Avenged(26)

“You won’t have to get too creative.” He reached behind him and pulled a familiar-looking wallet out of his back pocket. Now, it looked like it had seen better days. The leather was torn, half of it looked like it was missing and it was stained with lord only knew. But I could see my driver’s license and my credit cards were still in the remaining slots. “I dug around in the car and found this wedged under the back seat.”

I gasped at him, jaw dropping open in disbelief. Not at the fact he’d found my ID, but at the fact he had risked his neck crawling around in the demolished SUV. I took the last few steps that separated us and snatched the tattered leather out of his hand, tossing it on the floor next to my bag. “Are you insane? What were you thinking messing with that car? It could have shifted and slid the rest of the way down the mountain. You would have gone with it.” I was practically screaming at him but I couldn’t pull it back. I worried about him, scared that he was wasting what little time we had left on foolish tasks so he didn’t have to face the inevitable conclusion of our time together.

“Hey, I told you I was a problem solver. It’s what I do, it’s what I’m good at. You needed something fixed so I fixed it, no matter the cost…that’s how it works.” He cocked an eyebrow and tilted his chin defiantly. “I think the words you’re looking for are ‘thank you’.”

Angrily and desperately, I closed the space between us. I grabbed the front of his shirt and used my hold on the fabric to pull myself to the tips of my toes. I slammed my mouth on his and immediately tasted snow and man. His lips were chilly and his beard was damp from being outside, but his tongue was warm as it tangled with mine and his breath was hot as I stole it from him. He immediately took over the kiss, owning it, controlling it, feeding it with the scrape of his teeth and the twist of his tongue. His icy hands grasped each side of my face and held me to him as I wrapped my fingers around his wrist. His pulse hammered furiously against my fingertips, each beat another second slipping away, marching us toward our separate fates. I’d wasted a lot of time with the people in my life that I cared about; I refused to do that with this one. I only got him for a few heartbeats; I was going to make them matter.

When I pulled back, we both had heavy-lidded eyes and whisper breaths. I leaned forward so I could rest my forehead on his fuzzy chin, and rubbed it against the springy facial hair that lived there. I found the gentle scrape of it comforting and arousing. I wanted to feel it across the rest of my skin.

“I’m going to be gone in the morning, Ben. This is not a problem you have to fix. This is an experience you need to have before the opportunity passes. If your purpose was to save me then consider it mission accomplished.” I pulled back so I could look up at him, seduction and salvation clear between every blink and in every breath. “Let me be the reward for a job well done. Let me show you that you are worth a second chance, that everyone can be saved, before our time runs out.” I let go of his wrist and reached for the scar on his neck. I traced my fingers over the mark and brushed my thumb along his Adam’s apple as he swallowed hard. “There’s a reason that we were thrown together, Ben. We were supposed to be here. We were supposed to save each other.” I pressed into him as hard as I could and moved my mouth to that ravaged side of his throat. “This is not a mistake; it’s a moment we will have forever.”

“You honestly think sex is going to fix everything that’s wrong with us, Pop-Tart? Because I gotta tell ya, in my experience sex is where a lot of those problems I ended up having to fix in my old life started.” He was on the edge; all I needed to do was push him over.

“No, I don’t think sex will fix us, but I think the two of us together will give us something to hold onto when the days are dark and remind us that there is a reason to keep going. It will be a memory that makes sense when nothing else does. I want that so bad I can taste it.” I smiled at him and reached up to push his coat off his wide shoulders. It hit the floor with a plop as I tugged at the Henley that was underneath and ordered him to unbuckle his belt. Being one handed sucked; it made getting to all the things I wanted to play with more difficult than it should be. I was impatient and anxious, racing against his resistance. “For the rest of your life, no matter what goes wrong or how bad things get, we’ll have this single moment where we got everything right. Don’t you need that? Because I know I do.”

He grunted when his belt was finally free and I managed to get his zipper down. He was all kinds of hard covered in cotton and eagerly waiting to fall into my hands. I gave the impressive bulge a pat and used the pad of my thumb to trace the rigid line up where the tip was trapped under the stretchy band of his underwear. I stroked my fingers over the flared point and had to bite back a victory cheer when he leaned back against the door behind him with a thud as he pushed his clothing out of my way. His shirt landed on top of my bag and his jeans and briefs ended up around his knees as I leaned in closer to him, my hand working up and down the velvety, firm shaft.