18. Chapter Eighteen #2
“I don’t care if it’s dangerous,” I rasp, and it’s the truth. “They need to die. All of them. Not just for what they’ve done to me. But for what they’ve done to god knows how many other women. For what they’ll do to more if they’re not stopped. And you’re getting in the fucking way, Lynx.”
His response is to rock his hips. My breath hitches when I feel how hard he is already.
“You tricked me,” he accuses, his lips hovering a mere inch from mine.
“And you fell for it. What does that say about you?” I grate out through clenched teeth. “That’s right. That you’re just like the rest of them.”
He nips at my lower lip, not hard enough to draw blood but hard enough to cause me to hiss. His free hand drifts over my curves, his fingertips branding every inch of skin beneath the fabric of my dress. When he reaches the hem and his knuckles graze my bare thigh, he pauses.
“I’m nothing like them, Harlow.”
“Prove it.”
He pulls back slightly to gaze down into my eyes.
“You heard me. I said prove it. Show me you’re not like all the men who visit the club. All the men who’ve taken a little piece of me with them when they’ve gotten me alone. Prove to me that you’re not like the monsters who destroyed me, all in the name of their own sick, selfish desires.”
Silence. The long, tension-filled, terrifying kind.
But then it snaps. And before I have a chance to protest, his lips crash against mine.
My world tilts off its axis, every cell in my body buzzing to life as my blood heats to a balmy degree. He releases my hands, my fingers finding purchase in his shirt as he drinks from me like a man lost in the barren desert.
When I moan into his mouth, he rocks his hips again, the impressive bulge in the front of his jeans pressing into my stomach.
Without thought, my lips part and he deepens the kiss, cupping my jaw and dusting his thumb over my cheekbone.
His touch is gentle now, but his tongue is laced with desperation and need.
My body sags against his, my limbs softening to jelly.
I’ve never been kissed so thoroughly in all my life.
It feels as though I’m soaring high above the clouds, looking down on earth while having an out-of-body experience. Everything is lighter up here. Easier. Freer.
There’s no pain. No fear. No monsters hiding in the dark.
Just me and Lynx.
I never want it to end.
But then he pulls back and says in a gravelly voice, “Remember what I said. You’re in charge here. Tell me no, and I’ll stop.”
He takes my silence as consent and slowly brushes the backs of his knuckles further up my bare thigh. When he skims over one of the ridges of scars littering my flesh, all the blood in my veins crystalizes to ice as Lynx’s entire body galvanizes.
I close my eyes and begin counting backward from five, zoning out so I don’t need to face whatever reaction he’s going to have.
I’ve never shown anyone my scars before. Not even at the club where I keep them strategically hidden beneath fishnet stockings and body makeup.
I hate this. I hate this so fucking much it hurts.
“Which one of them did this to you?” Lynx asks through gritted teeth, lowering his forehead to mine.
I consider telling him. I really do. But Lynx seems to have some sort of hero complex. And if I give him a name, I know he’ll rob me of the revenge I deserve and then I’ll be left with nothing but rage and regret flowing through my veins for all eternity.
Determined not to allow that to be my story, I tell him vaguely, “The worst one.”
A million questions linger in the space between us, but none of them are spoken. I wouldn’t give him answers anyway, and he must know that by now because he doesn’t press me for more information.
When the hand on my thigh begins moving again, it’s gentler than before, his fingertips tracing each of the harsh slashes across my skin as though he’s counting each horror-filled inch of marred flesh.
He creeps higher and higher with each stroke, and by time he reaches the thin layer of lace between my legs, I’m panting like a dog.
It’s all new to me—this tenderness. Nobody’s ever touched me like this before because the only men who’ve been close enough to do so are the ones that forced themselves on me.
“Are you wet right now, pretty girl?”
“Yes,” I whisper, shivering when he drags his middle finger up my lace-clad seam.
Then he hooks the side of my panties with one finger and shreds them from my body. I jerk at the burn of the fabric against my skin and glower up at him.
“Those were my favorite pair.”
“I’ll buy you new ones,” he says dryly.
I go to protest but am stopped short when he slides a finger between my folds and circles my throbbing clit. I moan in response, my knees buckling from the contact while all thoughts of my panties lying on the basement floor of a church evaporate before my eyes.
All I can think—all I can feel—is this moment. How strange but freeing it is to be given the option of saying no. And knowing he’d back away if I asked him to.
“You’re going to give me names, Harlow. It may not be today …
” He emphasizes his statement with another circle of my clit.
“It may not be tomorrow …” Another circle.
“But eventually you’ll give me names. And every.
” Circle. “Last.” Circle. “One of them.” This time he sinks a finger inside of me and hooks it, applying pressure to a deliciously sensitive spot inside of me I didn’t know existed. “Will die.”
I release a loud moan and break out in a full-body sweat. If it weren’t for him pinning me against the wall, I’d be a puddle at his feet.
He brings his mouth to my ear and growls, “And I won’t stop, pretty girl. Not until every last drop of blood of the men who have wronged you runs dry.”
He presses his thumb to my throbbing bundle of nerves while that magical finger of his works inside me.
But just as the pressure in my core threatens to give way, he withdraws his hand and brings it to my mouth.
I whimper in protest because fuck him for showing me I can still feel something and then ripping it all out from under me.
It makes me want to sink my thumbs into his eye sockets and press until I feel a satisfying pop.
He lewdly smears my juices over my bottom lip the way he did at the cemetery.
But this time, his tongue sweeps over my lips, tasting me in the most primal of ways. A groan escapes him, and he brings his fingers to his lips and sucks those clean too.
“Now you know what it feels like,” he murmurs.
“Like what feels like?”
He shakes his head but doesn’t give me an answer.
“I hate you,” I grate out.
“I know, pretty girl. I hate me too.”
He releases my wrists and steps back. I tug my dress down my thighs as he grabs my gun from the ground, then snatches my hand in his and drags me through the dark.
How he knows his way around down here I’m not prepared to ask. And when a crack of light comes into view and we move through a set of steel doors and out into the sun, I search around and realize I have no goddamn clue where we are.
“Underground tunnels,” Lynx tells me, answering the question I hadn’t asked.
He leads me down a long concrete path and across a parking lot, stopping in front of his truck. I jerk my hand out of his and turn to run. But he’s faster, snaking an arm around my waist and hoisting me up into the passenger seat before slamming the door in my face.
“This is getting really old, you know,” I shout at him through the pane of glass as he rounds the hood and climbs up inside.
I turn and shoot invisible daggers at him, sneering as he reaches across me to grab the seat belt and clip it into place.
His gaze drifts to where my dress has ridden up my thighs, showcasing my scars in broad daylight—something I try desperately to avoid.
Anxious now, I tug the fabric down and clear my throat.
His blue eyes snap to mine.
I hate the pity I see there.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
Breathe.