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With an impatient groan, I shuck her boots off one at a time, then I have her jeans wrenched off her ankles and tossed to the mud. I spread her thighs wide, my fingers leaving bruising imprints as I hold her pinned to the earth.
I plant my hand in the center of her pelvis as her thighs clamp against my head, as if that will stop me from devouring my dirty girl. Then I eat her sweet pussy.
Twisting her arms, she successfully fights her wrists free of her shirt. Her dainty hands find my hair and she digs her fingers into the roots, her nails scraping at my scalp as she tries to escape. I let her tear her blunt little nails into me, savoring the delivery of her pain.
My hand fastened to the underside of her leg, I turn my attention to the sigil on the inside of her thigh. I sink my teeth into the mark, and the coppery taste of blood spills over my tongue. A feral growl works free as my inner beast demands to devour her until she’s thrashing against my hold.
“Do you still want to hurt me?” My tone is gruff as I restrain myself from taking her closer to that shattering edge.
She’s shaking, furious tears mixing with the rain as the droplets slide down her temples. “I want to claw your skin off.”
With one last selfish taste of her sweetness, I push to my knees. A wicked smile carves my face as I grab her ass and haul her forward. “Claw my fucking skin off, baby.”
The fiery venom in her eyes says she’s either about to fuck me or kill me. I’m obliged to let her do both, as long as she doesn’t deny me her touch.
The carving knife lay discarded in the mud, and I grab the weapon in one hand before I secure her wrist in my other. I press the hilt into her palm and close my hand around hers, our heated eyes locked.
The gray sky hangs over us like a threat, falling a shade darker than our desire as we kneel in the mud, bound by the charged current strung between us.
Stripped naked and trembling, Halen braces her free hand against the hard wall of my chest. “Kallum. You have to stop?—”
I latch on to the back of her neck and draw her face up to mine, my mouth descending on hers before she can crucify me with the lethal words poised on her lips.
The flat of the blade crushed between our bodies, she keeps her palm welded to my chest to hold me at bay. Her fingers skim the crescent, and I can feel the violent storm within her fragile walls.
“You know how to make this stop.” My nostrils flare as I grip her wrist tighter and move the tip of the knife over my sternum. The sharp point draws blood. “Aim for the heart. If you miss, I won’t ever stop coming for you.”
A tear streaks her abraded cheek, and I want to lap the salty wetness with my tongue, to taste her confronting that terrifying fear. It’s easier to run from the monster in front of us than face the one within.
Her fingers inch higher to cover the sigil, her desire charged so deeply into me I feel it with every aching breath. “That’s not what I want,” she whispers.
“What do you want?” I’ve asked this of her countless times, desperate for her answer. “What the hell do you desire, sweetness?” I cup my hand over hers, anchoring her to me. “God, please fucking tell me.”
The tears fall freely now, and when her silvery eyes flick up to capture mine, she might as well drive that knife through my damn heart.
“For you to have found me before my life fell apart,” she says around an uneven breath. She’s shivering, from the chilly air, her cresting emotions. “Before the death and the tragedy and the pain, and the endless void that I can’t find a way out of. Before I became…this. Why didn’t you find mebefore?”
Because then, maybe then, she could have let herself love me.
Before I became the goddamn devil of her nightmares.
A crash of thunder recoils through my bones, cracking as violently through me as her words. Because I have failed her so immensely, this is my punishment.
“And this is our descent into madness, thewhat ifof us. It will ruin us, Halen.” I trap the lock of white framing her face. The strands are covered in mud, and I rub her hair between my fingers affectionately like I did that night. “What you are, to me, is so fucking lovely, sweetness.”
Her watery gaze connects with mine as I utter the words I whispered to her once before, when she revealed the basest side of herself to me. I mean them now as I did then.This—the darkest part of her nature; what terrifies her—is my haven.
The fierce desire to work the ritual and spin my ring tears through me—but there is no magick powerful enough to influence this outcome.
Only her.
I can’t harbor her darkness forever, though I might try. There’s too much danger in keeping one side repressed; it will find an outlet. And by then, it’s a magnitude ten quake and a man’s face is mutilated by a tire iron. Halen can’t sustain that level—her humanity, her logical nature, will always punish her.
My conflicted muse has to embrace this part of herself.
I lick my lips, tasting the rain water, desperate for that hit of pure decadence that comes from her mingled with it. “Fuck, we could love, Halen, if only you’d let us.”
Her smile is fragile, so achingly beautiful it chars my throat. “I don’t think we’re capable.”
