Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
Lizette
I smell him.
Breath catching in my lungs, the rum and tobacco with hints of roses scent winds down into my cells, regardless.
My heart thumps as fear runs a low buzz, making me shiver.
I didn’t run away, but I didn’t want to be cooped up. And okay, my first thought was to follow Reaper outside, but he moves like he isn’t there at all. Silent, invisible, a creature who can slide between worlds.
I don’t know if he’s seen me, and I’m not looking around again. Once I thought he was on top of me, his presence pressing into me like a cloying shadow, but when I whipped around?
Nothing.
No one.
So, I slip past an empty warehouse just near the water; the soft lap of waves and whoosh of traffic a few streets over are the only sounds.
I don’t like it here, in the gathering dark.
Dirt crunches, and I almost scream out of instinct, but it’s me. My foot.
Breath comes harsh as I dart into a half open warehouse door. It’s full of old crates and empty shelves. Broken furniture.
Why do abandoned places always have broken furniture?
Concentrate , I tell myself, pulse racing hard.
I don’t know why I’m running, hiding, or why I’m panicked.
But it’s the kind of fear and panic that has an electric beat to it, and my heart spins.
There’s a half-broken table, and I dive behind it, hitting my knees hard.
The door doesn’t creek, but light from outside casts a wider stream and then a shadow eats up the middle.
It moves.
I don’t.
I don’t even breathe.
What if it’s not him? What if the danger isn’t studded with excitement because Reaper’s hunting me, and it’s real danger in the form of someone who means me harm?
Reaper can be deadly. I don’t have to know him, see him more than once, to understand.
It’s in his eyes, stillness, his stance. He’s a master, and I’m nothing but a thing to be played with. Stalked.
Hunter. Prey.
Those words turn bright and brand me.
I don’t even know why I didn’t stop and call out to him. Just like I don’t know why he didn’t make himself known. Announce his presence.
Because, I think, Reaper likes this. He gets off on it.
Between my thighs, heat rises and turns into a throb of desire. Wetness starts to slick me, wet my panties. I don’t think it’s actual slick but something like it .
Oh…if I can smell him, he can smell me. And I’m aroused.
Things scrape.
Now footsteps start. Slow. Deliberate.
Getting closer.
Then he stops and nothing, not a sound, until that shadow reappears in the light, and recedes.
I lean back, breathing in gulps, trying to be quiet as I stare up at the high ceiling.
Hell. How do I even know he’s hunting? And I’m to run? But I do and I can’t explain it. His scent is in the air, beguiling, not enough. Everything inside me flutters into life.
It feels like foreplay, and I want more. I want him to chase me, to hunt me down. I need the rush of adrenaline.
There’s a part of me that wants to take off, hard and fast and absolutely mean it, like it’s life or death. To experience that kind of chase from him would be…
I swallow.
Insane.
Addictive.
Slowly, I rise, unsure who this new Lizette is. I’m like a whole being, a primal animal, both willing to taunt my predator and needing to run.
I don’t recognize myself. Just like I didn’t recognize the snarling woman who tried to goad the sinfully hot and hardcore demon, Dante. Or the little submissive who wanted Knight, to please him, to have him punish me for being bad.
Dante would be like winning a prize. The kiss is something that just might be a work of art if he gave it to me. But he doesn’t like the weak, the clingy. He hates the girl who walked in and got drugged and felt up out the back of his bar.
I want that kiss.
I want to earn it, win it, do whatever it takes. Be that slinky, sexy woman who could be with him and reap all his rewards .
And Reaper? This is a dance on the wild and dark side. It’s blood. It’s death. It’s pure lust and life.
I want him to chase me. Take me, drag me screaming into whatever he might want to do. I want his teeth on me, I want his mouth.
I’m connected to all of them and it’s like I instinctively speak their language, like a part of me rises to each of them and it doesn’t make a lick of sense.
They all fascinate me. But with Knight it’s comfort. Dante is sparks, fire, hurdles. Reaper is…untold and unexplored highs and lows. He fascinates me.
What the hell am I doing? Waxing lyrical over the alphas of an outlaw pack who kidnapped me and dropped me home with a fuck you very much? All before being yanked to a strange apartment somewhere else?
I don’t even know what this is.
What I’m going to do is go back, let myself in the apartment, and pretend I didn’t leave.
I move as quietly as I can to the door. I slide out and stand, looking around.
I’m not alone.
It’s in my blood and sinew.
I sniff the air and with the slight breeze that’s sprung up, I smell the brine of the water, the must of disuse behind me, and the regular city stench the light breeze carries along.
No one’s here, at least I don’t think they are, so I start to turn back to the building where Reaper put me.
Something makes me stop.
And my breath stops in my throat as my chest tightens.
A man steps from the shadows. Like he’s appearing by magic.
The lone street lamp showers him in yellow light as his shorn dark head tilts and he looks at me. I can’t see the obsidian eyes, but I feel them piercing into me.
His face is worthy of a painting in a chapel, or my wall as a girl. The light catches the scars and instead of the faint red lines, they seem to glow.
I drink them in. All of his beauty. The slightly curved scar running from his right eye to the corner of his lips. There’s one slashing up from his throat’s corner near his ear, moving across his lower right cheek to the other side of his chin. A cut over his nose that stops close to the right eye and the left side.
Just one more scar.
A jagged, violent thing starting low and runs up to the middle of the orbital bone, and then continues through his brow to an inch above it.
He watches me impassively. Not angry. Not lustful—no there’s lust. It makes his eyes shine dark. A current runs through him, so vibrant it lights me up and I’m about twelve or so feet away, runs through him.
Reaper doesn’t move.
All he does is say one word.
“Run.”
With a small shriek, I turn and take off, running hard. He’s behind me, his scent’s all over me, surrounding me as I dart in and out of buildings and over the road.
My body’s alive, more alive than it’s ever been.
Every time I turn, Reaper isn’t there.
I want to see him, get caught, eaten, but it has to be clean. Not a cheat. When he said run, he meant for my life, and the adrenaline pounds as I pump my arms.
I run for my life.
Reaper is pacing himself. I can feel it. Thick in the air, clogging my lungs. I turn and yell. An animal howl of sound.
And he’s there again. He stops.
This time, his mouth ticks up in a smile, and my knees turn liquid. I could fall.
The smile isn’t romantic, or even nice. It’s not friendly.
It’s harsh, deadly .
The smile of the predator who’s got his prey and is playing with it.
My pussy throbs so hard, pleasure surges.
He’s so fucking beautiful.
So unbelievably handsome. The fact I don’t think he gives a damn about how he might look, how people see him, heightens his appeal.
And yet…
I don’t want others to notice. I’m greedy. He’s mine already.
Reaper starts towards me, small steps, and I shriek to the heavens again and tear off, up a side street.
He’s deadly. Emotionless. On the outside. I want to shatter that. I want…I want to matter. To him.
It makes no sense, and I don’t care.
In this very moment, I want to matter.
He breaks my heart.
Not because of the scars on that face that could grace a magazine. No, they add to his beauty.
But he breaks my heart because he’s both a monster and an angel fallen low.
Someone hurt him. I’m betting when he was young because it feels like a black and white thing, lacking shades of gray. For him. And that’s young.
Love or hate.
Worlds crash. Suns soar.
There’s nothing in between.
And it’s that kind of pain that shapes a monster over the small child in him, the vulnerable part, to protect.
He’s smart. No one could hunt like this and not be. And the intelligence is in his eyes…
I turn again, down another street, not daring to look behind me. I lose precious seconds when I turn, so I just run and weave and duck and hide .
My side starts to hurt with a stitch and my lungs burn. To distract myself, I go back to the puzzle of Reaper.
By child, I don’t think he’s stunted, more that the concept of child represents an innocence which someone tried to crush out of him, to cut out of him.
I dart behind a fence. My legs are a thousand pounds of weight, and I collapse, looking around.
There’s a tiny house wedged in between two grim and dark apartment buildings. It doesn’t belong, this weird little house, one that’s falling apart but seemingly holding on by sheer strength of defiance. It’s clearly abandoned.
To me, it’s another lost soul in this city.
A twig snaps. It’s his only mistake. Or did he mean to alert me?
My breath rushes out, and I push up in the dark shadow of the fence and take a step, but an arm clamps around me, hauling me against him.
“Good chase. Did you know you smell of gardenias? A garden of Eden.”
His voice is dark like him, calm, and I sink into his front. He’s hard.
A thrill flares bright inside. Hard, big. For me. Because there’s nothing like a virgin thinking she’s queen of sex. I rub against him and he growls low, pushing me away and then turning me.
“I’m not going to fuck you, little omega. Because I like rough, elemental sex. You’re a fucking sweet virgin and I’m not interested.”
“What are you going to do?” And I reach up, trace the line of the scar that ends at the corner of his lip.
Reaper takes my face in his hands and leans in close. He walks me backwards into the darkness of the wall.
My ass hits bricks and his lips hit mine.
The kiss is pure heat and explosives. It’s a taking, a claiming. He tastes like cigarettes and rum, almost like he smells. But there’s more. He tastes of fire and sex and something so dark it steals a part of my soul.
This is my second real kiss. Second person, I mean. I don’t count Jake. Just Knight.
And they couldn’t be more different.
Reaper kisses like he moves through life. No compromises, just the dark and the sweet and the smoke. His tongue slides against mine and he sucks mine into his mouth.
My knees give way, and I clutch him as he deepens the kiss in a way I can’t fully explain or understand. It’s a demand without pressure. Without words.
And I want more. I want to explore his body, touch all those strong, hard muscles. Trace the tattoos. All the scars I know that live on him, all of them with a story I need to hear.
I want to move lower, explore my first cock, touch and stroke and taste.
I just want .
He releases my tongue and makes mine dance and duel with his. Air is a commodity I can do without. Then he bites my lip so hard, I taste copper, and I moan, digging my nails into him as I quiver from that bite alone. It goes straight to my pussy, lights up my clit, and I’m on fire in a different realm where pleasure is tied to blood and pain and foreplay promises better things.
The tiny sting fades as he pulls back, hands still on my face, holding me up that way. My blood is on his mouth, smeared a little, and then he licks it up.
That should have been disgusting, shocking. It’s not. It’s filthy, thrilling and wild.
Elemental.
“Hands and knees.”
He releases me, and I almost fall to the soft grass. Before I can scramble up or even to my feet to ask what he’s doing, one of my shoes goes sailing and then he pulls down my stretch pants and underwear .
“What? I’m not?—”
“I’m not fucking you. But I’m having you. Payment for your life, for releasing you.”
His eyes are savage fire as he speaks.
I almost choke on the air. “My— No one’s seen me like this. You can’t?—”
“I am. I’m collecting.”
“That kiss. My blood.” In the deep throb of my being, I recognize this is a different sort of foreplay. “You licked it up.”
“You’re delicious. The kiss doesn’t count.”
He comes down on me, fingers stroking me between the thighs making me hum high. My body singing. And he kisses me again.
Then suddenly he rolls off, pushing my head down so my ass is up.
And then…Oh, God…
He licks me.
His tongue is hot, velvet rough as it goes from my clit up to my ass. He moves, bites my asscheek and then he shoves my leg, moving, doing something under me. Everything’s hypersensitive and each touch is exquisite agony. A promise of things he could do.
Then his breath hits my pubic bone, and I moan.
The attack’s twofold.
His mouth closes on my clit and he shoves two fingers in me.
I jump with the shock, with the sensations.
I can feel the stretch because he’s moved his fingers apart, in and out and then… he sucks and licks and nibbles my clit, moving to just below it and pulling back until I’m seeking him out. And he settles into a hard rhythm with his mouth.
It’s insane. I’m on the verge when he upends everything again by shoving a third finger in me.
A high note breaks free as I come. My body shakes, and I’m leaping, body doing that of its own because my clit is so sensitive, it’s pain, too much. I pant.
He doesn’t let me go. Reaper starts to finger fuck me hard, borderline brutal, hitting something in me each time that rings out with a pleasure ache and then pure pleasure. But it’s not enough, and I push back, rocking into his pistoning fingers, grinding on his sucking, biting, licking mouth.
The orgasm starts again, contracting beats of euphoria as it gets bigger, bigger, and I’m singing. I’m singing.
It’s not a song, a chant of need and lust and pleasure.
“More. More. More,” I sing. “More, Reaper. More.”
It reaches a crescendo, the euphoria, and I come again, but this time I push back on him harder, grinding down like I want to smother him. The crescendo was only small and it builds and builds even as I come, until it explodes that orgasm through me. A galaxy bursting into life.
When I come down, I’m on my back somehow, and he’s between my legs, licking everything, and then he kisses me again, his tongue and lips are full of a wild taste of me and him. Finally, he lifts his head.
“That’s what you taste like. Decadence. Mine. Next time I chase you I won’t be as kind as this time.”
A thrill shakes me.
“Time to get you back.”
And I think, what the hell have I done?