Chapter 2 #2
Nothing and no one could’ve prevented our collision. Just like now, as he closes his strong arms around me, his hand cupping the nape of my neck, and crushes his mouth to mine.
An unstoppable force.
His hands seek lower to grasp beneath my arms, then he lifts me above him.
I’m a doll in his hands. Fragile and breakable.
He keeps me suspended as he backs me against a shipping container.
My calves hit the steel edge as he seats me atop the unit.
Grayson’s hands roam roughly to my thighs, hiking up my skirt an inch, before he finally breaks the kiss.
A pained expression creases his features. He doesn’t have to say a word, because I’m feeling the same constriction in my chest. The unbearable affliction of not enough.
This is the danger—our danger. Not the threat outside this warehouse, the FBI and police officials closing in on us.
Not the judgmental world that would turn a blind eye to its own hypocrisy to see us dead for our evils.
No, nothing beyond these walls is powerful enough to really threaten either of us.
The danger lies in whether or not we’ll survive each other.
The overbearing desire to consume and consume until we’re sated…but we’ll never be sated. We’re an endless abyss, demanding replete gratification, our disease our enemy. We’re afflicted with an insatiable hunger.
“My sick matches your sick,” I whisper to him.
Burning recognition ignites in the depths of his eyes. He lunges, wild and mad, seizing my wrists. He crawls over me, his knee parting my legs, as he prowls my body like a feral animal. Every erogenous zone comes alive with the promise of his cruel touch.
A sharp clatter draws Grayson’s attention, and he releases a low growl. He nips my lower lip, a promise simmering in the dark pools beneath his contacts. Then he releases me and rises to his feet. He situates the bulge in his denim before he turns to address the rapist in our presence.
“You know, I wanted to drag this out,” Grayson says, his accent thick, roughened with desire, as he rounds his prey trying to squirm toward the roll door.
He drags the guy back to the center by his ankle.
“This was supposed to be a reunion present for my girl. I’ve been fantasizing about this moment for a while… watching her get the chance to play.”
Grayson is not a spontaneous killer. Everything he does has been planned out in meticulous detail beforehand. He rarely has any physical contact with his victims. Yet the one thing he knows intuitively is if his victim is guilty of a heinous crime.
That’s important to him. It means authorities won’t be inspired to solve their murder. There are more deserving victims who warrant the time and effort.
Is this all for me? Is his sudden shift in method a way to fuse our two techniques together? Or is it really proof he requires. I killed for him once, but it was Grayson’s hand that pulled the lever, not mine.
“But,” Grayson adds, groaning as he drags a clear tarp to the center.
He then reaches into the guy’s back pocket to retrieve his wallet.
“Larry Fleming—” he glances down at him “—really? That’s unfortunate.
Well, Larry, I’m sure I could do a quick search on you.
Find all sorts of other unfortunate things, like the fact you’ve probably been convicted before. ”
Larry stammers as he gets to his knees. He’s muttering against the tape. Grayson yanks it off, his blade pressed to Larry’s neck so quick the man swallows his cry of pain.
In a shaky voice, Larry says, “I was falsely accused, and I still served my time.”
Grayson rolls his shoulders. He grabs Larry’s phone he placed out of his reach from one of the crates, silent fury radiating from his body.
He drops the phone to the tarp and smashes it.
With a forceful yank on the guy’s collar, Grayson pulls Larry upright.
He drops closer to his ear. “She is beautiful, isn’t she? ”
Larry doesn’t answer.
The click of the switchblade reverberates around the warehouse, then the blade is once again at Larry’s throat. Larry stutters out a, “Y-yes.”
Grayson’s gaze shifts to me. “Spread your legs, love. Just like you used to do in your therapy room. Slowly. But leave them parted.”
My pulse flutters. “You noticed that?”
A slow smile curls his lips. “I noticed everything.”
I uncross my ankles and lean back onto my palms, letting my legs part open. Grayson’s gaze drops to the apex between my thighs, and I can feel the tangible weight of his stare as his tongue drags across his lips.
“God damn, so fucking sexy,” Grayson says. “Isn’t she sexy?”
Larry nods.
“Touch yourself,” Grayson tells me.
An immediate ache blooms in my core at his command. As I slip my hand beneath my black skirt, I see only Grayson. The man who challenged me, pushing me to the brink. I’m alive—truly alive—only when I’m with him.
Grayson’s chest rises and falls in time with mine, each breath strung with tension. The longing in his eyes pulls at the ache low in my belly, the throb descending farther, becoming unbearable.
I rock my hips, chasing the pressure against the hard container beneath me, earning low, appreciative groan from Grayson.
He fists Larry’s hair and yanks his head back. “Beware,” Grayson says, the gravel in his voice a threat. “She’s a temptress. Just look at her… Don’t you want her? Don’t you fucking crave her?”
Larry remains silent, yet the bulge in his pants speaks to his arousal.
Grayson sighs, long and breathy. “The truth is, you’re not worthy. She could snap your mind like a twig, then have you groveling at her feet, begging her to do it again, before you slit your own throat just to make the torment end.”
Moonlight bleeds across the concrete through a dingy window, catching the blade as Grayson flicks it back and forth, back and forth, silver glinting.
“Maybe neither of us are worthy,” Grayson continues, “but you’re absolutely fucking beneath her.”
The blade slips down Larry’s throat, and he’s shaking now. Curses and prayers fall from his mouth, melding together incoherently.
And Grayson’s intense stare is aimed on me.
Just as I selected a key to end a man’s life, Grayson is waiting for me to decide. Either way, Larry can’t leave here alive. He knows who we are. He knows too much. He will die by one of our hands.
Or by both.
I ease off the unit and move toward Grayson, summoned to him like light to a black hole, knowing there’s no escaping his gravity.
He towers above me, face carved in sharp, brutal angles and devastating beauty. I position myself directly opposite my lover, my fiend. With our victim between us, I reach out and lay my hand over Grayson’s. My gaze locks with his, steady and unflinching, as we drag the blade across his throat.
It’s not an easy kill. It takes strength.
My grip on Grayson’s hand is firm as we force the blade deep, slicing through cartilage.
Memories of steel hitting bone assault me.
The vibration recoils through the blade as it cuts through muscle and tendon, sinking me into that dark cellar as my father’s hand used mine to take a life.
Understanding settles over me. Grayson never does anything without intention. The victim selection. The rushed kill. The warehouse. All my choices, yet always by his design.
Where I was fashioned into a killer by trauma, he’s offering me a reclamation. Liberation. Not just drawing me into his world—he’s making it ours.
There’s a brief moment of shocked uncertainty that covers our victim’s expression before blood beads in a dark red line across his throat. It then streams down his neck, a thick river coating his chest in a shiny red lacquer. His wet gurgle echoes around the enclosed space.
Warmth spreads over the back of my hand, the wet heat of blood. Copper mists the air, the scent of murder an aphrodisiac.
I’m watching our victim, but Grayson is watching me. His gaze touches me, tracking every shift of my features. Every breath.
Grayson releases the body, and it crumples to the tarp. He lets our victim fall without an afterthought.
My gaze flicks up to meet Grayson’s as hunger stirs low. The pang builds, ravenous, a need demanding to be fed. He steps around the pool of blood, eyes locked on mine, driving that ache deeper as he claims his next victim.
He stalks me like a hunter, like he’s starving, dropping the blade before he captures my hips and hauls me up into his arms. God, I’m so close already. Trembling, on the brink, barely able to hold onto his shoulders as he moves us toward the container.
His movements are primal, driven by pure need as he lays me back on the cold steel, pushing my skirt up with a rough touch, his fingers trailing blood in their wake. In one swift motion, my skirt and panties are dragged down my thighs.
He doesn’t ask—he doesn’t need to. The question of whether I’m aroused by our kill is answered the moment he tastes me, my body giving him proof where words fail.
We’re beyond language now, our desire only answered in flesh and blood, raw and carnal.
The second he drops between my thighs, his mouth surrounding me, I spike with need. A sharp pulse spears the ache deeper, a pain so pleasurable I grit my teeth as my muscles contract, my core clenching to be fulfilled.
Grayson looks up from between my legs as he consumes, watching the wave crest over me. I break with a single flick of his tongue, too stimulated to stop the crash. But I’m not sated. Far from it. The external orgasm only heightens my need to feel him inside me.
“I need you.” It comes as a breathy plea, but Grayson is already in motion to claim what’s his.
He braces a hand on the container as his other reaches for the closure of his jeans. I glimpse his hard length as he lowers the zipper, my sex throbbing with renewed want at the erotic sight.