Read Online Out Of The Ashes by Diana Gardin - Free Book Online

that this was wrong, and that I should stop him. The other side of me told the more sensible side to shut the hell up. The bag of ice dropped onto the floor, forgotten. His hands were placed on either side of my face, and my burns tingled where he touched them. I had never let anyone touch me there. He was the first person to try. His hands were warm and smooth, and they healed a part of me that the skin grafts and surgeries hadn’t been able to touch.
     
    Then there was the fire growing larger deep within my belly, spreading heat throughout my lower body like flames were ripping through me. I almost couldn’t stand it.
     
    All the while Clay’s lips moved gently over mine, and I was trying to muster the courage to push him away.
     
    I never found that gumption, because I didn’t really want to.
     
    He finally broke the kiss, pulling away slowly, taking a nibble of my bottom lip along with him. I gasped, and his eyes widened.
     
    “You can’t do that to me,” he whispered, leaning his forehead against mine.
     
    “Do what?” My voice was barely there, and my hands gripped his hard biceps to keep myself steady.
     
    “Gasp like that. I almost couldn’t let go.”
     
    “What if I don’t want you to let go?”
     
    I didn’t mean to say it; the words just fell out of my mouth like stones. I bit my bottom lip, but couldn’t take them back.
     
    He pulled back a little more and brushed the hair aside that had once more fallen over my eye.
     
    “Paige…this is crazy. The way you make me feel is…monumental. This has never happened to me before. What are you doing to me?”
     
    Instead of answering, I leaned forward again and kissed him. Hungrily, this time, and more intense. There was so much I couldn’t tell him, but that wasn’t to say I couldn’t show him. I put all the feelings I could muster into that kiss; the attraction I was harboring toward him, the fact that I wanted him to break down the walls I had so carefully built all around me. The pain I had stewing inside of me at all times took a backseat, but I knew he could feel it in my kiss as strongly as he could feel my passion for him.
     
    His arms went around my waist, and he lifted me up until I was straddling his lap. I kissed him all the more fiercely, tangling my hands in his hair and tugging softly.
     
    He groaned against my lips, and my eyes flew open. I scrambled off his lap and took the seat next to him, breathing heavily.
     
    He reached out and grabbed my hand so that I couldn’t escape too far, and turned to face me.
     
    “I felt that,” he said. “Don’t try to pull away from me now. That kiss told me everything I needed to know.”
     
    I stared at him in wonder. “What did you need to know?”
     
    “That you feel the same way I do.”
     

 
     
     
     
    Eleven

    Clay
     
    I lay awake that night, staring at my ceiling. Thinking about Paige and the fervor with which she had kissed me. Before the night I danced with her at the Kappa Sig party, I thought that maybe my feelings were one-sided and that I would have to work really hard to get her to see me as anything more than an annoyance.
     
    The heat between us that night had proven to me that we had chemistry. But would that chemistry turn into anything more? I didn’t know if Paige would allow it to get that far.
     
    I was wrong.
     
    She wanted to be with me. She ached for it, just as badly as I did. I experienced everything she was feeling with that kiss.
     
    Her lips on mine…it was epic. Like a fantasy I didn’t even know I had. My lips were still tender and tingling from that kiss. I wanted more.
     
    I was missing something, though, when it came to Paige Hill. Even though there was an underlying sense of familiarity between us, I didn’t really know her. That was, in part, due to an insistence on her part to keep me shut out. I wondered why that was. What had she been through that had hurt her so badly she wasn’t willing to share any of it?
     
    If I