Outcasts (Badlands 3)

That tick in my chest turned into the rapid beating of a heart as I kissed him back. He tasted like the sweetest sugar, dissolving on my tongue like a drug.

We were in a rundown hospital, but we could have just as easily been standing on top of a mountain with fireworks goin off somewhere.

His hands didn’t stray, and he didn’t push for more.

I leaned into him and cupped his face, stroking the inverted cross I’d been eyeing since we met. His skin was so much softer than I would’ve thought. His beard stubble was rough on my palm.

It was me wanting more. I wasn’t sure where that sudden urge came from, but it was vicious in its hunger, and carnal in its need to be sated. Maybe it was because I actually wanted him, or maybe it was simply one of those things that was always going to happen between us.

He pulled back before I could think about it too much with a grin on his face, keeping us nose to nose.

“Don’t ever say you’re not good at this again, you liar.” I dropped my apple core on his lap and leaned back.

“That good, huh?” He shot the apple across the room, making a perfect score into the rusted sink. “That was just a sample.” He gave me a roguish smile it was impossible not to return.

I was well aware of that. Grimm just had a look about him. It was like a flashing red warning sign about that bad habit I’d mentioned earlier.

He was the kind of man who fucked you so good you thought of it every single day for weeks on end and replayed every second of it as you were foldin the laundry.

Maybe I was more screwed up than I thought. I didn’t know if it was abnormal to feel such a way after what happened to me, but this—having him look at me the way he was—it felt powerful and destructive. And that was preferable to that sick, weak, pathetic feeling that seemed like a parasite trying to plant itself in my brain.

“Here,” he finally said, manipulating my body as if I were a porcelain doll so I was on my back with my head in his lap.

I felt an obvious hardness beneath my skull that was apparently goin to be the starved elephant in the room.

“We won’t be here long, so we can talk later. You need to sleep now. ”

I crossed my feet at the ankles and snuggled further into his hoodie.

I didn’t feel tired, but I didn’t feel like fallin off his bike because I got no sleep at all. I couldn’t doze off like this, though.

“All I had was silence; I want to hear your voice.” It’s my new favorite sound, I silently added.

When the quiet stretched on, I didn’t think he was inclined to indulge me. I might have been pushing, but I soon found myself with a small smile as he began tellin me about the hospital we were in.

With a gentle hand resting on my stomach, he spoke while looking down at me, and I looked right back at him with something lodged in my throat. Timing was said to be everything, and my reaper had come back into my life at just right the moment.

Face to face like this, everything became meaningless. I forgot where we were. Who I was no longer mattered when it felt like I was staring at myself, seeing something harsh and cold but full of blaze reflected back at me.

It’s like time stopped and then reset with a countdown for somethin much larger than I could fathom just waitin to happen. His pretty, soulless hues were like a bottomless well, and he had no problem dragging me down, straight to the bottom where Tartarus waited.

When I finally started driftin off, it was with the thought that this was one bad habit I didn’t want to ever be free of.

Chapter Ten

When I woke, I saw sunlight.

It streamed through the dirty window and only made the room seem muggier than it had naturally become.

Grimm’s voice came from right outside the door, and I knew he was on a cell. I sat up and tossed my legs over the side of the bed, and then stood.

Stretchin some kinks out, I pulled the hood down and went to the window. Standing on my tip toes, I peered out.

This wing of this hospital faced an old grocery store. I spotted an older man pushing a rusted shopping cart full of crates, and another man beside him with a bat.

“I thought ya’ll took this city?” I asked, sensing Grimm back in the room. “I saw the Sigil on the sign.”

“We saved this city. It was abandoned a little after I turned sixteen. I guess it wasn’t big enough to have been salvaged. It took too many resources that could be used elsewhere.”