She’s always trying to see me.
“Parker,” she whispers delicately, her face close, too close. Her hands start moving again in a skyward journey from my chest to my neck, trailing up to my face until both palms are cradling my jaw.
My body tenses at the contact, wanting to reject the tenderness of her touch—like it’s some kind of foreign entity that doesn’t belong. I snatch her wrists up. “Don’t. I don’t want your pity.”
“It’s not pity.” Melody wriggles her arms free of my grip and returns them to my face, her fingertips featherlight against my rough jaw. “It’s empathy.”
“I don’t want that either.”
The whooshing sound from outside, almost like a runaway train, seems to die down, and I wonder if the threat has passed. I wonder if this will all be over soon, so I can get the hell out of here and never look back. The lights flicker for a brief moment, just enough for me to catch the glaze over her eyes and the pink stain in her cheeks.
And then it’s dark again. Our secrets are still safe.
The soft pads of her fingers graze the bristles along my chin, and she inhales slowly. “Tell me more.”
I try to swipe her arms away, but she actually fights back, maintaining her grip, cupping my face between her palms.
“Keep going, Parker.”
A growl escapes me, and I fist her hair again as a wave of anger surges through me. “Fucking intrusive,” I spit out, our foreheads knocking together when she arches into me.
Melody makes that sound again, a squeaky mewl, as I tighten my hold on her hair, and her sharp nails dig into my cheeks.
And fuck, this is the damn wrong time to be getting turned on.
“Keep going,” she says raggedly, echoing my own words from that night in the rain. “Get mad. Let it out.”
Her body bows against me, our groins pressing together and a hiss expelling between gritted teeth. “You don’t want to know what I’m feeling right now.”
“Yes, I do,” she insists, her knees clamping around my hips. “You can talk to me. We’re just two people taking cover from the storm.”
“Is that what this is?”
“Yes.”
I tug on her hair, my opposite hand grazing down her spine and curling around her hip until I’m grinding my erection into the apex of her thighs, and she knows exactly what I’m feeling. “Feels like something else to me,” I reply in a low voice.
Melody’s hands drop to my shoulders with a whimper, squeezing tight, her nails surely leaving little half-moons in my skin. She sucks in a sharp breath, her whole body tensing as her forehead falls against mine and rests there. She whispers my name as if she can’t seem to muster anything more. “Parker…”
Jesus, this is fucked.
I haven’t had sex in ages. I haven’t even thought about it—not until her. Not until that night beneath the rainclouds when I watched her dance atop the hood of her car, weightless and free, her wet clothes stuck to ivory skin that I suddenly wanted to feel beneath my fingertips.
But that was just a fluke.
And this…
This is just the dark, playing tricks on me. Playing tricks on both of us.
I can hardly make out her outline through the black veil between us, but I can picture her flushed cheeks, wild hair, and wide green eyes, like two emerald arrows to my chest.
All I want to do is pull them out, but they’re embedded, lodged too deep, and it’ll only make it worse. I’ll bleed out.
Instead, I strengthen my hold on Melody’s hip as her nose grazes mine. Our breaths intermingle, and my head falls back against the wall, her breasts flush with my torso. I feel her inching in, getting closer, her lips almost touching mine.
It’s the dark. This isn’t real.
I’m choking on her scent, dizzy and light-headed.
Melody’s palms slide up to my neck, her thumbs dusting gently, and she breathes against my mouth, “You’re shaking again.”
Fuck.
It’s not the dark this time, and it’s not the storm—it’s all her. She’s twisting me up inside, smelling like lemons and grapefruit, feeling warm and supple in my hands, and making these little squeaky sounds that shoot straight to my groin. And I know I should pull away because her lips are far too fucking close to mine, but it feels like she’s breathing life into me, and I don’t know how to pull away from something like that.
Melody leans in, just a centimeter more, and our lips brush together. So soft, so light, hardly anything at all, but it feels electric.
Catastrophic.
I don’t move. I’m barely breathing.
I just hold onto her so tight, I’m afraid I might break her.
But I’m more afraid she’ll break me first.
She doesn’t press any harder, though, she just lingers there, memorizing the shape of my mouth with her own. Melody grazes her lips gently across mine, inhaling a deep, tremoring breath, and applies the most delicate kiss to my bottom lip.
But before we can cross anymore lines, before she crashes through anymore of my steel walls, the lights flicker back to life.
Melody jolts back with a sharp gasp, her hand lifting as she presses her fingertips to her lips, like she’s in shock. She blinks against the harsh fluorescents with bright red cheeks, her straw blonde hair a knotted mess, and her expression… wide-eyed and mortified.
My chest tightens with lightning rage, and I ground out through clenched teeth, “Get off me.”
Her eyebrows dip, hesitation seizing her.
“Fucking get off me, Melody.”
Her own features grow taut and hard as she scrambles off my lap, pulling herself to trembling legs. “You don’t have to be such a jerk,” she bites out with a husky rasp.
“I don’t kiss. I’ve never kissed.” I move to find my own footing, internally scolding my dick to calm the fuck down.
“What?”
“I don’t fucking kiss, okay? I never have. Not once.”
Melody blinks at me through a mask of incredulity. “How is that possible?”
Smoothing out my t-shirt and ruffling my hair, I spare her a scathing glance. “I don’t particularly care for women, that’s how.”
Her eyes pop, and she repeats, “What?”
Jesus Christ.
What a fucking mess.
I don’t bother replying to her and storm out the door, practically kicking it open, kind of hoping the tornado is still lurking around somewhere so I can dive in, headfirst.
“Parker.”
Melody calls after me as I stomp up the staircase, but I quicken my gait and move to collect my tools so I can get the fuck out of here. A brief glance out her front window pauses my feet. “Shit…”
There are downed trees everywhere, one taking out a roof. Window shutters, glass, gutters, all lay strewn across the dusty street.
Debris, destruction, ruin.
I pace towards the window, my eyes taking in the wreckage as I scan her neighborhood, an eerie chill coasting across my skin. There’s an elderly woman wandering her front yard in a floral nightgown, looking completely lost, in a daze.
I feel Melody come up behind me, so I turn to her, noting the tears welling as she stares out in silent horror at the scene before us—a scene that looks like it came straight out of an apocalyptic movie set. When she lifts her eyes to me, misted and gutted, my heart stutters.