His breath hot in my ear, heartbeat pounding against my back, he slowly slid his fingers inside me. I think I went cross-eyed, or at least, the ceiling blurred. I hadn’t been drunk in months, but now my blood was wine. I writhed into it, against his perfect, thick fingers.
My head fell to his shoulder, catching the dark shadow of his square jaw, the sheen on his pink, pouty lips. For one second, our eyes locked. His softened blue eyes—a look reserved only for me.
“There’s my girl,” he said, soft.
And then something flipped inside him, some kind of switch. He turned wild. Animal. Fingers still inside me, he ripped my nightgown down, past one breast, teeth descending.
“Grayson. You’ll…you’ll—”
You’ll leave marks.
Drawn back to the very first time.
Only this time, the stakes were higher. They were death. They were destruction of our happily ever after, what we’d been fighting for tooth, nail, and blood since the moment in the closet when everything snapped and broke between us.
“If he sees this, I’ll kill him anyway,” he snarled.
He arched over me, teeth searing my flesh, fingers fucking me, still holding me flush to his body and entirely caged. I felt like a d
ame in an old vampire novel.
I was helpless. Boneless. His.
“Anytime you’re with him.” He was crazed now—I was crazed. “You look at this mark and you remember me. If the world can’t know.” Thrust. “Then I want you to know, little wife.” Thrust. “Whenever you walk, I’m there walking with you. I always will be.”
Grayson pressed me against the sheets, and I breathed him in as we slept in the shadows of my prison as the sun smudged the night sky gray.
“So what are you guys gonna call yourselves?” I joked. “Team Anger Issues?”
“Jokes.” He exhaled like he could breathe again. “Nah, probably Team Eskimo Bros.”
Gray barely lifted his head enough to see my shocked face, rose gold hair falling roguishly across one eye. He mirrored my shocked, open mouth, then grinned, a body-melting, devious boy grin, that showed his teeth and pink lips and actually met his eyes.
Oh, I missed that.
He crushed his lips against mine, still holding me in place by my chin.
“You started it,” he murmured against my lips, then pulled back, suddenly serious. “I gave you your phone. So you’ll write me morning and night, and if you feel the need…anytime in between.” He gave me another boyish smile.
I bit my lip. “Yeah.”
His eyes dropped to my bitten lip briefly. “And if you have something else to say to me, you’ll tell me your words? All of them?”
His brow furrowed, jaw clenched, as if reading something from me.
Digging.
My throat was scratchy. “Always, Atlas.”
He exhaled through his nostrils like there was something he wanted to say, but didn’t.
As the sun grew higher in the sky, my heart pounded with the ticking clock it represented.
“Grayson, you said you want to be a hero. A good man. A good father. You said if you went down this road, you couldn’t promise you’d be the man I loved on the other side.”
His eyes cracked. “Story—”
“So take me with you,” I breathed against his lips. “Let me walk down the dark road with you. If you don’t let me disappear, I won’t let you disappear either.”