“Your hair,” he said, his voice rough like it took every ounce of self-control he possessed to curb whatever impulse currently knit him with barely contained tension. “Take it down.”
I sat up slowly, lifting my hands to remove my hair tie, following this command as well.
He watched without blinking—not even once—as I sent blond waves tumbling around my shoulders.
He gritted his teeth, and something dangerous sparked in those eyes. A decadent promise of ruin.
No running now.
He proved that point in the next instant when he moved like he had in the elevator, too fast to track.
The slim distance between himself and me.
Gone. Just like that.
In the same blurred motion, he grabbed my ankle and yanked me toward him and the edge of the bed, eliciting a gasp from me, one that he stole and devoured by claiming my lips with his.
My heart launched itself to full speed as my soul exploded with an electrifying brand of terror I couldsoget used to. I braced my hands on his shoulders, gripping him hard, as keen as I was nervous over whatever he planned to do next. Which, apparently, was trailing one calloused palm along the outside of my thigh to hike up my skirt, curtaining it to my hip before gripping me there.
Another silent pledge.
I moaned into the kiss, the tease killing me.
With his free hand, Grim took hold of my chin. He broke the kiss, eyes fastened on my reaction, soaking in my pleading expression as he rerouted his other hand to the inside of my thigh, warm knuckles and freezing rings trailing the tender flesh as they neared the most heated part of me.
“Perfection,” he murmured against my lips, eyes shutting as if it was the softness of my skin he was savoring. Then he opened his eyes again, pupils expanded as they drove that stare into me. “Pretty thing. I will have you.”
That last set of words. His lips didn’t move withthose.
Instead, his dark voice came through him. Like an escaped thought.
I flushed, taken aback even as my arousal reached new head-spinning heights.
It was as if the man in him and the monster had, in that moment, reached some dark agreement about me, their commentary seemingly more for one another.
And tangling him up like this. Being the bait that had drawn this unhindered version of him out of hiding. I loved it. And I wanted to entice him from the shadows even more. Even if that meant gettingmyselfdragged into them.
“How to take you,” he mused with his human voice, thumb grazing my cheek. “Where to start.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Not fromme. His two sides had their own ideas.
Slowly, Grim guided me back, one knee braced on the mattress as he leaned over me. Then those roaming fingers stalled at the barrier of my panties, fingers contemplating.
“I think of you. All the damn time,” he said.
Warmth spread through me at these words, my yearning for his soul mixing with my desire to be under his body.
“I will show you.” Yet another solemn guarantee from him. “How you have consumed me. By returning… the favor.”
His fingers ventured beyond the lace of my panties to tease my core.
I flung my head back, arching, helpless to subdue the moan that escaped me. Grim descended on me, inviting himself to my exposed throat, lips, tongue, and teeth assailing the tender skin there with caresses even as, with a low and relishing groan, he dragged fingers through my slickness.
Why did it feel like he was trying to figure out which part of me he was going to devour first?
All questions evaporated when two of his fingers slid into me, the cool metal of his bulky rings stinging my enflamed flesh. The gentle roughness of it had me surrendering to the bed. To him. Eyes rolling back, I pitched my head to one side, hands knotting in the blankets again, lips parted in a soundlessO.
“All this for me?” he asked, his smoky voice rough but also low, controlled, contained.
