I couldn’t give her much, but I could fucking try to give her this.
There was only one weapon left, the matte black tang knife I wore on a chain around my neck. Bea’s fingers hovered over the faint shape of it beneath my hoodie, then brought her gaze to mine in silent question.
I swallowed thickly and jerked my chin.
She didn’t go for the blade. Instead, she tucked her little hands into the shoulders of my leather cut and pushed it over my back. Then she pulled the hem of my hoodie up, but I superseded her by pulling at the neck and shucking it myself.
We were both panting hard like we had run some kind of race. In a way, we were. There was only so much I could take, and we both knew it. Any moment, the beast in me would lash out and conquer her so she’d forget to conquer me in return.
Her eyes raked over my black henley, the way it flowed over the hard edge of my honed muscles like ink. I sucked in a sharp breath and fought a flinch as she trailed her fingers lightly up my forearm to my shoulder then over to my collar. The feel of her skin against my neck made me hiss, a bead of sweat rolling down my temple.
No one had touched my bare skin, save my hands, in over a decade. The feel of it seared through me like wildfire.
Bea made a whimpering noise in her throat but continued her journey, trailing a fingertip under the fabric to hook around the silver chain holding the blade. With one firm curl of her beckoning finger, the chain broke apart the way it was meant to into her hold. The slither of metal whispered between us as she pulled it gently from beneath my shirt and gathered the body-warmed metal in her palm.
Finished with my weapons, we stood there breathing heavily, eyes locked and dark, air pulsing between us to the rhythm of my increased heart rate. She didn’t seem to know what to do now that she’d succeeded in her task. Indecision and excitement sent a flush spilling down her neck and breasts.
“Will you take off your clothes for me?” she asked softly, almost afraid to ask or maybe afraid of the answer.
I ground my teeth as I fought with myself. I wanted to give her everything, all of me, hollow bones and empty soul, but that was too much.
Too much, too much, too much.
I hadn’t been naked since I was seventeen, that last time covered in the blood of holy men who had done so many unholy things to me.
A shiver tore through me so violently, I stepped backward to brace myself.
Bea’s face contracted with sorrow.
And I was done.
Done being too broken to function. Done bringing sorrow to that angelic face. Done being passive.
What did it matter if I was unclothed? I’d never been more naked than I was standing there in that pink living room with my Little Shadow.
I snapped forward so quickly, she gave a little scream before she melted into my hard clutch like warm wax. Then I was kissing her, stealing the air from her lungs because I wanted to taste her breath, eating the sweetness of her tongue to swallow down the poison I’d just felt on my tongue.
“Gonna take you tonight like you’ve never taken a man before,” I warned her between vicious little nips at her bottom lip. It grew swollen and bruised as a plum beneath my attentions. “You gonna let me take you like that?”
“Yes,” she agreed instantly, arching into me, shivering as fantasies reeled through her deviant mind. “I want you to fuck me. Hurt me. Make me cry.” She rolled to her toes to speak her next words against the corner of my mouth. “Show me how beautiful it can be to be broken.”
A groan ripped from my gut. I fed it into her mouth with my teeth and tongue, hefting her into my arms as I continued to kiss her so I could walk us down the hall to her bedroom. I dropped her on the bed without care, watching as she bounced against the mattress, all that pale hair and paler limbs spread for me to plunder. I considered her for a second, head cocked, as I decided what I would do to her.
How I would own her that night.
There was Christmas here too. In the string of coloured lights draped through her bedframe, in the holiday-themed pillows on the bed, and the soft music that spilled out of speakers somewhere in the room.
“Don’t believe in Christmas,” I growled as I decided on my course of action, kneeling on the bed on either side of her hips, leaning forward to unwrap a length of colour lights. “But I’ll always appreciate the things you do…in my own way.”