“I hate you so fucking much.”
“More than that.” I try to catch her by the wrist but she’s determined to get to my pants.
Which she does.
To my belt and my zipper, and then she’s fumbling with the waistband.
Damn us both.
I help her.
I help her because I don’t want her to move any more than she has to. At least that’s the excuse I give myself. There’s no good reason to be pulling out my erect cock when she’s injured. It’s a dangerous game with open wounds. Get too carried away and they’ll reopen.
If she’s not careful, she’ll do real damage, and all the time I’ve spent keeping her in that goddamn bed will have been for nothing.
The truth is I help her because I want her too much to stop. I need her too much.
If this is the end, and it is, then I’m not shuffling off the goddamn mortal coil without having her one more time. I’m already so hard it hurts when Holly swirls one finger around my tip.
This should be slow and gentle. I should hold my breath and try not to touch her. She should be ready to tap out when it gets to be too much, and it will get to be too much. Sex is always too much when you’re recovering from a bullet wound.
I can’t love her that way.
Not now.
Not ever.
Holly’s eyes light up when I pin her wrist in a firm grip and guide her closer. “Don’t fuck around,” I warn her. “Not unless you want to suffer the consequences.”
She bites at her lip. “I do want that. I thought it was obvious.”
Fine. Never mind the bullet wound, never mind fucking anything. An animal surge of adrenaline and need pulls my muscles tight. I’m dying of the need to fuck. Worse than that. To rut.
I’m an animal right now, and Holly doesn’t mind.
She sighs with what sounds like relief when I shove down her pants. Her panties. I kick them as far away from us as I can get them, and then I pull her into my lap. Spread her thighs wide. And notch the tip of me to the core of her, where she is very, very wet.
Goddamn it, she’s slick and hot and tight, and the minute I touch her there, I’m lost.
I fuck into her like she’s not hurt. Like we’re in those woods in France. Like the worst of everything is still ahead of us. Holly sinks down onto me with a hiss, hands braced tight on my shoulders, and I would take a thousand bullets to keep feeling the sweet grip of her pussy every minute for the rest of my goddamn life.
If I feel it another second now, this will be over.
I won’t have that.
It’s torture to lift her off me and onto the cot. It feels like hell. Holly protests, fighting me when I shove the pillow under her head and fighting me when I push her down on the bed.
It takes a lick between her legs to settle her down. To shock her into some semblance of submission. It’s not enough for me, fuck, it will never be enough, but a long lick makes her shiver and clench.
She digs her fists into the sheets and rocks her hips up to my face.
It’s twisted, how hot it makes her to be fucked rough. It’s twisted and it makes her dangerous to me and more dangerous to herself.
And it doesn’t matter anymore.
We’re a runaway train and we won’t survive the crash, but I’ll die with the taste of her on my tongue.
Holly calls me a bastard when I tease her hole. She calls me worse when I find her clit and worry at it with my teeth. She keeps saying something, over and over again, her voice so breathy and senseless that I don’t know what the hell she means until she gets a grip on the words:
Why did you stop, why did you stop?
Stop what?
Stop fucking her.
I told her I don’t know how to love her, but the truth is that I do. I know exactly what she wants. I shouldn’t give it to her. For a man like me, wrestling with the brutal morality of this is an exercise in shame and lust. Jesus, who wants to hurt a woman the way I want to hurt Holly? What kind of man would want that?
The kind of man I am.
I want it so much that my skin feels too tight. I want it so much that I’m devouring her for the sole purpose of making it last longer for me. She’s right. I am a bastard. An asshole. The devil himself.
I lift myself up to kiss one of her hip bones. Once I’m there I bite her too. “I’ll hurt you,” I tell the bite mark. “I’ll take it too far. You need to rest. You need—”
Her fingers twist in my hair. Holly shouldn’t have the strength to bring me up over her but she does. “If you say that I need to rest one more time—”
“What, you’ll run away? You won’t get far.”
“I’ll die,” she promises, and a strange light in her eyes tells me it’s true. Maybe the truest thing she’s ever said. Her hips buck up into the air, fucking into empty air.
It has to be killing her.
And here she is, telling me that she’ll die without my dick.
A desperate joy bursts like a firework in my chest. She wants me. She wants me so much she can’t stop her hips from moving. She can’t stop her hands from digging into my shirt. She is still, even now, making small noises in the back of her throat that tear down every bit of my reserve.
There’s none left.
It’s gone.
“I’ll die without this,” she says again, and I believe her.
7
Holly
I don’t think Elijah knows how hard his fist is punching into the flimsy cot.
He doesn’t know, he can’t know, what he looks like right now—like all of him is barely contained in his body. I’m witnessing a one-man brawl. I caused a one-man brawl.
I needed it.
Still do.
He doesn’t know what he looks like but I know what I must look like. Needy. Wild with it. Hungry for all the dirty things that you’re not supposed to want out of a man.
I admit it. I am needy. I need for him to look this way, with his glittering eyes and gritted teeth. I need for him to see me as a woman and not some wounded creature to be pitied and tended and soothed. Not some pathetic person to be spoken to with extreme patience at all times.
I need him to fuck me.
More. Again. Despite everything. If I’m going to be trapped forever in a medieval basement with Elijah then I want something out of it, damn it, I want him.
My last painkillers are wearing off. They burn away into a clarity that reminds me of a sunrise over water. It paints everything in vivid colors and sharp detail.
His eyes. His hands. The hitched rise and fall of his breath.
Elijah’s standing there in a tangle of pants, so hard his cock is leaking at the tip, and he finally looks like he’s supposed to.
Like he’ll ruin me all over again. I’m the one with a fist in his hair but he’s the one with all the power. He could take himself away from me right now, and I believe what I said—if he doesn’t fuck me, I’ll die. Maybe I’ll die anyway. That’s the way the world works, isn’t it? Sometimes you get kidnapped outside an airport.
Sometimes you get shot. Sometimes you do the shooting.
Every day you wake up and roll the dice.
His green eyes narrow. Something flashes through them, bright like gunfire, and he curses under his breath. I see the moment his self-control dissolves. It’s the same moment his muscles bunch and he leans down to drag his teeth along my naked collarbone. It’s a different kind of pain, sexy and glancing, and it makes me arch up toward him again.