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.
CHAPTER SEVEN
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.
This time Elijah doesn’t deny me.
The cot is low, low enough for him to spread my legs with his big hands. He looks down between them to where I’m completely exposed. His eyes are a match, and I’m kindling. I’m ready to burn into a massive flame.
I need more.
Elijah takes himself in his fist and gives himself two absent strokes, jaw working. A flash of fear caresses the back of my neck. He really could hurt me.
He was honest about that.
A vicious fucking might actually damage me beyond repair.
But I’m already damaged beyond repair by him. I can’t go back to the life I had before—not really. The last six months are proof. All those colorless days in my apartment and with my agent and doing all the mundane things from my mundane life tumble through my mind while I grit through this final wait. A lifetime of ordinary boredom when I could be doing this.
I can’t take it, I can’t take it—
The words are on my tongue when Elijah thrusts into me, all at once.
It’s pure pain and pure pleasure, meeting each other like opposite storm fronts. He means to shield me from the worst of him like this, he tries his best, but it’s not enough—this isn’t enough. Not for him, and not for me. Three deep thrusts and he’s crawling up over me, onto the cot, fucking so hard it takes the air from my lungs.
It hurts. It hurts bad enough that I moan in agony.
It’s perfect.
Every time his hips meet mine there’s an answering jolt of pain in the wound. The pain is nothing compared to how good it feels to be taken. Elijah’s body is all tension and take. Mine is all give. This is how it’s supposed to be, this, this, this.
Pleasure coils tight at the place he’s using me now. He lets his head fall forward, his face in my neck. Lips on my skin. If he hadn’t already stolen my breath with his body I’d lose it now. Every shallow tug on my lungs is supercharged with him. On fire with him.
I want him to burn me alive.
Being burned by him, being fucked and used and taken by him, is a thousand times better than lying here waiting for the pain to pass. Who does that?
Who just lays down and lets things happen to them?
Not me.
I didn’t do it when I got kidnapped. I didn’t do it when London found me. I don’t know what I was thinking, trying to fit myself back into my old life when I’ll never fit there again. The only place I fit is here, with Elijah, no matter how many times he tells me I won’t.