Chapter 29
DELIVERANCE
GRAYSON
Abuzz fills the night air, a charged current caressing, embracing. I feel the electric pulse of it vibrating along London’s skin, crackling under my touch.
Our first kill.
I’m drawn to her heat like a moth to a flame, like she can ward off the demons haunting our past. She’s my temple, and I long to kneel at her feet and worship her.
“I’m on fire,” she says, adrenaline still surging through her veins, her flesh simmering hot beneath my arms. My muscles and sinew tighten, aching to crush her body against mine.
She doesn’t need to explain. I understand what she’s feeling. I’m lit from the thrill of our kill—I can’t stop touching her, every sensation, every texture between us tantalizing, erotic.
“You’re beautiful,” I whisper next to her ear. “So alive.” My fingers find the clasp at the top of her dress, and I drag the zipper down the length of her spine. My fingers trail her exposed skin, my entire being ignited, consumed by a fiery need to touch every inch of her.
“I may have passed your test,” she says with a slight shiver, “but I failed mine.” Her body goes rigid.
The boy. She failed to save him.
I can’t help the smile that steals across my face. We’re so close to being one. “Would knowing the boy was out of harm’s way have changed the outcome for you? Would you have chosen differently?”
She turns in my arms, those fierce eyes seeking the truth. “But how?”
I brush a wild lock of hair behind her ear. “Trust, London. It’s what comes next. Do you believe I’d want you to suffer an innocent child’s death?”
She blinks up at me, relief filling her shimmering gaze. “He was safe the whole time.”
I press my lips to her forehead, unable to deny myself the taste of her. “We’re not those monsters,” I say, my hands mapping a path across her back and waist, gripping the satin dress. “But we’re not healthy, either. We’re ravenous, and we have to feed.”
She’s touching me, too. Her hands tracing the ink and scars scored into my forearms, palms seeking friction against my chest, fingers stroking the back of my neck. Every intimate quest to pull us closer sends an arousing lick of fire over my flesh.
We’re uninhibited.
Unleashed.
“It would’ve changed nothing,” she admits. “And now, I’ll never be sated. How will we ever stop. Filling the void is an endless cycle. We’ll always need more and more until it consumes us.”
I cradle her face in my palm and stare into the depths of her. The golden flecks shimmer with the reflective sparkle of keys, our very own stars set within a sky of blood.
“We never have to stop,” I say, my voice rough, deepening with vicious want.
“Never. I no longer bear a penance, just as you no longer have to live the lie. Shame doesn’t exist between us.
And as for this maddening need…” I drag the dress down her shoulders, relishing the glide of fabric slipping along the delicate curves of her body, just as I imagined.
“We’ll find ways to keep each other satisfied. ”
Bathed in our starlight, her body is achingly beautiful, an alluring tease finally within reach. Unable to resist, I lower my mouth to her bare shoulder, tasting the hint of lilac on her soft skin—my aphrodisiac, my drug.
God damn, she’s my addiction.
Her breath hitches as I grasp her slender waist. She tilts her head back, surrendering to the spell, as I drop heated kisses to her skin, greedily claiming every tempting part of her as mine.
Her gaze drifts to the trap, where our victim erodes into nothing. “It’s too much—keep touching me, Grayson. I’m burning up…I need more.”
“Fuck, I’ll give you everything—all of me, a stóirín.” I trail my hands down the sexy flare of her hips.
“Tell me what that means.”
I grasp her nape, guiding her gaze back to mine. “My treasure,” I whisper, pressing a gentle kiss to her cheek. “My darlin’,” I murmur, brushing my lips along her jaw until I reach her ear. “More than any endearment could hold, you’re my match, mo anam cara.”
She shivers a little in my embrace, and I pull back just enough to admire the faint bruising along her throat—my brand. I trace the beautiful violet imprints of my fingers, marks pressed into her skin with hunger. She wears them like a promise, like a vow.
“Now,” I say, voice thick with want, “let me do every wicked thing to you, love.”
My knees hit the ground. My mouth travels hungrily along the sensitive skin of her pelvis, loving how she clutches at my shoulders, her nails biting into me, her legs trembling with aching need.
“Don’t stop,” she begs, the throaty rasp of her voice tearing at my control.
I drag my fingertips down her legs, then lift one over my shoulder, burying my mouth against the flesh of her inner thigh.
She jolts at the graze of my teeth, and I groan as her heat touches my face, intoxicating my senses.
Her fingers sink into my hair, gripping as I kiss and bite my way upward, her breathy, broken cries making my cock painfully hard against my jeans.
I taste her then. My hands hold her ass, pulling her sweet center against my mouth, my tongue slipping between her silky lips. Fuck, she’s so wet, so fucking needy, I feel every trembling constriction of her muscles as she grinds against my face.
“Grayson…” My name is a prayer on her lips, soft and breathless, and it drives me crazy. My desire turns wild, hungrily devouring her until she’s throbbing against my tongue.
I pull away and quickly rise to my feet, lifting her into my arms and seating her right up against my aching groin. She wraps around me instinctively, her slick heat tearing a rough groan from my throat.
“Take me,” she breathes against my mouth before capturing my bottom lip between her teeth, and I obey, tunneling a hand into her hair and dragging her down against me. “Oh, god. Fuck me until I’m begging you to stop…until we’re on the brink of death.”
“Shite,” I breathe against her. I slide my hand to the back of her neck, gripping hard as I crush my mouth to hers.
I’m trembling as I lower her to the earth, every muscle and tendon stretched taut in anticipation. “Christ, you’re so fucking perfect. I’ll never hold back with you, London. That would be a sin.”
Her hands tear at my shirt, nails raking across my skin. It’s agonizing and pleasurable, and it’s pure, unadulterated need. I hiss through clenched teeth when her fingers graze the wound along my abdomen.
“Do it again,” I growl.
London strokes the injury she inflicted, owning me with each agonizing touch. “Is this what love feels like?” she asks.
I crave her pain like my lungs crave air. “This is what our love feels like.”
“Make me your sinner, Grayson,” she breathes. “I don’t want redemption. I want us.”
I kiss the cuts on her wrists, the marks I put there.
The sight of them, the feel of them beneath my lips, only heightens the urge to mark her more.
To claim her in a way no one else ever has.
My teeth scrape over her shoulder before I bite into the curve of her neck, drawing a soft, breathless cry from her lips.
We tear at my clothes in a frenzy of stolen touches and whispered, heated avowals, impatient. Ravenous. The shared pain building to a staccato rhythm, a pulse of insatiable need. To be closer. To be skin to skin. The hard slab of earth beneath us grounds every movement, amplifies every sensation.
I roll her on top of me, gazing up at her naked body. Breasts bared, hair wild, no trace of shame in her beautiful eyes. I flatten my hand against her stomach as she arches her back, grinding her slick lips along the hard length of me and working a string of expletives free.
“Fuck, you’re killing me,” I groan as I lift up to meet the devastating and sexy roll of her hips.
She collapses over me, her hair cascading down one shoulder, falling like a curtain between us and the rest of the world. I let her cage me in, her strength thrumming through her limbs, into me—jacking my pulse. She wears her dominance beautifully.
“What if I could,” she whispers into the shell of my ear. Her teeth nick my flesh as she braces against the ground and drives back hard, obliterating the rest of my restraint.
A growl rips from my throat as I seize her wrist and bring her hand to my neck, guiding her fingers to my jugular. I squeeze until she feels my firing pulse. “If you’re going to tease, you’d better be willing to back it up.”
A deviant glint sparks in her eyes. “You’re serious.”
“I’d suffer any torture willingly, so long as it comes at your hands. My sick matches your sick.” I drag her fingers to my mouth and suck them. “Touch yourself,” I command.
She obeys without hesitation. Arching back, she slides those delicate fingers to her clit, rubbing in slow circles, driving her need higher.
I groan at her hot and wet sliding over me.
Torture doesn’t begin to describe how punishing the feel of her is as her climax builds, thighs tightening around me, muscles clenching for release.
Wild and unrestrained, I rise up and hook an arm around her lower back. I anchor her to me, swallowing her gasp as I sink into her.
Our eyes lock.
Every torturous second I hold still inside her stretches into eternity.
Her nails rake up my back, and that simple act triggers her body to flex around me, detonating something primal. I slam into her. Fingers gripping at the dirt behind me, I thrust into the perfect center of her, completely undone.
Her soft cries fall against my mouth, and I taste her pleas, answering each one with another unguarded thrust.
The feel of being inside her annihilates every belief I held before her.
This is heaven—the only heaven I care to enter.
She’s my truth now.
She peaks. I peak. Our bodies rise and fall together, cresting higher, crashing harder. The emotion thrumming between us is fucking unbearable. The urge to inflict and to feel pain is overwhelming—feeling too much. Maddening.
“God, Grayson, hurt me…make me feel you,” she pleads, and a violent shiver tears through me.
When pain is the only emotion you’ve ever known, it’s all you crave. It’s the one thing that lets you know you’re still alive.
My hands are touching her all over, greedy and searching, mapping out every delicate region of flesh. I drag my fingers down her skin, streaking her body with dirt from my palms—marking her as mine. My beautiful mess.
“God-fucking-dammit, I love you filthy like this, London.”
The abrasive grit of it rubs between us as we fuck. Ruthless, relentless. There’s nothing tender here—only hunger. Fucking like two insatiable, wild animals that are starving for each other.
I bite down on the firm peak of her nipple, and she throws her head back, welcoming the sharp pain. Too many ways in which I could hurt her ravage my thoughts, every one of them tearing at my weakening control.
I cup her shoulders from behind, forcing her to arch and bare her beautiful tits to me as I drive into her, each thrust more punishing than the last, but the need to go deeper breaks my sanity.
“It’s not enough,” I growl against her.
“Fucking make it enough, Grayson. Hurt me.”
A guttural sound tears from my throat as I shove her down into the dirt, grabbing her leg and dragging it over my shoulder before slamming our hips together. Her fingers splay across the hard lines of my stomach as I rut into her, a depraved demon.
The need still demands more.
Her body bends to mine like it was made for this, begging to be manhandled, built to take everything I give. With a low growl, I flip her over and slide a hand beneath her pelvis, lifting her perfect ass into position. I seize her wrists, anchoring them behind her trim back in one tight grip.
She’s bared. Vulnerable. Fucking breathtaking.
My groin throbs as I ease up behind her, heart thundering hard enough to crack my ribs. I sink inside her to the hilt, and she bucks against me at the pressure—only to rock back, undulating those sinful hips, begging for more.
“Fucking Christ,” I breathe as I thrust deeper, forcing her wrists toward the center of her back.
She releases a throaty curse, her core pulsing tight around me. I’m a starved animal with no remorse, driven mad with the desire to fill her and take her unfurling in the sweetest agony.
I fuck her violently. I fuck her brutally against the cold, unforgiving earth. Beneath the open night sky, under our canopy of starry keys, I make love to her the only way I know how.
I’m beyond falling dangerously in love with her—she’s dominated my being since I first saw her, tasted her. And as pressure builds at the base of my spine, speeding my thrusts, she clenches hard around me.
“Ah, goddamn…fuck—London.” I drop her name like a sacred chant against her back as the shattering pleasure seizes me, making me lost. My cock throbs as I release deep inside her.
She comes shamelessly. She comes without fear or guilt. She comes so hard she nearly pushes me out, but I crash back into her, breaking against her wave.
For a few suspended seconds as we both come down, the pain bleeds away. I fall against her, dragging in ragged breaths, my mouth sweeping over her slick skin so I can consume every last bit of her in this moment.
Fucking euphoria.
She slips free of my weight and pushes me to the ground, where she curls on top of me. Fitting together like she was made for me.
“Peace,” she whispers.
I wrap my arms around her. I’ve never felt peace before. I cradle her to me, allowing this foreign emotion to own me the same way she possesses me entirely.
We lie beneath the glimmering canopy of red until her breath evens out, steady against my chest.
I don’t want this to end.
But all too soon, the world and its demands steal into our moment, my thoughts darkening.
There’s only one way for London to truly be free.