Descent (Black Heart Romance presents Heaven & Hell)

I grab onto it. “Please, Calvin,” I say softly, looking up at him.
He cocks his head and looks down at me, then softly strokes the side of my face. “God, you’re
beautiful.”
My heart flutters. It’s the way he says it. Not even deliberate, just an unguarded thought that
escaped his lips.
My heart hammers once it starts beating again. I don’t know what I’m doing or what might work,
but following some instinct I don’t even fully understand, I lift his hand from my face and slowly,
carefully turn it so I can kiss his wrist. Then his palm. He sucks in a breath when I do, obviously not
prepared for tenderness from me.
I’m not sure what I’m doing, but it feels good. My mind resists—I shouldn’t be kissing him. He’s
bad, I know he’s bad—but my body knows what to do. I kiss him the way he talks about me—like
he’s something precious to me. I know how much it throws me off, so maybe it will do the same to
him.
At worst, I suppose he might think I’m a lunatic, but I already think that about him, so why should
it matter what he thinks about me?
“What if… what if we move slow?” I ask.
“Slow,” he reiterates, a tinge of curiosity in his tone.
“You can take it from me right now if you want to. I can’t stop you. I could try to run, but you’ll
catch me. You’ll… you’ll pin me down, maybe on the floor beside your bed and have your way with
me right there if that’s what you want to do.”
His dark eyes heat with desire.
Of course he likes that scenario.
I swallow past my doubts and keep talking. “But there are things you can’t do that way. Things
you can’t take.” To emphasize my point, I place another tender kiss against the palm of his hand.
“I’m listening,” he says.
I caress the back of his hand with my fingers and let my lips linger against his skin. I need to
think through what I’m about to say one more time before I let it out into the world because I think it’s
fucking crazy—no, I know it’s fucking crazy—but it’s the least painful way I can realistically envision
this night going.
I look up at his face to gauge his reaction to what I’m about to say. “You want a second taste. The
first and second are the best, like you said at dinner. So you already had the first taste, and you had it
your way. You trapped me in that dungeon, you stripped away my will, and you violated my body
because that was what you wanted. But, because of the way you did that, there was stuff you didn’t get
to experience. Maybe that’s why you’re still thinking about it. Maybe it’s just the missing pieces. The
things you can’t have.”