Chapter 34 Helena
I’d never been so turned on in all my life—and so far, he’d hardly touched me.
That kiss, though. Why did I get the impression it had evolved into a preview of… other things?
His muscled arms and lean torso, defined and sculpted—positively ripped—had me all but salivating.
Apparently, wielding a scythe on the daily was a great workout.
But the tattoos…
Those gave me pause. Now wasn’t the time for questions, though. I was satisfied with the chance to admire them—and him.
Everything I needed to know in this moment… I did.
He wanted me, too. That was evident in his ravenous gaze alone, but the sizable—perhaps even intimidating—bulge in his jeans erased all doubts.
My fingertips played over his warm skin, appreciating the pattern of shapes—a moth, a spider, a diamond, a dagger… Then my hands went rogue.
After that mind-melting kiss, I couldn’t have hoped to stop them as they latched onto his belt, which I unfastened. I undid the button on his jeans, too, but that’s when my fun ended.
Grim grabbed me, and I only gave the softest yelp when he picked me up and hoisted me over one shoulder before carting me off caveman-style to the bedroom.
I braced my hands against his muscled, tattoo-packed back, lifting my head. My ponytail bobbed in my face, and I blinked in shock while my living room and kitchen vanished.
Delirious, giddy, and maybe a little trepidatious, I had half a mind to wave the main room goodbye.
Then my fairy lights came into view.
God, I hoped there was more of this kind of brutish, reprehensible conduct coming.
I also hoped I was in trouble. A lot of trouble.
As if he’d read my mind, Grim half dropped, half deposited me on the bed, hard enough that I bounced on the mattress.
I’d been wet since the moment I’d laid eyes on him that day, but now I had to be drenched.
Was this really happening? Apparently, death wishes—all of them now—did come true.
The idea that I hadn’t imagined Grim’s affection for me, or his desire, had me soaring on the inside.
Terrified in the best way possible, like right before you get on the big looping, upside-down roller coaster, I sat up partway.
Squishing my knees together, I gripped the comforter beneath me with both fists as my gaze traveled up those torn jeans, lingering on his unfastened belt and half-fallen zipper.
Lips parted in awe of his physique—and because I was already parched for another scorching kiss—I took a moment to appreciate the newly unveiled patch of tattoo-covered skin there, the V of his hips, and the faint impression of veins under taut skin before trailing my stare back up that chiseled and decorated chest.
I swallowed hard when some deeply felt instinct, perhaps a sliver of what others experienced around him, had me shifting and scooting back on the mattress. Maybe to get a better look at him. Maybe to put distance between us. But Grim put a stop to that quick.
“Don’t move.”
I froze. Then, finally, I found the courage again to meet that cool gaze.
Despite their icy hue, those eyes seared me with a heat that threatened to consume me from the inside out.
But behind the roaring hell-flames of reckoning, there lurked something else.
A glimmer of that depthless tenderness that, until now, had only been communicated through the comingling of our spirits.
“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 could so get 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 with those.
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 getting myself dragged 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 from me. 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 soundless O.
“All this for me?” he asked, his smoky voice rough but also low, controlled, contained.
Unlike me.
And he must be asking about the mess between my legs.
Like he didn’t know the answer.
He tsked once when I didn’t reply, as though in sympathy. Like I was in trouble.
“Delicious librarian,” he said, his thumb exploring now as well as those fingers, creeping close to where I wanted it, but not nearly close enough. “I want your shirt off.”
This man. Already, he had me teetering on the brink.
Grim lifted away, both hands retreating. An involuntary whine escaped me, even as those hands ganged up on my skirt to relieve me of the piece of clothing.
Which, good riddance.
“Now,” he said.
Wait. What had he told me to do? My mind scrambled for the answer.
At that moment, I’d have given him anything. If only he’d just…
Oh. God. Right. My shirt.
Crossing my arms over my torso, I seized the hem of my blouse and lifted upward. When I got my head stuck in the material, he helped to free me, those big tattooed hands much gentler—much more patient—with the delicate fabric than mine.
“Stunning,” he said. And under his raking gaze… I felt that I could be.
The way he admired me. It left me with no doubt that to him, I was.
The shirt went somewhere, leaving me there in my pink butterfly bra and not-matching-but-still-thankfully-cute sky-blue lace panties.
Well, at least until Grim knelt in front of me, drawing the latter of the two undergarments down, off, and away.
“Do you have any idea what I’m about to do to you?” he asked—again in that calm but darkly resolved voice. The one that sought to warn me of the retribution I was thankfully already condemned to.
I didn’t have time to do or say anything more than prop myself up on my elbows as he hooked my right leg around his shoulder. And there was no bracing myself for impact, either, when his mouth collided with my core.
I cried out, falling back again as, in a brutal onslaught, he swept his tongue through me, dragging it from opening to clit.
“Oh, God, Grim!”
Merciless, his tongue assailed that small bead of pleasure. He moaned into me, low and raw, like the pleasure was truly his. That sent me careening straight toward the edge of climax. Until, cruelly, his tongue whisked away—right before plunging into me.
Arching, I wailed in surprise, my legs falling open of their own accord.
Back he came to kiss, tease, assail my clit, fingers returning out of nowhere to invade me a second time.
God, what was he doing to me?
My ears rang, blood rushing hot in my veins. Then he emerged to hover over me. This time, thumb taking the place of his tongue, he didn’t leave me wanting.
With that intense gaze locked on me, he worked a steady rhythm, knuckles and rings—now heated almost to the temperature of my skin—brushing against tender flesh.