Chapter 42 Grim
Three weeks away from her. That brief, agonizing scrap of time.
It made the centuries that had come before seem like a day.
The things she did to me. The way she dismantled and reorganized me, somehow making me simultaneously more human… and less.
When it came down to it, between the two of us, I was the one who was truly doomed.
Fated to adore her forever, whether she permitted me in her orbit or not.
For once in my afterlife, though, luck, even if fate had forsaken me, was on my side.
Helena loved me back.
That whole “meant to be” thing… It wasn’t something we could ever aspire to.
Didn’t matter. We were us regardless. Rewriting fate—overwriting it—to our liking.
At least until, one way or another, the powers that be ripped us apart.
Until then…
I scooped up my soft, sweet, delectable, fuckable librarian and seated her on the sarcophagus.
“Oh my God, Grim,” she said, bracing her hands on my shoulders, squeezing muscles on one side, my exposed clavicle on the other. “What are—”
“I’m hungry,” I rumbled in my reaper voice as I hiked up her skirt, hands—both skeletal now—gliding up her thighs.
Being this close to her, between her legs like this, hit by the heat of her, made it hard to figure out what the fuck I was. Good thing she liked my bones as much as my cock because trying to keep myself neatly filed into one form or the other certainly wasn’t going to happen tonight.
“Are we supposed to be doing this in here?” she asked, her voice quiet and whispery—scandalized but tinged as well with hidden delight.
“I promise you she’s not going to wake up,” I said, the tips of my fingers finding the elastic lace of her panties, a garment she wasn’t going to need.
I needed them, though. Which was why, after I drew them down, off, and away, I secured the hot-pink lace in a pocket of my robes.
“Shouldn’t we—?”
I stopped her there, fleshless fingers clicking as I caught her chin with one hand, studying that strawberry-hued mouth that, even if I managed to keep us both out of the furnace for a thousand years, I’d never get enough of.
“Should,” I said, “shouldn’t. Supposed to. I don’t think you understand how that all went out the window on that fucking balcony. Aside from that, you should have figured it out by now that I’ll take you where I want.”
Helena whimpered, like she hadn’t known that’s what she wanted—needed—to hear. I pushed her knees farther apart. As they had before, they fell open for me.
That had my hands itching for every part of her, bone fingers twitching.
Beneath my robes, my cock strained with its own need, the pain of its rigidness just as delicious as my prey.
But the depraved monster part of me wanted in, too.
And that’s the part that came out first, wisps of smoke unfurling to catch Helena.
I sent one vine winding up her body like a serpent.
It shifted her bra aside as more vapors undid the clasps, unleashing her breasts in a spectacular display that made my dick throb.
And she gave me no resistance as I bowed her backward over the cold stone sarcophagus. Which she was going to get fucked on.
Dinner at last.
The thought echoed through me as the moonlight bathed her glorious form in the floral pattern of the stained glass window—a fitting mosaic of gamboling roses and vines.
“Your string,” I said, my dark voice reverberating around us in the tomb while my shadows caught her wrists, pinned them to the lid. “You should know I fixed it while you were in the shower.”
“Wh-what?” she asked, trying to sit up, but I tightened my hold on her, smoke serpents constricting.
The pulse of her heart beat through my wispy black tentacles, building to a manic speed—something that had me relinquishing more control to the part of me that didn’t think so much in words.
“You didn’t know I was there,” I said. Matter of fact.
Helena hitched a breath, like she liked that. Just like she liked this.
What else had I unknowingly done up to this point that she’d been into?
“The next time,” I promised, “you will.”
I obliterated the distance in a blink, diving in, assailing her exposed cunt open-mouthed and ravenous.
Helena arched on the tomb, as much as I let her, a wail escaping her, and as it reverberated around us, I lit up on the inside. The way flames did in a back draft.
Fuuuuck. How many times in the last three weeks had I thought about eating her alive like this? Having her come on my tongue this time. All while thinking I’d never get the chance again.
No wonder I couldn’t keep my shit together.
Helena surrendered, her head falling back over the other side of the sarcophagus.
In reward, I sent my tongue wandering. Then I sent it plunging.
A sound I wasn’t sure I’d ever made before came rolling out of me—a low guttural growl mixed with the hum of some happy, feasting carnivore. Helena writhed in my grip. I liked that, too, and she wanted one of her hands back, so benevolent wraith that I was, I gave it to her.
Apparently—for some reason, no guess as to why—she promptly forgot about all her shoulds and supposed tos, driving her fingers into my hair, palming the back of my head while I buried my face in her, dragging my tongue through her.
Gasping, like she was trying not to drown in pleasure, she fisted my hair, a signal that her stance on what should happen had recently fucking changed. That, combined with the decadent taste of her, had me funneling the whole of my concentration in on the new assignment.
Losing focus on maintaining my form, part of my lower face gave way to the hard bone of my working jaw.
“Oh… my… God,” Helena panted, her breath coming fast.
I plunged my tongue into her again, but I lost control of that, too, heated flesh turning to wandering, invading shadows and maybe back again.
“Oh, fuck!” Helena’s cry echoed in the tomb, and the darkest, most pitch-black laugh came rumbling out of my depths to rebound around us as she came with a violence that I went ahead and let myself be proud of.
Whimpering now as I returned to gently suck on her clit, cooling my assault while she still held me there, she trembled all over, like she might just break apart.
Poor thing. I almost felt bad for her.
I slid my lips along her inner thigh, giving the flesh there the softest sucking bite.
“Looks like I’ve been a bad influence,” I said as, somehow, I managed to emerge from the heaven between her legs, one of my new favorite places.
Loosening the grips of my shadows on her, I gently drew her up into a sitting position again. Still reeling, gasping for breath, she fell against me.
Completely unaware how she was about to come again—even harder.
“Grim,” she said, flushed, breathless, and desperate. “I’m… pretty sure… I have… a lot… more things… for you to fix.”
“Oh, I know you do,” I told her. “First thing’s first, though.”
I gave her another moment. Just one more to catch her breath. I gave myself the same moment to get myself together, wrangle myself into being human. Mostly.
“Look at me,” I told her.
Helena took my face in shaking hands. Her eyes found mine, pupils blown wide so that only a slim ring of that summer-grass hue remained.
I lifted a skeletal hand to her cheek, thumb clearing tears. “You said a bad word.”
She huffed a laugh, eyes averting from mine as she flushed to a brighter red.
“Afraid I can’t let that slide.”
She smiled, shy and embarrassed, and as obviously into the game as ever. Until my next words.
“Put my hood up,” I told her.
She blinked only once as, slowly, that smile slid away, her gaze finding mine again, a dark hunger of her own replacing that shyness.
I waited. And Helena didn’t disappoint. Her hands, shaking, went to either side of my head. As instructed, she gathered the material of my hood and slowly drew it up.
The familiar shadows fell over me. In the darkness I summoned my true face. The one that was no face at all.
Helena watched without fear, but she wouldn’t see me. Not until I let her.
I had power over the translucency of my shadows—at least I did at the moment—and for right now, I just wanted her to see black. The color of doom.
And why did I love it so much that she liked me this way?
She was the only mortal being who ever had.
My form locked in this state—caught between being thing and man—I swept in on her, deleting the slim distance in a blink, straining cock now poised at her opening.
My turn to tremble, my whole being wavering, becoming less certain with the sensation of her scorching, velvety softness clenching me.
Helena’s grip returned to my shoulders, one flesh, one bone. No. Both bone, both flesh.
Those curious eyes searched for my face.
Thinning the veil of shadows between us, I allowed her to see that it was me who wanted her this way, this time-torn being whose spirit she had resurrected.
Then I grasped her by the hips, one hand skeletal, one hand not.
Eyes locking with my empty sockets, Helena pressed a hand to my chest. And she didn’t flinch this time when her delicate fingertips fell through the cage of my ribs as half my form faltered there.
My grip on her tightened. I drew her to me, filling her to the brink in one go.
She took me with a soundless, open-mouthed, and breathless gasp.
Her shock. Her overwhelm. God, I fucking loved it.
I rocked into her again, and her jaw dropped open farther. Her free hand entering my hood, palm finding my hard cheekbone as my cock throbbed in the fierce grip of her divine body.
I withdrew, slowly, before plunging in yet again—all the way—what little mind I had left officially shattering at being sheathed to the hilt.
Helena kissed me, soft on the teeth. My own jaw fell open, like I could kiss her back. Then, when her tongue darted between my teeth, something in me broke open.
I thrust into her sharp and hard, and Helena hissed with pleasure.
“Sweet… liiibrraariannn,” moaned the creature part of me, officially in charge again as I hooked an arm, one of bone, one of flesh, under each knee, capturing her legs.
Knocked off-balance, Helena fell back on the tomb, though she caught herself with her palms so that she could remain upright.
So she could watch me as I drilled her.
I started fucking her hard. Helena braced herself, eagerly taking it, short, sharp gasps escaping her. I sent smoke snakes all over her, to lick and flick her nipples. More dove between us to have at her clit.
“Grim,” she gasped. “God, Grim, I’m close.”
Good to know.
My pace brutal, I sent my soul into her, seizing hers in a cruel grip.
Helena cried out. My invasion. Taking so much of me all at once. It had to be overpowering.
Good.
Come for me, Helena, my monster’s voice urged through my soul, which twisted hers in its grip.
Her own soul, gentle as ever in return, even though it had once proved stronger than mine, sent shots of liquid gold to wind my darkness. Like her essence wanted me to crush it even harder—just as hard as I fucked her.
Now I was close. And when her soul gave mine the softest returning squeeze, I almost finished right there.
I held on, head tilted back, twisted toward the moonlight, which revealed more of my reaper’s form to her, my white skeleton grin, my ribs and the shadows in between.
The vines of smoke that surged to penetrate her more deeply, capturing her inner being, wringing her out—delivering a lick of death while soaking in the burn of her life.
All the way until Helena collapsed backward against the stone lid, her cunt spasming around me.
“Fuck,” I choked out when she came, my soul seizing the pleasure that radiated through hers, my spirit swallowing her orgasm down whole, blissing out on it—and her.
Right before, as I’d done the last time, sending the wave of ecstasy that came with my own release straight back into her.
Brutalizing her all over again while she shrieked a second time.
Because I wasn’t just a monster. I was her monster.
And I wasn’t about to let her ever forget.
Our pleasure blurred together, the fallout prolonged, our climaxes trading echoes.
She shook against the tomb, demolished. Just the way I wanted her.
My shadows gathered her up, returning her to my arms.
I cradled her close.
Helena, knocked half unconscious again by the soul fucking I was seriously addicted to, slung one of her own arms around my shoulders.
“Grim, I love you,” she managed, murmuring the words into my ribs.
I clutched her tight. Ripped to shreds.
Because… I fucking loved her, too.