AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I sniff back the burning threat of furious tears, a mocking laugh falls free. “Yes. I fucking hate not being in control of my thoughts, my emotions, my actions. What the fuck else am I capable of?”
His hands fist the slim give of my jeans along my hips, tugging me closer to him. Heat pools between my thighs where his body touches mine, and I fight the urge to wrap my legs around him.
I’ve seen all shades of Alex before. The gullible nerd. The intelligent scientist. Theinsanemad scientist. The smoldering man fighting carnal need. The remorseful sinner he became when faced with his demons.
But I’ve never seen the darkness pit out his eyes the way it is now, reminding me of his room of clocks, a hollow void of blackness.
“Alex, what?” I demand. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“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.
