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Something snapped somewhere behind me, and the grin I had on my face only widened at the mere thought that he was near. That he was coming closer and closer, coming for me. My pace only quickened the closer I came to the center of the maze, because I knew that this was where we should start. This very center I found a couple of months ago. When I came to his property to see the place, to find every hidden nook, I stumbled across the maze, knowing that it would be a perfect fit for what I had planned.
The knife I strapped to my thigh was slowly cutting into my flesh, and the gentle trickle of blood down my thigh only made me smile more.
I would bleed for this man a thousand times more because he helped me remember. He helped me see my true potential.
A scream came somewhere from the direction of the house, followed by the loud laughter of a female and a man mixed with the heavy breathing of someone behind me just as I reached the center of the maze.
A hard body slammed into my back, sending us both to the ground. His scent drove me nearly insane—the smell after fresh rain, the pine trees and something that was so uniquely him.
“Lazarus,” I breathed out, smiling as I turned my head to the side, feeling the debris and dirt sticking to the side of my face. “You caught me.”
“You fucking ran from me,” he grunted, rubbing his already hardening cock into my backside, pulling out a moan directly from my soul. Lazarus’s lips latched onto the bare skin of my neck, marking, his teeth biting, pulling blood out, embedding himself deeper into my soul. “I’ve missed you,” he murmured, licking the fresh wound on my neck. “I wanted to go after you.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked, even though somewhere deep inside of me I knew the answer. He wasn’t letting me go per se. He was letting me be me, and I couldn’t fault him for that. He waited, just like he said he would. Just like he promised he would, and I came.
“I couldn’t.” He huffed as his lips dragged over the length of my neck, all the way to my shoulder, pressing soft kisses as if he couldn’t get enough. “I wanted you to figure things out on your own. To remember.”
“What if I didn’t come back?”
He suddenly flipped me around, caging me in between his arms as he stared down at me with something akin to a look of a feral animal.
“Then I would’ve chased you. It wouldn’t matter where you went, my Dark Star, I would’ve found you.” His tongue darted out, licking my neck, quickly replaced by his teeth. “Because you’re mine, Danika. I don’t give a fuck about anybody else, but you’re mine.”
His.
Only his.
The promise of forever, of eternity together, shone in his dark eyes, his pupils swallowing the entirety of his irises, turning them pitch black. Something wild broke free inside my chest, growling and pushing closer and closer to this man, to my monster.
“Then you’re also mine,” I bit out, dragging my nails over his neck, tearing open the skin as I went, while my soul danced at the desperate sounds rippling from him and the shivers racking through his body. “Every fucking inch of you is mine. Your soul, this heart,” I said as I placed my hand over his chest. “This body.” I moved my hands to his hips. “All of you belongs to all of me, Lazarus Morass. From that first moment I saw you, my soul knew what it needed, what it was waiting for.”
His lips smashed against mine—bruising, punishing, filled with need and a yearning that made it so much harder to breathe, both of us fighting for dominance through the kiss. But neither of us was going to win.
We were equal.
Two monsters that found each other in the middle of this insane little town, that hid more secrets than the entire country altogether. The very essence of Winworth fed people like Lazarus and me, giving us exactly what we needed even before we realized that we needed it.
Lazarus’s hands roamed over my body, his lips barely moving away from mine—nipping, kissing, biting, soothing. His touch was the drug I needed. His lips were the poison I craved.
I was lost for so long, barely understanding the world I was in, trying to fit in for the sake of society, for my mother, for all those who told me that being different meant being an outcast, shamed. But one look, one kiss from him, and I knew I had found what I was looking for.
My heart sang as he dragged his lips over my cheek, down my neck, and toward the corset I wore, his eyes feasting at the cleavage right in front of him.
“You look like a dream, baby girl,” he murmured. I had no idea if he was telling it to me or to himself. No one has ever looked at me the way he did—with so much passion, reverence, love and need.
My mother told me once that love was only a fool’s dream, designed by those who wanted to have a way to control the masses into thinking that they cared about someone that much. Love was for weak people. Love was for those who had nothing else left in their life, but the idea of love.
But being held by Lazarus, being kissed by Lazarus, told me that love wasn’t just a noun, or a dream only a few could reach. It wasn’t just the feeling or a state of mind. It was abandoning everything you knew for that one person who filled the little black hole in your heart, finally making you complete. Love was abandoning everything you thought you knew about feelings, because nothing had ever felt this right.
Nothing had ever made me this elated, this happy, if happiness was even something that I was capable of.
After the years in darkness, it was as if the first rays of sunshine finally broke through the dark clouds that hovered above my life, giving me a glimpse into something new, something bright and good. Something I could hold on to when life became too much to bear.
“Sometimes it feels like I’ve been waiting for you my entire life,” Lazarus mumbled, his fingers dragging over the ties that kept the corset together, pulling at the one on the very top, letting the corset fall open.
Goosebumps erupted all over my body as he slowly pushed the corset open, revealing my torso, hungrily staring at every bare inch of me. “Sometimes it felt as if I would have to go through this life all alone because no one could ever understand,” he continued as his palm landed on my exposed left breast, kneading the skin, while his thumb and forefinger pressed around my puckered nipple, bringing out another moan deep from my body. “But having you here…” His eyes connected with mine. “Seeing you like this…” That small smile started playing on his lips. “I know that nothing was in vain. I know that my soul always waited for you to come to me, even before I had met you. I’ve looked for you in a hundred different women, a hundred different souls, but none of them felt as good as you do, baby. None of them fit as well as you do, and none of them had enough insanity in their eyes to battle my own, as you do. I am all yours.” He spread his arms, holding them at shoulder level. “If you’ll have me.”
Words couldn’t describe how I felt about him. There were no known expressions in the English language that could even begin to express the way my heart squeezed tightly when I saw him last year, or when I saw him tonight. Words weren’t enough to tell him how much I craved his touch, his darkness, his ruinous world.
