Our Fatal Failings (Twisted book two)

Chapter 12

Jonah's POV

She'll be my ruin.

I watch as she breathes slowly, having actually fallen asleep this time, dark mounds rising and falling. I close my eyes and lift up the blanket, tucking it around her arms.

I need a cold shower.

My skin burns hot in every place she ran her hands, and my mind plays the scene on repeat over and over again.

I want to hold her again.

I stay in the shower for a long time, until the early morning sun comes up.

That party had an actual purpose--to keep dissenters close to me, but it all went to the wind when she started rubbing her fingers over my skin.

I let the frigid water hit my face. I have to stay focus, keep these two part of my mind separated somehow.

Thoughts of her are going to creep in when I least expect when I need to think with my head the most, and it'll be my ruin.

She doesn't even want you.

Yet the way she pulls me in presses her lips against mine.....it could've fooled me.

I wrap a towel around my waist.

I'm not a fumbling teenage boy anymore. I know her, I know what she does.

She pulls you in, asks questions between kisses and ruins you with the information she learned. She'll whisper sweet nothings in your ear then run away.

I laugh dryly--I sound so bitter. I step out of the bathroom, towel hung around my waist. She sits up, eyes tired, hair mussed, falling around her head in a riot of twisted strands. And she's wearing my shirt, again.

She looks up at me and I almost forgot everything I have just thought.

Almost.

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Imani's POV

"You look good in that. It suits you."

I feel the need to close my eyes. I shouldn't be seeing this, it's an invasion of privacy.

"It's your shirt."

"That's why it suits you."

Heat fills my cheeks, but a smile does not spread to my face. He makes no move to cover his half-nakedness. If anything, he's letting his towel slip lower by not holding it up with his hands. I see the lines of his stomach, molded by hard-work and a dedication to exercise I don't have. Even those V lines I hear about.

"Don't worry, it doesn't bother me."

I meet his eyes and the blood drains from my face. "I'm sorry for staring, I was thinking about something else. I blanked."

"Sure." He crosses the room the closet and pulls out a pair of sweatpants. "It's normal, we're mated."

"That's not it," I hiss. "I wasn't thinking about that. I don't think of you that way."

"Okay." He begins to unwrap his towel. A half second passes before alarm rises up in me.

"No! Not in front of me! Take your clothes to the bathroom."

"But you don't think of me that way. It should be fine."

I'm about to see more of him than I ever wanted to. Scratch that. He's a beautiful man, I can't deny that.

"It doesn't matter how I think of you. I don't want to see your-"

He laughs. "I know, I know. I was going to take my clothes back into the bathroom, but it was fun watching you get angry."