27. Threx Surrender
twenty-seven
Threx: Surrender
My body whispered into hers when the pretty little drops of water fell down her cheek, warm and salty in the way they stained her skin.
Was it me?
Was I the one making the clouds cry?
“Daphne,” I dragged my grip down her throat, feeling her tighten around me as I took her slowly by the hips. “No.” I pulled her hands from the wall. She no longer needed a safeguard. She only needed me.
“Here.” I lifted her into my arms and draped the limp, quivering things about my neck, fucking into her in slow, wavering pulses.
“You gave me,” she attempted to focus, but there was no gravity, just embers and mist.
“I gave you what?” I asked, breathing down her throat until she rolled into a relentless shiver.
“Your last name.”
Yes. I did. And now, not even Wolfe could take her from me.
“Daphne Gavros,” I crowned her, causing the dark lines bordering my heart to do a thing. Feel alive? Die? I couldn’t tell which.
Daphne crumpled, burning like the end of a cigarette between my fingers, and it was all I could do to keep her upright.
Her skin was a petal-soft river of melted snow that I couldn’t stop touching… Stop keeping. I couldn’t let her slip away.
Not this time.
Not ever again.
“Stay with me,” I exhaled against the shell of her ear while my hands played. From the tight peaks of her nipples to the forgotten stretch of flesh above her elbows, I wanted her to feel me until there was nowhere left I didn’t exist.
“Thayor,” my full name fell from her lips like a prayer caught in her throat.
To everyone else, I was Threx. The harbinger of death. Wolfe’s teeth. But to Daphne, I was complete, despite being marred and aching for her to suck all the pain away.
Daphne deserved more than being dragged down from the clouds, but I was done pretending that heaven could keep her. She would fall, and I would catch her. And whether that made us saints or sinners, I could give a shit.
“Say it again,” she whimpered. “Please. Say it again.”
Fucking hell. I did not want to say it. I wanted to burn the words into the fucking sky and watch all of Seattle bathe in its lightning strike.
“Daphne,” I rolled hard, rocked harder, pressed my bloody fingers into her pretty fucking hips, and rolled out the words she so desperately wanted to hear. “Gavr…” I breathed, swiping my teeth along her shoulder, “os.”
“I…” she gasped when the pressure shifted.
“You what?” All the letters felt hot and sticky. “Want to come?” I asked, trailing my hand down her body, over the rise of her chest, the plane of her stomach, the swell of her thighs, until I found the place where she could not hide from me and pinched.
“Thay!” she whined, nearly toppling forward.
“Not yet.” I rolled her onto her back, settling deeper between her thighs at an angle she couldn’t escape.
I wanted to be inside her, over her, moving in her blood. Needed to feel her heartbeat slam into my chest, every muscle in her body tense and contract as I fucked into her.
“I want to see your face when you break.”
“Ohhh,” she moaned, arching when I tipped her hips to ensure she could take me. “Thay.”
“Breathe.” I wrapped her legs around me until the bud of her clit caressed the top of my dick in an agonizing slide. “Open your eyes,” I demanded as I worked her hard until she was sweating and breathless.
“Thay,” she touched my face, thumbing over the dark line of my eyebrow before staring drunkenly at my mouth.
When I settled low to trap her beneath me, her chest fluttered into a reckless sob.
I closed my eyes against her, dropping against the surge bursting between her thighs.
From the way she thrashed and tingled, I knew bits of her were breaking.
I moaned, fucking harder into the flood until my dick blushed with her undoing.
In a shaky breath, I peeled the hair back from her face and lowered my forehead onto hers, spreading her legs under the pressure of my weight.
“Daphne?” I lifted her just enough to wrap my arms around her waist, using one to tangle through her strands and the other to play along her ass. “I am sorry,” I warned before melding my skin into hers. I wanted her, and not gently.
My soul was a shattered thing, clambering about my insides like a loose chain on a hot wire! To make it move. To make it feel! It demanded more than what I permitted… It required her.
I exhaled, breathing into her mouth before I angled my cock in so deep I felt her stomach clench.
“Me, too.”
I smiled. What in the hell was she apologizing for?
It didn’t matter because I let go.
All the things I kept hidden, shoved down inside myself, became real.
The monster dispersed into thin, inky strands, filling my body until it lodged itself in my muscles. I held Daphne in my gaze while it fucked her senseless, pulling punishing, bruising, twisting unfamiliar noises from her throat.
She needed to know the truth.
And I needed to know she could fucking take it.
“Thay,” she grabbed at my neck, her wet lips tilting toward mine.
My body split in two when she closed her legs around my hips, locking me dead center.
Fuck. Me.
“Thay?” she bit at her arm, needing somewhere to put all that sweet pressure.
She was so pretty.
I watched Daphne’s eyes for a glimmer of fear, but all they did was burn bright when she pulled my face closer.
“Thay,” she pleaded, but she didn’t run, and I swear for a split second, we were in Seattle, in my shitty little bed with the world screaming outside the window. But only for a moment, until it became a glimpse, a curtain blowing in the breeze, handfuls of ash falling around us like rain.
My body slammed into hers, but she was spinning, the way she did whenever she dragged my ass into the first snow, the edges of her white nightgown twirling under the shine of a dying streetlamp.
Then she ran from me into the space where life and death negotiate terms, whispering into a birthing mother’s ear like a fearless, goddamn angel who never stops fighting.
I wanted her.
That smile.
The messy way she eats toaster waffles, all the fucking syrup running down her chin.
I wanted to mouth along her spine when she let me fuck her against the window. And all the fucked-up poetry she creates that never quite sits right inside pentameter.
My kiss fell into hers like a gunshot…
And…
And…
Everything exploded into slow-motion circles, making the ghosts within me scream.
“Oh, fuck,” she held onto me, her eyes bursting, while I roared against her tongue. My vision blurred, the salt of an entire lifetime streaming down my cheeks.
She tasted of snow.
Like sadness.
Like a raven flying low under the starry death of forever.
She was perfect.
And not in the way perfection should be. Better. Darker. Messy in all the right places.
“Mmmm,” I howled at her throat. I didn’t know if we were still fucking. All I knew was that I never wanted to stop.
My bones cracked when I caught our tears in our mouths, mixing everything up in saltwater.
The scales down my nape flickered in the dead light while the creature within me spun and drank as her mouth and hips took me all at once until the universe fractured.
“Fuck,” I moaned into her body, my cock throbbing and pulsing, pushing her back over the ledge. I caught her orgasm against my molars, refusing to break the kiss as I broke inside her.
She had the letters of my last name bleeding down her ribs.
My dick deep within her, singing.
The cum she asked for dripping down her legs.
She had my soul, my monster, my goddamn stars… And now, she had my mouth, kissing her lungs with rain-soaked darkness.
But me? I had her heart trapped in my ribcage.
Beat.
Its willpower electrifying my body, keeping me alive.
Beat.
The perfect song. The perfect drug. The reason God exists.
Beat.
Somewhere in the background, a red flash lit up Wolfe’s wristband. Lyla was dead.
Beat.
I pulled back, just enough to look my bride in the eyes.
They were glowing in ways I’d never seen, as if someone had finally pushed the last puzzle piece of her soul into place.
Even if she knew what that meant. The Underworld wasn’t a location; it was a man, and now that he had her beating inside his ribcage, he would never let her go.
Just like she wanted.
Beat.