Seducing Danger (Star-Crossed, #2)

by Alexandria Lee

“Definitely. I love how hot your fire burns when you’re protecting someone.” His thumb skimmed my bottom lip, petting me as he softly admired, “My little spitfire that could burn down worlds if she wanted.” I anchored myself to him, fisting my hands in his shirt. “I’ll burn down anyone who tries to hurt you.” “Maybe you’ve got it backwards,” he heartened, face lowering to mine. “Maybe you’re my hero.” “I hate maybes.” “And I love you,” he hummed. “Deeply and wildly out of my control.”

Holding hands was simple, but not to me. None of this was simple to me, and I’d made none of it simple for Dominic either, but he never gave up. He never stopped coming after me and fighting for me even when I yelled at him not to. Even when I showed him my ugliest demons and hoped they sent him running. He stayed and he loved all of my ugly with all of his beauty. He was a miracle, and he deserved to know it.

“Am I gonna cry every time we have sex?” I asked, half as a joke, half out of fear that it was true. A steady hum resonated through his chest pressed to mine. “No,” he heartened, confident and deep and brushing soft lips over mine. “But I’ll kiss your tears away as many times as you need me to, and I’ll never get tired of it.”

We were the crossed stars tied up in the constellations, the twin flames unchecked and unbound, the mirrored pieces of a heart broken in half at birth. We’d been unwittingly set off on a path to find each other before we knew what we were searching for, but Dominic had figured it out quickly.

“I almost wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.” The words floated up from behind me, riding every roughed up syllable from his lips over my shoulder, taking a hold of my chin and pivoting me back around to him. He was, of course, already watching me.

“I’ve dreamt of getting out of here so much, I eventually had to realize that dreaming only exists in our head for a reason. Reality is too harsh and damaging to support the kind of beauty our dreams can create. Dreams are safer tucked away in our minds where the savagery of humanity can’t deteriorate them.”

Cause I do. It’s stupid. Emotions are stupid.” “People are stupid,” he bullishly corrected. “Emotions are what we paint with, but we decide what to create with them.”

See, Blake and I had always had this energy. It’d been there since our first encounter, and I knew right away it was dangerous. I’d assumed the hum of electricity was dangerous because he was dangerous. But the danger wasn’t in him. It was in us. There was something about us that enchanted the forces and hypnotized the air in whatever room we were in. And now, we’d gone ahead and touched each other. He touched me and I touched him, and now we were fucked. Because now we knew. We knew what the other side of the line with each other looked and felt like, and that prowling energy that vibrated in the silence between us wouldn’t let us forget it. His mouth on my neck was a shadow imprinted and unforgettable just like I was sure the taste of my skin was an addiction permanently saturated in his taste buds.

“Pain is our nexus,” I whispered.

“It’s because we’re made of darkness that we’re able to see the little bit of light in each other.”

“I liked watching a pitch black sky bleed with light. It gave me hope that darkness wasn’t forever. That maybe something out there was waiting to lighten my world.”