Sinner (Shelter Harbor #1)(233)

She gasps as I slide my lips over her sex and push my tongue inside her, and she’s rocking against my face as her hands grip my hair and my name falls from her lips. Her hands are on my hips, pulling me onto the couch alongside her, and I groan into her wetness as she takes me in her mouth. Her lips are like heaven, her tongue dancing across me, and there’s something so sensual, so visceral about this that I almost don’t want to break away.

But I have to have her. I need her in that moment. She’s my new vice, my everything.

She pulls me into her as she lays back on the plush sofa, her legs wrapping around my waist to keep me inside as she rocks against me almost as hard as I push into her. We’re panting, kissing, grasping at each other like we’ll fly away if we don’t as we move together like one wave in an ocean, like a tempest.

We’re both lost in the everything until the world shatters around us, as we both come screaming to the neon skyline.

Her head is lying against my chest afterword, her fingers tracing an inked line across my skin.

“Before, that time at my Dad’s-”

“Ray-”

“No, no, it’s not like that. You already explained all that, and I’m not mad that you didn’t take advantage of the situation, Hudson, believe me. I just want to know-”

“Why I walked away, you mean?” The words are ones I’d never have imagined telling her before, though for some reason they come easy now.

“Because I knew you were hurting. I was too.” I take a deep breath. “Reagan there’s so much he never told you, about everything.”

I can hear her sniff against my chest. “I know,” she says quietly.

“I had so much shit, so much pain inside. You- you don’t know, and you can’t know the things I’ve seen, Reagan,” I whisper out. “The things I’ve done-”

Her lips kissing my chest stop me. “You don’t have to tell me.”

Right, but being near me might be bad enough for you, I want to scream.

I’ve come a long way from the broken man I was when her father found me, but I’m still toxic, and I know that. I still have the demons clawing at my back, the lust for vices I’ll have to deny myself for the rest of my life, and the recklessness of a man who’s already seen death. How can there be a place for a girl like her in all of that shit?

She’s so good, and just so damn perfect and unbroken and undimmed by the darkness of the world that I can’t bare the thought of even telling her that darkness exists. She’s the light, and I can’t let my darkness swallow that up.

“I want to, you know.” I say, running my hands through her hair and closing my eyes as she softly kisses my chest again. “I just- I just can’t, not yet.”

“I’m here, you know, when you can.”

I smile into her hair, wondering for the millionth time how all this is possible. “I know.”





Chapter Twenty-Four





Reagan




P A S T



I know as soon as I step off the stage that I’ve fucked up, even before my new campaign manager stomps over to me with that mean look on his face.

“Okay, so, that was-” He shakes his head, sighing heavily at me like I’m some sort of disobedient child. “That was not good, Reagan.”

I’m feeling flustered, and out of my element, and mad at myself for not going up there and being strong. “I know, I’m sorry, Donald.”

“I give you a script for a reason, you know, stick to it.”

I groan. “I know, I know, it’s just- I mean, I’m doing this because I have ideas, and visions, and projects that are important to me that I really want to make part of my platform in all of this. And I feel like if I ignore those things-”

“If you ignore those things, you’ve got a shot at being elected.” Donald snaps at me.

“Well then what’s the point? What about fighting for what you believe in? What about having passion for things that matter?”

He sighs. “To get elected, Reagan. If that’s not your goal, than you may be wasting your money with me.” He takes off his glasses and looks at me sharply as he cleans them with his tie. “You do want to actually get elected, right?”

I nod quietly.

“Good, then keep your fluffy daydream ideas inside and stick to the damn script.”



P R E S E N T



I giggle as I push back against him, feeling his lips brush against the back of my neck and send shivers down my spine. “We need to stop this, I’m about to go on stage you know.” I bite my lip, wondering if that sounded even remotely more convincing to him than it did to me.

“Stop what?” He growls into my ear, and I gasp as I feel his fingers slide up the inside of my thigh, under my relatively conservative knee-length skirt. I gasp as he finds what I know he was looking for, his fingers sliding over the gusset of my panties and only making me press back against him even more.