause her pain. If I keep pulling away when she thinks I’m getting closer, I’m gonna keep hurting Luna. And myself too. Her hurt is my agony.
That much is clear.
“Donnelly?” Her chin trembles.
“I’m afraid,” I choke out, my eyes scalding and wet. “I’ve been afraid of hurting you—that if I make one wrong move too fast, it’ll inflict pain that you won’t be able to come back from.”
Luna ponders this. “Can you forget I’m kind of a virgin?”
“No,” I say strongly. “No, I can’t. I won’t. And I’m not waiting for you to remember what sex feels like to sleep with you.”
“Then why do you think you’ll hurt me?”
I start to shake my head. “I had sex with you and then you were kidnapped, Luna. I broke a promise to your dad doing it, and it’s felt like the one thing in my control is to wait this time around. ‘Cause if I waited, then nothing bad could happen to you.” I let out a pained sound. “I think I hurt you tonight though.” It’s eating at me.
“I’m okay,” she says with a nod. Her tears have dried.
I take a deeper breath, trying to ease.
“You won’t hurt me if we sleep together,” she assures. “I was right when I wrote that you are the best of humankind. Because being close to you has only brought me the best that humankind can offer. It’s made me feel strong and whole and loved. The very inverse of what you’re afraid of.”
I rake the heel of my palm against my wet cheek now. “Think you have a new talent. The banishment of fears.”
Her smile lights up my whole world. “They better be afraid of me. Because I’ll come after them again and again, and my bite is deadly. They’ll never win.”