He parts my legs, and the cold metal under me makes my skin shiver, a stark contrast to the fire he’s igniting. He bites me through the lace of my panties, through that last thin barrier that still separates him from the place that craves him the most. My eyes roll back in desperate need as I feel the searing heat of his lips.
“Deimos.”
I breathe his name like a prayer. Not to anything innocent. It's a plea to the devil devouring my body as if I were the last woman on earth.
“Hearing you moan my name like that… that’s the only thing I need to hear in my life from this moment on,” he whispers between kisses, sending electric shocks through my whole body, straight into my spine.
My back is arching unconsciously. He leaves marks on my thighs with his lips as he rips the last silk barrier off too. He briefly licks my bare skin with his tongue in a tortuously slow motion.
Then he stops abruptly and leans over me, his hands pinning my wrists to the cold surface. His dark eyes scan my face with a terrifying sort of pride.
He leans down, his lips brushing against my ear, his voice dropping to a gravelly, haunting whisper that makes the air in the morgue turn to ice.
“Do you feel the chill of the steel, Mali? Do you realize where you are?”
I shiver, my breath hitching as I look up at the red-tinted ceiling.
“This is the same table,” he murmurs, his teeth grazing my earlobe.
“The same cold metal where you opened him up. Where you touched his dead heart and looked for answers.”
He presses his body harder against mine, forcing me to feel every inch of his heat against the freezing metal.
Suddenly, the cold steel makes contact with my skin again, but not from the table. I gasp as the familiar, cold edge of the scalpel is pressed against my throat.
He applies just enough pressure for me to feel the bite of the blade. It’s a threat, but the way he looks at me, the intense focus on my mouth, the way his body grinds against mine, makes it purely sexual.
“I didn’t just kill him to set you free. I killed him so I could take his place on your table. But I’m not a corpse for you to study, Madeline. I’m the one who’s making you feel alive on the very spot where you watched him rot. Every time you work here from now on, you’ll feel my weight. You’ll taste my blood. He’s gone, and I am the only ghost allowed in this room.”
My eyes roll back in pleasure as his hand slides up my ribcage, his touch possessive and bruising. The sacrilege of it should make me scream, but instead, it only fuels the fire.
“You’re not dissecting tonight,” he growls, his gaze dropping to the space between my legs that is aching for him.
“Tonight, I’m the one taking you apart.”
CHAPTER 14 - Deimos
The metal table groans as I pull my weight away from her briefly, and for a second, the loss of her heat feels like a physical wound. I watch her eyes. Wide, dark, and swimming in a cocktail of shock and hunger. She looks fragile sitting there among the dead, yet she’s never looked more alive.
"I’m going to disappear into this red light," I whisper against her ear, savoring the way her pulse jumps under my lips.
"If you want me... if you want to know what it feels like to finally be mine... you have to find me."
I press the scalpel into her palm, my thumb lingering over hers just long enough to feel the tremor in her hand. I want her mind racing as fast as her heart.
"No cameras. No speakers. Just your brilliant mind, and the bodies in the walls. Don’t make me wait too long."
I claim her mouth one last time. A bruising, desperate kiss that still tastes like my blood and her surrender, and then I simply let go.
I'm giving her the choice and freedom in making her own decision. I don't want to hurt her. And I want the first time for us to be her crawling to me of her own volition, not by force.
I step backward, my boots silent on the linoleum, melting into the crimson haze of the cooling units. But I don’t stay in the autopsy room. Instead, I slip through the side exit, the one with the faulty sensor I rewired.
Then I move through the darkened corridors of the facility like a shadow returning to its source. My pulse is still high, a rhythmic thrumming in my ears that matches the stinging cut on my neck. She actually drew blood. The thought makes a jagged smile pull at my lips.
I reach her office. The door is locked, but locks have never been more than a polite suggestion to me. I click it open and slip inside, closing it silently behind me.
The room smells like her. Strong coffee, old paper, and that faint, clinical scent of soap she can never quite wash off. It’s my favorite place in this entire building. I don't turn on the lights. I don't need them. I sit in her chair, leaning back into the leather that still holds the ghost of her warmth.
