Page 52 of Sharp Lies

I wanted every inch of him, and I wanted it now.

“Please,” I groaned.

He must have known exactly what I was asking, because he immediately started moving faster, pumping into me harder and harder as his pace increased and the intensity between us grew, and before long, I was writhing and moaning shamelessly underneath him, our kisses all teeth and tongues and groans. I rose up to meet him with every thrust, and he held me and rode me like his life depended on it, my name a growl on his lips and his eyes hot as coals when they met mine.

I watched him transform from someone who had to control everything to someone who was riding quickly toward the edge of losing all control, and I reveled in every second of it. This man was losing control because of me, because of what he was doing to me, and I was riding that wave with him, my body drawing up tighter and tighter until it found the edge and jumped mindlessly over it.

I cried out and threw my head back, fireworks and explosions going off behind my eyes as my body contracted around him, holding him inside me as he met his own release. He pumped into me, gasping my name again and again, and then lay down gently on top of me, his hips still rocking slightly and his breathing shallow against my neck.

And I smiled into the darkness.

Because I might have come up here for the safety of a protector, but somewhere between the window and this moment, I’d found a whole lot more than that.

And I didn’t think it was going to end anytime soon.

CHAPTER 23

LILY

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I WOKE UP WITH A START, heart pounding and skin buzzing, and then lay very still, trying to figure out what had woken me up.

And where the fuck I was.

This wasn’t my room. The roof was all wrong, and the window was on a different wall, and when I turned my head, I saw a bunch of furniture that definitely didn’t belong in my mother’s house. Our house was cluttered with everything my mom loved, and that included my room, where I had a bed, dresser, multiple easy chairs, and a small table that served no purpose except to hold flowers when I picked them.

This room had almost nothing in it. A dresser. A chair. And that was it. The place was so sparse I wondered if anyone even lived here. It sure didn’t look like it. Who had a room like this and nothing in it? Nothing except...

I turned my head to the side and found that I wasn’t in bed on my own. In fact, I was in bed with Warren.

And the night came rushing back to me. The carnival and seeing Tony and his friend there. Stephen McCarthy’s threat. Warren driving me home and telling me he was going to keep me in his house for the night so I wasn’t alone.

The climb up the stairs.

Staring out the window.

Falling into bed together and making love until we fell asleep, our limbs tangled and our skin sticking together, our eyes on each other and our mouths smiling.

A smile curved my lips at the memory of what we’d been doing, and I cuddled into myself for a moment. I hadn’t been expecting to come home and climb into Warren’s arms, but I didn’t regret a single moment of it. Sure, we still hadn’t talked about what we were to each other, but something told me we were going to get that figured out. You didn’t spend the night making love to someone only to find out they didn’t care about you as much as you cared about them.

This was something real. I could feel it.

And then I realized what had woken me up. I could smell smoke.

And I could hear flames licking at wood.

I jerked out of my daydream and into the real world, my senses scanning the room around me for threats I hadn’t noticed before. I could definitely smell the scent of something burning, and I knew for a fact we hadn’t lit any fire before we came up here. And now that I was paying attention, I realized it was actually hard to breathe in here. It was dark, but the darkness seemed hazier than it should have.

And it was hot.

It was really hot.

I jerked up and started staring around the room, half terrified and half rational, my brain going through all the things you were supposed to do when something caught on fire. Figure out where the fire was and how we were going to get out. This wasn’t my house, so I didn’t know if Warren had a specific evacuation plan, but I did know that being on the second floor was going to be a problem.

We needed to get out of here.

I jumped out of bed and made for the window, my eyes on the darkness outside. When I glanced down, though, I could see bright flames licking at the house below me.