Jax’s jaw tenses, he cuts his stare, and that says all I need to know. “What are we doing Jax?” I demand. “We’re poison to each other.” I turn away and charge toward the bedroom, and I don’t stop at the door. I already found my suitcase and took it to the bathroom. I had to brush my teeth because I imagined myself kissing Jax. I imagined all these wonderful things with him, but that can’t happen now.

I hurry through the room, and I’ve made it halfway to the bathroom, just past the bed, when Jax catches my arm. Heat rushes up my arm, and it’s not all about anger. It’s about this man touching me. It’s about this man and how much I want him, how much I even feel as if want has transformed to need. I whirl around, intent to confront him, but I fail. He drags me against him, all those hard muscles absorbing all the softer parts of me, and the words linger on my tongue, but never leave my mouth.

“What are we doing?” he demands, and he doesn’t give me time to reply. “This.” His mouth closes down on mine, and I try to fight, no, I tell myself to fight, to push back, to save myself before I go down and never find my way back up. But I don’t fight. I don’t even try to save myself.

His mouth closes down on mine, and the taste of him, all man and demand, undoes me. I sink into his big, powerful body, as my tongue meets his. I’m all in, kissing him like there is no tomorrow, and maybe there isn’t, maybe there can’t be, but right now, right now, I reject that idea. I drink him in the way he’s drinking me in until his mouth is gone, his breath a warm whisper, as he says, “That. Over and over again, with no end I want to imagine. We’re not bad for each other. We’re not poison. Say it. We’re not poison.”

But I can’t say it.

How can I say what I’m not sure I believe?