Chapter 45
Reid doesn’t kiss me back immediately. I can feel his breath shudder out against my lips—a tether fraying somewhere inside him. I lace my hands through his soft hair and press my mouth to the curve of his jaw.
“We should”—he growls a little as my tongue traces down the side of his neck—“get back to Harker.”
“Not yet,” I beg him, lips against his skin. “Not yet.”
Before he can respond, I climb on top of him and lower myself into his lap. His hands find my waist, slipping under the hem of my shirt. He’s staring at me, eyes lit by only the silver glow of moonlight and the dim exhibit lights.
“And when we do leave”—I dig my hands into his shoulders in emphasis—“we leave together.”
His hands tighten on my skin. “Viv…”
“I’d follow you anywhere. Harker or otherwise.” I study the slope of his nose, the emotion welling in his eyes…“You don’t have to be alone.”
“I don’t deserve you.” His voice is rough.
“You do. We both deserve happiness, Reid.”
He leans close, and I expect his ridiculously drugging lips on mine, but he surprises me by pressing his lips to my forehead. It’s such a simple, gentle act that I find tears brimming in my eyes. Forget never having felt this way before. I’ve never been loved like this. Not by anyone.
We’re so close I can feel his heart pound against my own.
I can feel the warmth of his chest, smell the lemongrass on his skin, hear the ragged breaths sawing in and out of him.
When he pulls away, his cheeks are flushed and his lips are warm.
He kisses my cheek and the edge of my jaw.
His hands slip easily below the hem of my skirt, where his fingertips graze my hip bones.
My core heats and liquifies. I grind myself against his lap like a needy animal.
He closes his eyes. “Viv.”
I can’t even hear past my own heartbeat.
The energy between us is as taut as a bowstring.
Stretching, stretching elastic about to snap.
My legs widen an inch more, pushing me closer, pressing my chest flush against his, my nipples tight and aching.
His forehead finds mine, and our lips are so close, and I could cry myself hoarse begging for his mouth on mine.
“Kiss me,” I whisper.
All our other kisses—the ones I’ve fallen asleep thinking of or woken up still tasting—are mild breezes compared to the gale force of this kiss.
Desire crests in me higher and higher with every lick and stroke and nip.
His hands are everywhere—low on my back, cradling my jaw, touching my hair, my ribs, my fingers.
Every inch he pulls me closer sends my body further into overdrive, each nerve lighting up like the star-filled sky outside.
My desire for him could rip right through me.
With every brush of our lips, I’m telling Reid, I’ve never felt this way before.
My breath, hitching and catching with his groans, a message in morse code: You.
Make. Me. Belong. I can’t think of anything else when he moves against me like this.
When he mumbles how beautiful I am. How perfect.
How I was made for him. I can’t think of why I don’t tell him I’m falling in love.
Maybe he already knows. I kiss him that much deeper to be sure.
It’s wet and breathy, messy and urgent. Clumsy like we’re teenagers in the back seat of a car.
No fusing of our bodies will be close enough.
Every single inch of skin against skin won’t be sufficient.
And that’s fine by me. I’m lit up like a bonfire, crackling and scorching with a need so primal I can’t believe my heart hasn’t beaten clean out of my chest. I could swear this longing, this burning, is all I’ve ever known.
Without breaking the kiss, I pull fruitlessly at his shirt. Off, I try to tell him. I need to feel the heat of your skin. He yanks the offending material over his back and tosses it across the room. For a moment, he stares at my mouth, and I lick my lips, trying and failing to catch my breath.
Until I’m distracted by the swath of tan muscle that ripples below me.
He’s lean but carved like a marble statue I’d find down the hall.
Muscles stacked like bricks. Pecs and abs and forearms. My mouth waters.
My hands trace slowly down the swells and divots.
Perfect. Spellbinding. Not of this world.
He grunts, allowing me to grope and touch in awe.
My hand splays low across his abdomen, feeling the fine hairs beneath his belly button.
His fingers slide down to my ass and knead the flesh there.
I roll forward involuntarily and feel the hard length he’s sporting between my spread legs. Like a crowbar.
“Oh god,” I breathe.
He kisses me again, possessive, needy, dragging me across his length over and over.
The friction on my clit is dizzyingly good.
His huge, warm hands slide beneath my thong and grasp my ass.
My fingers curl at his collarbone and around his shoulders.
I whine a little when his cock under his pants hits just right, and he responds with a gruff “Yeah. Yeah.”
His voice is an accelerator. I rub myself against him.
Kissing has become too hard—requiring too much focus—so our lips are just brushing as we share breath, exchanging pleading, plaintive noises.
My nipples are too sensitive against his chest, and I wish I’d worn a bra to protect myself from this kind of torment.
“Maybe we—” He cuts himself off with a throaty groan.
He sounds like he’s losing it a bit, but I’m too focused on the orgasm that’s building from the friction alone.
His tongue slides down my neck until his teeth capture my sweater.
I rip it off and moan helplessly when his hands cup my breasts and squeeze.
“Jesus,” he gasps. “Your body—” He winces, slamming himself back into the wall behind us. Only then do I notice that without my sweater as a buffer, my silver locket has scalded his skin.
“Oh,” I breathe. “I’m so sorry,”
He rubs at his chest. “Don’t be.”
Carefully, I pull the necklace over my head and drop it safely atop my sweater on the floor beneath us. It’s the first time I’ve taken it off in months.
Reid’s mouth captures my own again, and his hips buck upward as if he’s not even aware of the motion.
His thumbs brush across my nipples until I squirm.
Wriggling closer, needing more, panting like a dog in heat.
Filthy. This is filthy. To fuck where we’ve just killed.
I wish it didn’t ignite me the way it does, but my vision has melted into sparks and stars, my body fused into one long current of pure electricity, and the cacophony of my swallowed whimpers and his muted growls is becoming deafening.
“Reid,” I whine when his mouth sucks beneath my ear. His hands haven’t left my breasts, cupping, massaging. Flicking my nipples until the ache between my legs is unbearable. “Reid,” I repeat.
“Shh,” he soothes. Another slow lick at my neck. “We can slow down.”
I don’t know how to tell him that’s not what I want. That I want him to wreck me inside and out. I try to breathe through his leisurely ministrations. To let him take his time with me.
“I’ve never been able to get you out of my head,” he murmurs. “It’s like torture.”
“I know the feeling,” I whine as his cock pulses against my core.
Some merciful instinct has him scooping me up and laying me down on the cold museum floor, caging his arms over me.
“More,” I plead.
He laughs lightly. “I’ll crush you.”
“Do it.”
I pull at him, trying to get him to press all that delicious weight onto every pulsing part of me. Closer, closer, closer. I don’t want any space between us. Where he ends, I begin. I arch my back, fusing us together until he releases a low, throaty noise that I feel in my stomach.
He reaches behind me and grabs his shirt, shoving it under my head like a makeshift pillow. He yanks my skirt and my thong down in one swift, confident motion, and I kick them out from under us, then lie bare beneath him. He swears as his eyes travel down my body. Then he sits back on his heels.
I watch him through lowered lashes. His hands are braced on his thighs, his chest rising and falling with choppy, rushed breaths. His abdomen contracting as the painful bulge beneath his pants twitches.
But it’s his eyes I can’t stop coming back to.
They’re darker. Ringed in red. Half-gone with lust and need.
And I’m wet. Shamelessly so. The way he’s looking at me sends a trickle of it down my thigh.
Motivated by something I’ve never felt, I bend my knees, planting my feet on the floor, and spread my legs for him.
Heat blooms across my cheeks and down my chest, but I don’t care.
I need him to see what he’s doing to me.
“Fuck,” Reid chokes out, eyes rolling back in his head. His hands turn to fists along his thighs. A muted growl rumbles in his chest…and two curled ram’s horns sprout from the crown of his head.
Oh my god.
The ridges glow in the moonlight, glossy and black and ancient.
“You said they weren’t real.” My voice is barely audible.
I’ve never seen a demon’s horns. Monstrous, violent things. And yet…so beautiful. I blink at him in shameless, terrified wonder.
“Shit,” Reid curses, shutting his eyes. His hand fists his cock over his pants. “I just need a minute…I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be,” I rasp. It’s as loud as my voice will go. I sit up to reach a hand out carefully. “Can I?”
Reid’s brows lift in guarded surprise. I nod once to tell him I’m serious, and he crawls over me until the horns reach my outstretched palm. Only then do I realize my hand is shaking. But he says nothing, and neither do I as I brush my fingers over the curved bone. Reid shudders out a groan.
“Sensitive?”
He only nods, his head bowing lower over my stomach. My fingers touch lightly, and he makes a sound like he’s punctured a lung.