Chapter 33 Grim
To hell with hope—at least any I had for myself.
Maybe a taste of heaven was all someone like me needed.
Whatever inferno waited for me after all I’d done—and was about to do—could have me. Already, I could say with authority that the inevitable torment I would face for shirking my duties, ignoring my oath, crossing this boundary… with her… was worth it.
She tasted of cherries and vanilla, her subtle citrus-and-honeysuckle scent teasing up my memory of Halloween night when she’d flung her arms around me, her supple curves colliding with my unyielding bones.
As Helena kissed me back, her warm and soft hands framed my face, her lips answering the demands of mine. Her desire was unmasked now as she held me to her, her fervor dispelling all the doubts I’d entertained that she hadn’t wanted me. Hadn’t meant the things she’d said to me.
She had.
And that knowledge unleashed something ferocious inside me, a greedy craving that I’d been trying to hold at bay—one that now surged up out of my gutted and war-torn soul to infuse my blood and enflame my flesh.
Neglected and abandoned for so long, this suit of muscle and skin had become alien to me. In this moment, though, with Helena pressed against me, her heart banging out an SOS that I itched to answer—and assuage—I became irrevocably fused with my body again. With hers, too.
Her hands half fell, half slid to grip the collar of my jacket, and the act of those slim and delicate fingers curling around the stiff black leather had my tongue diving to taste hers.
A soft murmur escaped her as she met my invasion with an answering brush of her own tongue, and that eager caress combined with that small hum of pleasure sent ripples through me. The simple idea that I’d done anything she liked threatened to set me on fire.
I wanted more. I wanted too much.
To coax that murmur into a moan. To taste all the rest of her with both tongue and spirit.
I wanted her under me, naked, flushed, delirious.
Bracing one hand against the door, I cupped her face with the other, pressing into her as unadulterated need ripped through me. My muscles drew tight, and my blood rushed through my veins, making everything—my skin, my mind, my jeans—suddenly… cramped.
How long had it been since I’d wanted anything? Anything that mattered…
Helena mattered.
She made me feel shit I’d forgotten I had the capacity to feel. She yanked my whole fucking soul into the light where colors outside of black and white rampaged through a world I didn’t—and couldn’t—belong to.
I didn’t care anymore. Not about what I was or wasn’t supposed to do.
I just needed her.
Deepening the kiss, I made one daring promise after another to her mouth as she pushed my jacket down, the stiff leather sliding back. If she wanted it off, I wasn’t going to argue. In that moment, if she’d asked for it, I’d have given her my soul.
The leather garment dissipated to smoke before it could hit her carpet.
Helena placed her hands to my chest, pushing me back as she broke the kiss.
Instead of being disturbed by my powers—this reminder that I was still, essentially, more of a what than a who—Helena brightened, and a strange interest colored by a keen hunger lit those already-luminous eyes.
I backtracked as she shoved, stopping only when those fingers burrowed beneath the hem of my T-shirt, gathering the material up to unveil my torso—a canvas of small and interlocking black tattoos etched over muscle.
At least, the emblems would look like tattoos to her. In reality, they were all scars.
Imprints—each left by the rarest of souls. Those who, upon my gathering of them, had stamped their mark on me, both figuratively and literally.
Helena wasn’t nearly tall enough to pull my shirt free. So, as she lifted, I took the job from her, and the fabric evaporated in an instant.
She wanted to see. And I wanted her to have whatever the fuck she wanted.
Those eyes scoured my naked chest, scaling down the innumerable solid black symbols and shapes that wrapped my biceps, wound my forearms, and mapped my torso, the collage of symbols vanishing past the barrier of my belt.
Helena seemed to be noting and appreciating each one, and I waited while she took me in, my own breath nonexistent while she stood with chest heaving, trying to catch hers.
But I didn’t want her to catch her breath. I wanted, instead, to hear her murmur and moan for me. I wanted my soul wrapped around hers again.
I wanted a few other things besides, and at this point, there was no hiding exactly what.
Helena had stopped, though. Maybe because she’d gotten ahold of herself. Realized what she was doing…
She didn’t meet my gaze again. Instead, she stared hard at my chest.
Several moments passed before, finally, she lifted timid and curious hands. They hovered in the air between us for an instant, and then her fingertips went to trail my stomach, bumping over muscles on their way down—and down.
Going rigid all over, I had to fight the urge to shut my eyes in bliss, if for no other reason than that looking away from her, even for a second, would have been too painful.
The sensation of her feathery and warm touch sent a surge of desire through me, my already-rigid cock going rock hard, making me remember in an instant what even centuries as a creature of the grave hadn’t erased from my being.
While also unlocking a part of me I doubted I’d ever known even in life, either.
This yearning for another singular spirit, a longing to be entwined only with her.
I gritted my teeth, my need for her threatening to overtake me, and hands curling into fists at my sides, I went to war against the nearly overpowering urge to snatch her, draw her to me.
I yearned to kiss her again. Steal those lips, claim them.
Start down the long and delicious path of making her scream for me.
I didn’t dare, though. Afraid any one of my movements would make her have second thoughts.
Maybe she was remembering I was a monster. A death wraith tasked with collecting her soul, ripping her light out of this world.
Or maybe I just wasn’t her fucking type.
But then Helena did us both in by biting her bottom lip, hungry, bedroom eyes flicking up to me as she seized my belt.
I let her get as far as unfastening it.