Chapter 29 Before We Light the Match
I pounce on him the moment he steps into the bathroom where I’m hiding.
Fists flying, legs kicking, I’m not going down without a fight. I’m tired of all these assholes trying to take me down because of some bullshit reason.
A grunt rips out of my assailant as we fumble in the dark.
I lock my legs around his waist, my arm curled tight against his neck, and I pull with all my might.
My muscles strain, but he’s too strong, too big.
He spins me around and sets me on something cold—the counter. A rough chuckle vibrates from his chest as he peels off my fingers, one by one, as if my grip amuses him.
Screaming, I claw at his neck, his hair, my fingers ripping off fabric—a damn mask—on his face.
“Shhh.” He presses a finger to my lips.
Fuck him.
Teeth chattering, I buck harder, wilder against all those hard muscles.
And an unmistakable thickness prodding my belly.
Fear spikes, and I thrash, jamming elbows and knees into any parts of him I can reach. But I might as well be a kitten pretending to be a lioness because he just pins me tighter against his heated frame.
Then I register it—the familiar masculine scent of leather, sandalwood, and rain.
“R-Reaper?”
Panting breaths reach my ears, following his fingers gently scraping across my face.
“Took you long enough,” he murmurs.
The fight leaves me, and I’d sag onto the counter if he weren’t holding me up.
It’s Reaper. I’m safe.
The same sheltering peace cuts through my fear.
Then the last forty-eight hours slam into me. Us having sex. Him leaving me afterward. Me almost getting killed at the Benefaction.
Indignation flares, and I slap him hard across the face.
Reaper hisses, but he doesn’t flinch.
“I deserve it,” he rasps.
“You bastard!” I slap him again, my palm searing from the contact. “You left me alone after you fucked me, knowing damn well what it meant to me. That it was the f-first time I’d—”
Had sex since Blake. I can’t finish the words when a maelstrom of emotions—grief, relief, anger, sadness, exhilaration, and more—swirls inside me.
“And today—” My voice breaks. “Today, I nearly died, and you still weren’t there when I needed you.”
“I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Something tingles at the base of my spine. The cadence of his words, the same baritone in his voice, but there’s something else.
He holds me tightly, plastering my ear against his rioting chest. Tears leak out of my eyes as I shake from all the messed-up shit I’ve gone through.
“I shouldn’t have left. What we did meant the world to me.” Reaper presses heated kisses to my hair, my ears, my cheeks. “And when I heard you scream, something in me snapped. I thought I’d lost you—”
“What?” Hairs rise on my forearms. “You heard me scream?”
His breath hitches. “You don’t understand—”
“Then make me understand!” I shove him and grasp at the wall, trying to find the light switch.
I’m sick of it. Meeting in the dark. Feeling in the dark. Always being in the dark.
He grabs my hand.
“I almost died today!” Hot tears drip down my face and I hate myself for it.
I hate how I’m trembling, how even now, when I should push him away and tell him to leave and never come back, I’m still leaning toward him, still craving his heat like a flower needs sunlight.
“Weren’t you supposed to protect me? Wasn’t that what this was about?
You protecting me at night? Where the fuck were you? ”
Reaper grips my fingers. “I was there, Aria. I was at the Benefaction.”
“Wh-What?”
I yank my hand from him as his words finally register.
He kisses my fingertips—the same reverent touch that melts my bones. “You were attacked on the way out of the Kongs’ compound. I was there. I wanted to kill every bastard who touched you.”
My mind flashes to the mysterious man who saved me at the Benefaction. The tall streak of black, his motions too quick for me to take in before he disappeared from view.
“That was you? The guy who pulled the asshole off of me?”
“Jasper. His name is Jasper. He’s a soldier in the Triads. High ranking and dangerous.”
My mind spins as logic tries to catch up. I don’t understand.
How was Reaper there? How did he know where to find me? The Antihero Syndicate all had their roles: Ren enacting some Plan B, Elias with Lana, Sofia with me, Sebastian guarding Celia, and Tristan being our getaway man. Where does Reaper fit into all of this?
He must sense the questions bubbling up inside me because he says, “I’ll tell you everything someday. It’ll all make sense, I promise you.”
“Why can’t you tell me now?” Something hollows inside me. Against all common sense, I’ve buried my doubts about him. But there were red flags, so many of them, and I can’t live with not knowing any longer. “Wh-Who are you, Reaper?”
Reaper stills, a low, bitter chuckle grinding out of him. Instead of answering me, he twines his fingers with mine, grazing them, letting them go, then tugging them back, each slide sparking embers over my skin.
“Tell me. Please,” I whisper.
“You don’t want to know. It’ll change everything. You’ll lose…this.”
He squeezes my hands.
“You’re talking in riddles.” The dread turns heavy.
“Are you sure you want to know?” Reaper asks. Uncertainty laces the deep timbre of his voice.
An answer perches at the tip of my tongue as the clues stitch themselves into an image I don’t want to see. I squeeze my eyes shut and force myself not to think, to stop making obvious connections, because desperation seizes sharply inside my chest.
And fear. Soul-crushing fear.
Whatever the truth is, it’ll wreck me and destroy us. And because I’m weak, because I want one more selfish moment and delay a goodbye I feel deep in my gut, I grab his face and kiss him.
He hisses, his muscles tensing for a split second.
Then everything catches fire.
Our kiss turns ravenous—mouths open, tasting, savoring, consuming. I bite his tongue, and the metallic tang of blood rushes to my taste buds.
“My deadly vixen.” He growls and returns the favor, kissing me harder, like he’s trying to swallow the truth dangling between us.
I claw at his back, nails digging into his rippling muscles through his thin shirt, and with a yank, he rips it over his head, then jerks me back to him.
Clangs and thumps echo in the small bathroom—bottles and brushes and God knows what else crash to the floor.
“I need you,” I gasp when we part for air.
Without another word, Reaper lifts me and carries me to the bed.
It’s dark. Too dark. I can only make out a sturdy silhouette as I’m singed by his presence, drunk on sensations flooding my body and mind.
Clothes rustle, zippers are wrenched down. I barely register when he sheds my sleep shirt and panties before tossing me onto the bed.
The cool sheets are a temporary relief from the fever burning me up from within. But that all disappears when he falls on top of me, all sinewy muscle and coiled power.
He’s naked like me now, his hardness and roughness devouring my softness whole.
Growling, he moves down my body, raking his teeth along my neck, nipping the divot of my collarbone before dragging a hot lick down the valley of my breasts.
“I can’t get enough of you,” he rasps before taking a tight nipple into his mouth and sucking hard.
I cry out, my body writhing beneath his, desperate to escape the sharp lashes of his tongue, which shoot pleasure straight to my clit.
But he holds me captive. Fisting his hair, I buck under his relentless mouth—hard suctions, heady flicks of tongue, a pinch from teeth worrying one nipple then the other, until they’re twin live wires.
“Look at you, Aria,” he grunts.
His large hands grip my waist, locking me against the mattress as my legs shift and slide, desperate for friction, for something to put out the fire burning in my core.
“Reaper, please.” I yank his hair, which spurs him to quicken his motions and drive me closer and closer to the edge.
My legs clamp around his head, so tight I’m afraid I’ll cut off his oxygen supply.
Clearly not caring, he buries his face in my pussy and delivers a toe-curling lick from my aching hole to my swollen clit.
“Shit!” I spasm, wetness dripping out of me as the first flash of ecstasy threatens to pull me under.
“Not so fast.” He chuckles darkly.
Two fingers spear my entrance as his lips wrap around my clit.
His suction deepens as white-hot pleasure builds inside me with the force of a tsunami.
My muscles lock, my mouth parting in a soundless cry as he curls those talented fingers just right, scraping the top of my channel in time with the deadly pull of his mouth.
“Reaper!” A lusty scream rips from my throat as I shatter.
Wetness spurts out of me in relentless streams.
I don’t even have it in me to be embarrassed because he doesn’t stop. He only licks harder, dragging out every aftershock like he still can’t get enough.
My teeth chatter. Shakes overtake my body. Too sensitive, everything’s too sensitive.
He builds me up again.
“That’s it, Aria. Again,” he growls. “I want this cunt to come all over my face.”
My lips move, but no words come out. I thrash, my body fighting yet welcoming the onslaught of another soul-crushing high.
A hard slap cracks across my ass, and I gasp from the sudden pain.
“Ass up, on all fours, Aria,” he grunts. “I’m going to own you. Brand you from inside out the way you’ve scored yourself permanently into my heart.”
More heavy breathing. He spits, and I hear the unmistakable groan of him fisting his cock as I quickly get into position, my mind empty aside from the need for him.
“Yes. Take me,” I moan, my swollen breasts plastered against the sheets, rough fabric scraping against my peaked nipples. “Please. I need this.”
Another slap cracks across my flesh. I cry out as wetness seeps from my pussy, dripping down my thighs.
“My messy, slutty girl,” he rasps.
Then I feel him.
All solid muscles against my back. The thick head of his cock nudges against my entrance.
“My brave, beautiful, reckless girl.”