“I’ve given you no reason to trust me,” he says. At my impatient glare, he expels a breath. “The procedure didn’t change you. It can’t… Personality traits aren’t altered, just magnified.”
Cold trickles beneath my skin. “You’re saying I’m a killer. That’s just…who I am.”
He takes hold of my face, a mix of desperation and determination carved in his features. “We both know Ericson was deserving of that punishment. He probably deserved worse.”
Breath bated, I try not to move. “I wasn’t his judge,” I say, my voice devoid of conviction.
He drags his thumb across my bottom lip, eyes lit with raw hunger. “But you were his executioner,” he says. “You once said revenge was your ethos. It still is, just…magnified.”
Fear is a tidal wave crashing over me, pulling me so far below the surface I can’t catch my breath.
“You’re wrong. You’re so fucked up and wrong.” But even as I deny his words, my heart rate quickens, my pulse jumps in my veins. The numb cold is replaced with a rush of liquid fire to ignite my blood. A white-hot spike of adrenaline pours through me, almost intoxicating.
I experienced this very feeling while stalking Addisyn. The rightness of it, the same rush I always felt at the start of a job, the initial stage of the hunt.
As I struggle to free myself from Alex, he forces my arms above my head and pins both wrists to the mirror. My lungs fight for oxygen, my chest rising to push against the solid wall of his chest.
The brain cells that capture memory fire in rapid response. I recall the taste of our first kiss. Our first touch. What it felt like as he entered me on the cliff of the waterfall. The assault is overpowering, confusing my fight or flight response.
My skin crackles where he touches. Everything in me wants to rip his eyes out and punch his smug mouth. But something primal squirms in my belly and lower, tempting me to arch against him, the desire for friction to offset the needy hunger too strong.
It’s not just physical; it’s the yearning for closeness. All those lonely, sleepless nights where I clung to his shirt with some foreign need to be comforted.
“If I’m wrong, then we’re wrong. And I refuse to accept that,” he whispers over my lips, his eyes smoldering embers. “Goddamn, you’re all I think about, all I want.”
His mouth descends on mine, stealing my breath and the last of my fight.
The kiss isn’t soft and questioning; it’s all take and blaze, desperately trying to sate a sinister need that wants to devour us.
I’ve wanted to believe what I felt at the waterfall was a glitch. Some crossed wires in my brain along with survival instincts triggered an extreme response. That there’s no way in hell I could’ve been with Alex like that…felt all of those things for him any other way.
But just like a moment before, kissing Alex brings it all rushing back. My chest is on fire. The aching hunger to consume and be consumed too severe, and the pain borders on pleasure.
My body dissolves under the swell, strained muscles giving in as I’m being pulled under the current. His grip on my wrists loosens, and I link my arms around his neck as my mouth moves in time against his. My heart thunders as his tongue expertly sweeps inside the hollow of my mouth to tangle with mine.
I’m achy and starved and furious. Every emotion on the red spectrum burns through me as I fist my fingers in his hair, a desperate sound emanating from deep in my throat.
Alex groans as his hand collars my throat, holding me in place against the mirror. Fear only serves to heighten the arousal, and I know it’s wrong, only I can’t shut off the flood of emotions. Painfully, he pulls away from the kiss. His thumb rests heavily against my pulse as his gaze tracks my distressed features.
He removes one hand from my waist to gently touch my temple. He traces the scar, the one he put there from the electrodes when he shocked me with more voltage than a person should sustain. “Our scars define us,” he says, “inside and out.”
He presses a kiss to the scar. A tender ache lodges in my throat and my sinuses flare, threatening to unleash a torrent of livid tears.
“There is no one else like you, Blakely. You’re that rare. You’ll never be able to live an ordinary life, simply because you’re extraordinary. That kind of significance is isolating, but we don’t have to be alone.”
A serrated edge rises up between us, severing his mental hold. I lift my chin, swallowing against the pressure of his hand around my neck.
“I’m not alone,” I say.
Alex moves in, but halts inches from my lips. A coy smile tugs at his mouth to make that infuriating dimple deepen in his cheek. “Why do you sleep with my shirt?”
My pulse trips. “To keep the fury burning.”
“So much passion.” His head shakes slightly. “Do you really want to be rid of it? That fire that lets you know you’re alive?”
I steel my features. “I would tear it out with my bare hands if I could.”
He feathers a finger down the side of my face, his hold around my neck cinching tighter. “You can fight it, even physically fight me, but you know what it feels like to make a deeper connection now. Even if it was possible, you can’t go back to that numb state. You’ll always crave me in your system.”
“God, I fucking hate you.”
“Show me how much you fucking hate me.”
The dare hovers—charged and volatile—in the sliver of air separating us. Waiting for one of us to move, to submit, and topple the first domino. Letting every wall and barrier crash down.
Since the day I ran from the fire, I’ve been trying to escape a blaze of emotions. Make them stop. Bury them. Do anything other than feel them.
Sex is a drug, and like all drugs, it can deaden the pain. And all I want is one moment of relief.
I grab Alex’s shirt and drag him forward. We collide in a blistering inferno of lust and loathing and pure, unadulterated need.
I dig my ankles into his backside as my fingers fumble his shirt open. “I hate your stupid glasses,” I say, pulling away to tear his sleeves down his arms.
“I’m wearing contacts.” He tosses the garment to the floor and yanks his white undershirt off.
“I hate your pretty blue eyes.”
He fists the hem of my tank top and pulls it up over my head. “I love your stormy green gaze.”
My hands slip over his shoulders, my blunt nails raking down his back, as Alex grabs my ass and hauls me off the counter. He kisses me until I’m breathless, then drops my feet to the floor and spins me around.
I latch on to the rounded edge of the basin, chest aching, the pulse of the music competing with the pounding thump of my heart. He slips his hands to the front of my jeans and works the clasp open, lowering the zipper too agonizingly slow.
I slam my eyes shut against our reflection. “Just fucking do it.”
His movements stall. Then, with a fierce groan, he tugs the waist of my jeans down and spins me around, forcing my eyes on him.
Fire and ice clash in the depths of his eyes, an unhinged conflict of yearning and fury fighting for dominance.
Jaw clenched, he thrusts his hand down the front of my panties. His fingers rub over me with hot friction, and an ache pinches inside my core, buckling my knees. He spreads me open with two fingers, and I can sense how wet I am, how slick his fingers feel as he circles my clit before pushing inside me.