“Gray?” Red eyes blink open, and in them I see so much emptiness. It pulls at my heart. I know that look more intimately than I know my own smile. For so long after Ronnie, my worth was eclipsed by the self-loathing that filled the empty hole she left behind in me.
“Father Bane had me for so long that I thought he had broken me down to nothing, and when she came, I was just a shell of what I was before. I thought I could hate her, but all of my anger and grief were reserved for Bane. I think, in a way, she healed parts of me I didn’t realize were broken. When we talked, I felt a part of me was unburied by the monotony. I felt… human again.
“I learned that as vampires grow older in age, our emotions, if unchecked, fall away from us. Mine went untouched, so for years it was my instincts and hunger that kept me going. I had Tannis, of course, but I always thought they were foolish. They kept themselves close to mortals, whereas I only hunted them. With Francesca, I didn’t feel that way. I felt as I did in those early days of turning when my emotions were heightened and everything felt new.”
“Sounds like you found religion.” I smile, pressing a pointed finger against his chest. With his inhuman speed, he grabs it before I can pull away.
“There is no higher power that I believe in that trumps all of my life experience.” He brings my hand from his chest to his lips and holds it steady.
“So what did you find?”
“Humanity,” he says without skipping a beat. “Love.”
Guiding my pointed finger to his lips, he softly kisses the pad of it. My stomach flutters to life and I feel myself blush.
“My only regret,” he starts with heavily, “is that I couldn’t bring myself to hate Francesca. Maybe if I had, she wouldn’t have died.”
“That’s a lot to carry,” I say. In the end, it seemed like he did carry her loss from there on out. The pieces of the puzzle finally fall into place as I realize what that means. He didn’t just save my life on a whim, he did it because he could. The chains were useless over time, so they couldn’t hold him back from doing what he couldn’t do for Francesca all those years ago.
“It is.” He nods.
“But you know”—I break my hand away from his mouth and slide it along his cheek, drawing his eyes back to mine—“for all that talk about mortals, you’re doing a terrible job at untangling yourself from me.”
“You make it difficult.” He wraps an arm around my waist again, slipping his hands along the curve of my ass. “There’s a lot ofyouthat I want to touch.”
“Then touch me,” I whisper, but it comes out like a whine.
“Dante…” He hesitates.
“Dante is already hot on my heels,” I say with a little more force than I intended. “I’m damned either way, right? And your hot cousin is going to teach me Taekwondo, so it’s all good. I’ll karate chop his jugular and set a matchstick on his silky hair.”
“Hot cousin?” Gray’s hands go to my hips and grip them, hard. In one swift motion, he has me on my back, pinned to the bed. “Tannis is off-limits.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?” I hope it sounds like I’m challenging him, but I’m a little out of breath.
“I said it once already, Millie.” Gray rises to his knees and leans back on his heels. With his shirt hanging off his shoulders, hair scattered across his forehead, and crimson eyes glittering like jewels; he looks every bit the vampire that he is, right down to the hungry way he licks his fangs. “You’remine.”
I suck in a sharp breath and let it out slowly. “Not yet.”
“Notyet.” He weighs those words carefully, each one tipped with a promise as they’re spoken. It’s two simple words, but itfeels like he’s saying so much more than that. There’s no time to dissect his meaning, either. Gray sinks over my body, one hand braced beside me while the other trails along my left leg.
“If it wasn’t for our earlier interruption,” he says, voice deepening, like the far off rumble of a coming storm, “I would have made you a shaking mess.”
“Sounds like a threat.” I like it.
“It’s a promise.” He smirks, fitting himself between my legs. A perfect fit. “I want to feel you.Allof you.”
Reaching for his face, I hold his attention and spread my legs wider. “Then do it, because I can’t go another day like this.”
“Like what, Millie?” He tests the pressure between us by rocking his hips into me. The bulge of his erection is pressing against his pants so tightly that I can feel the tip of him through two layers of fabric.
“Aching for you.” I pull him down by the collar of his shirt and rut against him. Payback.
Gray groans and meets my mouth with fervent need. I wrap my arms around his neck as he sits up, pulling me into his lap. Somewhere in between the kissing, he manages to free his hard cock and shoves my panties aside. He slips the soft tip of himself along my sex, and then pushes in, hands gripping the underside of my ass. I moan into his mouth, tingling with the sensation of his girth stretching me to fit.
“Oh… oh my god, you feel… you feel incredible.” I break away from his lips and roll my lower half against him. He’s fully seated inside of me, wrapped up in my heat and tightening walls. His fingers dig into the supple skin of my cheeks in reply.
I cling to him, finding his lips again to stifle my cries. He accepts every rush of breath, kissing me back with equal passion. The tension between us feels like it finally snapped, as if everything leading up to this moment has been a constant cycle of foreplay.
