Love and Decay (12 page)

Unlike before in the church, however, this
was not an amusing way to torture my older brother.

Miller took me back inside the old church
where I’d recently survived the most awkward moments known to
mankind. The sunlight yielded to bright fingers stretching through
broken stained glass windows. The temperature dropped again,
wrapping the cool stillness around us. We picked our way through
vines, long grasses and broken debris until we were far enough
inside to ensure some privacy.

When Miller turned to face me, I tugged my
hand free from his. I didn’t wait for him to speak or apologize or
get the first word out. “What was that out there? What’s your deal
with Santi?”

“With Santi?” he scoffed. “After everything
that happened today, you’re worried about
Santi
?”

I held up a hand. “Don’t. I can’t do anymore
jealous rages. If you have an issue with Santi, bury it. Shove it
deep down inside, because I honestly have no patience for it.”

He looked at me with wide, incredulous eyes.
“Bury it? That is the worst advice I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s not advice! It’s instructions. The
truth is I can’t ever witness that again. If I ever see you attack
Santi because you’re jealous of something that doesn’t exist, I’ll…
I’ll…”

“Castrate me?”

I lifted my chin. “I was going to say punch
you in the face, but that works too.”

“This is impossible.” He took a step towards
me. “
You’re
impossible. I don’t know how you expect me to
get along with Santi after everything that’s happened between you.
That’s like-”

“Nothing happened between us!
Nothing
ever happened between us. We kissed a couple of times. And it
wasn’t even like it is with you! When we kissed it was just… I
don’t know… It just didn’t feel… It felt wrong. Santi felt
wrong.”

Miller could have said a hundred different
things. I watched as all of the differing angles flitted over his
face as he decided which one of them he would pick. In the end,
though, he heeded my warning and a very slow, very slight smile
appeared on his face, lifting the corners of his beautiful mouth.
“But I feel right?”

I rolled my eyes. “How did I know you would
pick up on just that one thing?”

He took another step toward me, the anger
leaving him in waves and vibrations, replaced with something else…
Something darker… hotter… more dangerous. He was less crazed flame
of fury and more stalking predator, hunting down its supper.

His lips tilted in a half smile. “Say it,
Page. Tell me, I’m right.”

There was an urgency to his tone, something
pleading and near desperate. I couldn’t deny him. Even though I was
furious with him, I couldn’t keep this from him. “You feel right,
Miller. Of course you do. I haven’t even thought of Santi in that
way since… since you kissed me. And to be honest, I hadn’t really
thought all that much of him before you kissed me. He was just a
way to, I don’t know, pass time or something. I was tired of being
the only person left on earth to not have kissed a boy. It was
obnoxious.”

“Page, you’re killing me.”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. It was fun to
torture Miller.

Until he started torturing me.

His arms wrapped around me, pulling a sharp
gasp from within me. His lips crashed to mine, demanding something
else from me… something hungry and needy.

He moved his mouth against mine with
insightful intensity. They were warm and soft against mine, a
surprising contrast from the tough hardness of his body.

He tasted like blood, dirt and the tang of
sweat at first, but that quickly disappeared into something
addicting. Into something I wanted to devour. His hands pressed
against my spine, holding me close against him, crushing me to his
chest.

I sighed into him. I couldn’t help it. This
was Miller. This was Miller kissing me. And despite how imperfect
my world was… my future… everything else in my life, this kiss was
perfect.

Just when I didn’t think this moment could
get any sweeter, he swept his tongue over my bottom lip. And when I
opened my mouth, he tangled his tongue with mine. The taste of him
on my own tongue was too much.

A riot of butterflies swept through my belly
and I shivered from the aggressive sensations of bliss and want. My
hands slid up and over his chiseled chest and wrapped around his
neck. I loved the feel of his warm body pressed against me. I loved
how his skin seemed to heat beneath my touch, how he reacted to
every little caress of my hands and taste of my mouth.

He was just as intense and focused when he
kissed me as he was with anything else in his life. Miller wasn’t
capable of doing anything halfheartedly or with minimal effort. He
threw himself into this kiss, the way he fought… the way he
battled… the way he held his demons at bay.

With unrelenting purpose.

He kissed me like he was a man dying of
thirst and I was a fresh spring of water.

Like he was starving and I was the meal that
would save his life.

Like he was suffocating and I was air.

Like he was trapped in darkness and I was the
first rays of light.

And maybe that was true. Maybe I was light
for this tortured, tragic boy.

The thought filled me with an anxiety I
didn’t understand. Clouds gathered in my mind and warned that I
couldn’t save Miller this way. No matter what I did or how much I
cared for him, the only person that could save Miller… was
Miller.

He deepened the kiss, forcing my attention
back to him and the delicious things he was doing with his
tongue.

I gave in to him. I released my grim thoughts
and let him take me to a different place. His mouth moved over
mine, greedy… desperate for more. His hands splayed against my
back, each finger pressing tightly against me.

I gasped an equally frantic sound and he
growled in response, low and deep from the back of his throat. And
just like that, like a flash of lightning in a stormy sky,
something changed in him.

He stopped holding back… stopped fighting
whatever it was inside him that forced him to be polite and
respectful. His teeth sunk into my bottom lip and I jumped in
surprise. Just as quickly as he’d caused pain, he ran his tongue
over it, soothing and teasing.

He walked me backwards, pushing me against
the wall. My body hit the crumbling stone hard enough to kick up
dust from the rafters and rain down on us. We kissed, hardly
noticing.

I ran my hands over his nape, tangling my
fingers with his hair. His hands started to move over me too, as he
tore his lips from mine to explore my jawline and neck.

I made a sound I’d never made before as his
hands slid under my shirt, touching bare, naked skin. I gasped
again as he pressed his superheated palms against my ribs. His
thumbs played with the edge of my bra. His mouth trailed kisses
down my neck, sucking, biting, nipping.

I was blinded by too many sensations. This
was too much. My breath caught in my throat. My chest panted
heavily as if I’d just run miles. My legs started to shake. My
fingers went cold with nerves.

He didn’t stop.

He kissed the thrumming of my pulse in my
neck, lingering there as he tasted the intensity of my emotions. I
let one of my hands fall to his chest, where his heart beat just as
fast.

His mouth moved slowly over my throat. He
took his time breathing me in, using his tongue to torture me. And
all the while his fingers stayed in place, hot against my ribs and
dangerously close to my bra, teasing me in their own way.

“Miller,” I pleaded, even though I didn’t
know what I was begging for.

With his name on my lips he lost whatever
little remnants of reason remained. He sucked at the curve of my
neck, surprising me again with a bite of pain. At the same time his
hand caressed my breast and I thought I would die from the
sensation.

I had never felt this before. Nobody had ever
touched me like this.

I didn’t recognize my voice or the sound I
made. I didn’t even know I could make a sound like that.

Miller pressed into me, kissing up my neck,
over the line of my jaw. When his mouth found mine again, it wasn’t
enough. I needed more… more of this kiss… more of him… more of… of
something.

His hand, the one that wasn’t driving me
completely crazy at the moment, dropped down to my thigh. He
gripped it in his huge grasp and lifted, encouraging me to wrap it
around him.

So I did.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and he
pressed into me, pinning me against the wall with the weight of
him. I moaned into his mouth and tried to grab hold of my
scattering senses.

He seemed completely fine to hold me in
place. Apparently he had no trouble standing… while I knew, I
just knew
if he set me down right now I would collapse in a
heap of molten lava on the floor.

“Page,” he whispered before slowing the kiss.
At once he was more intimate and intense. This wasn’t the hungry,
bruising kiss from before.

This was meaningful. This was significant and
soul-deep. This was breath-stealing and heart-hammering. This was
Miller reaching so far inside me that I knew he would never be able
to extricate himself completely.

I would carry him with me forever now.

He pressed our bodies closer together and I
realized what I wanted. I realized what I needed.

This was all new to me. I had never
experienced anything like this. But now Hendrix and Nelson’s sex
talk didn’t seem quite so stupid.

My heart skipped in my chest and I tried to
decide whether to smile or run away.

This wasn’t slow.

This wasn’t even close to slow.

Miller pulled back and rested his forehead
against mine. We both struggled to catch our breath, the air
between us mingling together along with our desire.

He pulled his hand out of my shirt as
carefully as I’d ever seen him do anything. His fingers grazed my
skin and I shivered from the sensation.

Once his hand was free, he set me back on my
feet with equal delicacy. His hands stayed on my hips, holding me
there as if he knew I needed help standing up.

I thought about opening my eyes, but I
couldn’t find the willpower. I needed to bask in this moment, enjoy
this incredible man that had managed to wrap himself so completely
around my entire life.

Although this was in an entirely new way…

A way I had never expected from Miller.

My face and neck tingled from where his
longer-than-usual beard had scraped against my skin and my lips
swelled from his demanding kisses. My heart still hadn’t evened
out.

I wondered if it ever would.

Would he always make it beat this hard?

Would he always bring this… this… side of me
out so easily?

“Say it,” he rasped.

His voice startled me. I had been so cocooned
in our silence that I’d almost forgotten we had the ability to
speak.

My eyes popped open, but his remained closed.
Pain flashed across his face and my chest clenched with frantic
emotion.

“You’re right, Miller,” I whispered. “You’re
right for me.”

“Say it again,” he asked.

Only it wasn’t a simple request; this was a
desperate
please.
This man, this tough, hard, dominating man
needed reassurance from me.

Despite his guarantees that we could go
slowly and that he wasn’t good enough for me… despite his
resistance all those years to the very idea of me or a relationship
with me… despite everything inside him that rebelled against having
something meaningful and deep with another person… he needed
me.

He needed me to need him.

But what he didn’t understand was that I had
needed him since the day I met him.

He had always been right.

Always.

“You’re right, Miller,” I said with a
stronger voice. I let my hands caress his face, lying gently along
his jaw. “You’ve always been
right
.” I cleared my throat and
gathered my courage. “You will always be right.”

His eyes snapped open and caught me in that
hypnotic gaze. Those dark eyes burned through me, wanting to
believe me… wanting to disagree with me.

I felt his pulse speed up beneath my
fingertips and watched his chest expand as if he were trying to
suck in too much air. His broad shoulders lifted with a heaviness I
couldn’t understand before dropping down again with a kind of
defeated sigh.

While we stood there, staring at each other,
he moved his jaw to press into one of my hands. He stepped forward
and covered me with his warmth and strength. But he never took his
eyes off me.

Not once.

He licked his bottom lip and let out another
heavy sigh. “I’m sorry, Page. I acted like a complete jackass
earlier. You had every right to be mad at me.”

I wanted to forgive him. It was my first and
most natural reaction. I understood Miller at like a molecular
level. There were huge parts of him that were a mystery to me. But
only because he hid them or he’d walled them off so nobody could
see behind his defenses.

Sometimes I wondered if even Miller knew all
the dark and buried places inside him.

He’d kept those secret parts locked up for so
long, I had to believe that they’d become a mystery to even
him.

But then there were times when he was so
obvious that I knew exactly what he was thinking as if he’d
broadcasted it to the entire world.

Why had he hit Santi?

Because he was jealous.

Because he didn’t trust anybody on this
planet. Not even me.

Because he wanted to assert dominance and let
the entire world know who was top dog.

Why had he brought me in here?

For the same reasons.

Not to apologize, although that was a tiny
subcategory of reasons. Not to even kiss me like that or share that
kind of intimacy.