“How are you doing, Snitch?” His lips were so close to mine I couldn’t think past the heat of them or the growl hitching his voice. The curling in my stomach and the pounding of my heart. I leaned on my tiptoes—
“Snitch.” He growled, his breath heating my lips.
“Perfect,” I whispered.
Because in this crystalline second, I was.
He dragged me closer, our lips nearly one—then one blinding question stopped me in my tracks.
“How are you doing, Atlas?”
“I’m perfect.” He crushed his lips against mine. “Now.”
Fourteen
STORY
We both let out the same needy, aching groan as our mouths collided. Yet, Grayson pulled back, barely giving me the kiss I needed.
The relief I needed.
Tormenting me.
I clung to his neck, his shoulders, but mostly, I clung to the way he watched me. The utter lust and possession combined with such complete defeat in his blue eyes made my throat dry. It was like he was an old sailor drawn to the rocks, as if I was the enthralling one in the room.
I got high off it.
I remember thinking Grayson Crowne would never look at me, and now it was like he can’t stop looking at me.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I begged.
He breathed his next words against my lips, a hot, arrogant promise. “I’d rather show you, little wife.”
With two hands, he ripped my dress. The tear echoed with crashing waves and I arched into him on a gasp. I couldn’t think beyond his fingers, his sugary sweet lips whispering dirty words, his cock an iron bar on my hip.
I looked down at my torn dress, at my cleavage lifting toward his mouth with my heavy breaths.
A few more inches torn and I’d be entirely bare.
“Your bruises have faded, little wife…” he trailed off, nostrils flared, blue eyes disappearing into black pupils. The grit in his voice slid into my chest, into my lungs. “You should be painted in them.” He crushed his lips against my cleavage, teeth closing on my flesh.
I arched off the wall on a cry as his hand secured me in the arch, captive against his wicked mouth.
Grayson was ruthless, dragging his teeth across my chest. Goose bumps rose with his teeth, and I melted into the possession of his growl on my flesh—the ownership.
I groaned his name like a prayer, twining my fingers into his unruly, silky hair.
Distantly, like the soft crash of waves, a thought tried to push into the forefront. We should be using this time to talk—but now I was nothing save sensation—nothing but deep, throbbing need. Grayson was everywhere at once. Lips hot on my flesh, teeth scraping over the hills and valleys of my breasts.
I could only groan.
He smiled against my flesh. “My little wife, you make the most beautiful sounds for me. Give me more.” His teeth grazed the very edge of my nipple and my vision went blurry, a whimper leaving my mouth. “Fuck. Yeah. Just like that, little nun.”
Grayson throbbed against my belly, hand sliding down my back and searching ruthlessly under the thick velvet of my dress. His large, strong palm found my lacy panties and tugged, pulling them tight between my pussy lips in desperate, harsh yanks. He growled something so low I couldn’t hear it, but I feel it in the way he ripped the lace from my body, and shoved two fingers inside me not a second later.
I felt his groan to my very core. To my heart. To my soul.
Like he’d been deprived.
Breath left me and I bit his shoulder, wetting his shirt with my saliva, fisting the fabric at his back.
Hard, fast, desperate.
“More,” I begged.
His blue eyes darkened, then he was gone. His hands and mouth from my body. I missed him with a whimper. Yet no sooner do I open my mouth to beg him to come back, did he grip my dress again, tearing it from neck to navel. The velvet material butterflied at my waist, and I was entirely bare before Grayson. Shock danced with desire.
How would I go back now?
Grayson pushed his cheek out with his tongue as he studied me. With each second that passed, goose bumps peppered my flesh.
“Grayson… H-how—” I swallowed, trying to think beyond his burning gaze.
Slowly, his eyes found mine. “I’ve missed the way you say my name, little wife.”
He crushed his lips against mine, wrapping his arms around my body and dragging his hands beneath the hollow of my shoulder blades. From his wicked, heady, rich scent, to the silky fabric of his dress shirt pressed against my bare flesh, he gave me his entire body, bleeding his entire soul into mine.
Grayson.
His groan dripped down my throat and I held tighter on to him, my teeth tingling like I’d had too much sugar.
“G-Grayson—” At my stuttering, his smile ghosted my lips. “That dress was my way back.”
West will know I left—the world will know I left. There’s no sneaking back into the party.
“You’re not going back,” Grayson snarled the words, teeth sinking into my bottom lip.
Alarm rang in my mind, foggy through the desire. What did that mean?
Grayson would break from his kiss for seconds—seconds of hot, powerful torture. Diving for my neck, my shoulder, my cheek, my collarbone—anything. He was feral in his determination to devour everything.
While he assaulted my neck in kisses, I managed an eloquent, “H-huh?”
I had a split-second view of Grayson—of blue-eyed lust and unbridled need—and I thought he might answer me, but he just slammed me hard against the wall, slanting his mouth over mine to get more of me. All of me.
My mind fractured, my vision went blurry, my knees weak.
If it weren’t for Grayson holding me up, I would have slid down the wall.
“I’ve missed your mouth.” He dragged his hand from my back to hike my thigh around his waist. “Your taste.” He bit my bottom lip, punctuating his words with a bite. “Your lips. I could spend hours on them.” A deep sucking kiss on my bottom lip, then top. “Days. Fucking weeks. Just on these.”
I couldn’t move in his grip and that made me hotter. I was a prisoner to his desire and desperation, holding me still, to use and abuse with his furious assault of kisses.
His muscles flexed beneath my fingers, roped and powerful. I could only react, gasp, and grab on to him. I tore at his collar—and then I saw it. The bruise. The one he still hadn’t told me about.
Prisoner.
“Wait!”
He froze, hair wild and messy over blue eyes shining through like a monster in a dark cave.
“W-what happened while I was away—” I broke off on a groan as he hiked up my torn dress, a finger circling my ass, while his other hand seared my pregnant stomach.
“This isn’t…” I broke off on a groan. “This isn’t fighting fair.”
He laughed darkly against my lips.
Calculated.
Torture.
I know what he’s doing, but I can’t fight back.
More.
The word burned my lips.
“What—” I broke off as Grayson’s finger pushed deeper inside my ass. I swallowed a choked groan, dizzy with the desire to give in. The ruthless gleam in his eyes said he knew it.
But that ruthless gleam also said he had a secret.