I wanted something.
Something more than ruin, ruin, ruin.
My cock, coated in her juices, in her blood, cooled in the frigid air pouring in from the open window, reminding me that I had just brutally taken her virginity from her. A normal man would have bundled her up and snuggled her or some shit.
I wasn’t that man.
Instead, I stood panicked and furious with someone, myself or some kind of higher power, for gifting me an obsession with a woman who deserved so much fucking better than me.
It was too late for that now.
I had the taste of her in the back of my mouth, the feel of her on my shaft, and that sweet, light voice in my head coaxing me to take her harder.
I’d be haunted by her forever.
And I was already haunted by so many demons, didn’t I bloody well deserve to possess just one? To own just one glorious thing in my life all for myself?
Bea read the turmoil in my eyes and stepped closer, drawing her hand and mine along with it to her neck where she lay it flat against her throat. Only when my fingers twitched did she slide her hand out from under mine so I was collaring her again.
Her pulse thud, thudded against my palm. Her life in my hand.
I closed my eyes against the burn of that thought in my head, the way it seared into my grey matter and worked its way down my spine, vertebrae by vertebrae, before settling as a heavy weight in my gut.
“Better men could love you,” I said, my voice guttural but strong. I opened my eyes and pinned her with the heaviness of my conviction. “But now, I’ll kill any of them who try.”
Bea made a soft noise in the back of her throat that somehow translated to sheer relief and joy. As if being possessed by me, obsessed over by a psychopath, was all she had ever wanted.
I stepped away before I could follow my impulse to fuck her into the bed, fuck her until she cried, fuck her until she was permanently changed by the shape of me in and against her body. I wasn’t used to curbing my impulse, and it was harder than I would’ve thought.
“You won’t stay the night,” she whispered, not a question.
“No,” I agreed, already moving toward the window knowing that the winter storm raging outside was safer for me than the sweet-scented interior of Bea’s room. “But I’ll be watching.”
Bea
I woke up alone and aching. My eyes fixed blearily on the whorls in the wood beams across the ceiling as I ran my fingers lightly down my naked torso to the center of the ache. My pussy was tender, silk petals crushed under the force of Priest’s savagery, opening torn by his thick, unyielding erection. I was still wet, leaking. My fingers played in the mess tenderly. It felt good, both the light stimulation of pleasure and the further provoking of pain.
I’d liked it.
No, “like” was too tame a word. Like “nice” or “okay”.
There was none of that moderation applied to what happened between Priest and me last night.
It had been base, savage, and animal, and completely out of my control. I’d submitted so easily to his demands as if he had a knife pressed to my throat in threat. Only, he didn’t have to threaten me. And the knife? It was pressed to my breasts and thighs, carving into my skin so lightly it barely left a scab. I shuddered as I recalled the way his hot tongue had lapped away the blood. It reminded me thrillingly of a predator at its kill, lapping up the residue before it consumed its prey whole.
Consumed.
That’s what he had done to me.
I was eaten up by his intense passion, wrapped in the flames of his burning need to take me however he could, to mark me and own every inch of me. He’d said none of those things in words, but I’d read them in the possessive grip of his hands and teeth on my skin. In the way he worshipped me to ruin me for any other man but him.
He’d succeeded. Wholly. Perhaps woefully.
Because then he’d left, gone into the night like some phantom dissolved in shadow.
No soft words, no kisses, no tender ministrations to my ravaged body.
Just something like a panic attack in his eyes, a hand at my throat, and one glimmering, shimmering phrase I held delicately between my hands as if it was some breakable glass orb.
Better men could love you, but now, I’ll kill any of them who try.
It wasn’t exactly a proclamation of love.
But it was close.
It was Priest.
And it was more than enough for me.
I grinned so wide my lips cut painfully into my cheeks, and then that wasn’t enough, so I started giggling. Then the giggles turned to full-blown, stomach-cramping laughter. I rolled onto my side in the bed as I laughed, clutching my gut as tears streamed down my face.