Chapter 27 #3
The words slipping between us in a frantic appeal as her fingers rushed up my shirt to grip onto my shoulders.
“Please,” she begged like I could be something that she had been missing.
I wanted to be.
I wanted to fix whatever went dark in her gaze. Calm those flickers of fear that sparked from her spirit whenever she hit me with all that feral, stormy heat.
Nothing but a fool who wanted to discover all that she was.
“Want you like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. In a way that makes me question all that I know. How is it you hold that power?” I rambled it against her mouth, sucking down the nonexistent air.
Drawing her essence into my lungs instead.
Had the very dangerous thought that she might hold the power to breathe life into all the vacant places that had long gone dead.
Resurrect a piece that had been lost.
One hand slid from her face to the back of her neck so I could control the kiss, while the other took a path down her front.
Hand palming one perfect tit, my thumb stroking over the hard, peaked nub of her nipple, swirling it and making her arch and moan.
“How? How? I don’t understand,” she mumbled, nearly incoherent as she pressed herself closer, and a growl was ripping free as I was assaulted with a lust unlike anything I’d ever known.
Piercing as deep as a bullet.
It was something that verged on deranged. A tipping point that once it spilled over, we both were going to drown.
My hand kept traveling south, gliding down her side and to her hip.
I palmed the outside of her thigh, using the leverage to rock against her, tiny sparks lighting up behind my eyes.
Greed taking me over, I edged back an inch so I could glide my hand under the thin fabric of her dress.
Dress that was pushed up high, exposing the silken tops of her lush legs.
Sight of it was enough that I nearly came in my pants. My mind lost.
All fucking rationale and purpose and knowledge of who I was evaporating in a beat.
Guts knotted in need, I brushed my fingertips over her soaked panties.
I couldn’t wait until I got to fully sink inside.
Fuck the consequences and the promises I had made. Let my crew shove my head under a guillotine.
I pushed her underwear aside.
Brinley suddenly flinched, and every molecule in her body froze for a flash.
I didn’t know how I recognized it through the haze of lust that saturated the air, but I did.
I recognized it like a smack across the face.
Like another mark slashed into my soul.
Her hands that had been grappling to get closer tightened in a way that told me she was trying to keep herself grounded.
To keep herself from spiraling into a place she was terrified to go.
Sucked back into a darkness that threatened to swallow her whole.
I wanted to go on a rampage. Demand that she make me a list.
A list of names of every single person who’d ever hurt her so I could eradicate the stain of them from the earth.
Panting, I checked myself, framing her face in my hands and trying to slow the haphazard pounding of my heart.
“Brinley,” I grunted, her name jagged shards of glass.
In restraint, I rocked my forehead against hers.
Her eyes were still closed tight, hands steel bands where they were bound in my shirt.
She only squeezed her eyes tighter, her words thin rasps. “Don’t stop. I don’t want to hurt anymore.”
“And it would kill me to hurt you, and I refuse to be one of the bastards who has.”
“Don’t you want me?” Her voice was something I didn’t recognize.
Small.
Ashamed.
I pulled back, gripping onto her face. “Want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, which is clearly an indication that I shouldn’t have you. Won’t be another monster taking advantage of you.”
I didn’t know who they were, but I knew they were there. Could see the grim history stretching out like an eternal road at the backs of her bleak gaze.
Drawing me down it like a beast searching for prey.
I’d hunt them.
I’d hunt every fucking one of them.
She hesitated, blinking as she tried to dip her gaze.
“You weren’t supposed to see me this way. No one was. I’m so sick of it, Silas. I’m so sick of being pathetic and weak.”
“There isn’t a single thing weak about you, baby. Not one.”
I brushed my thumbs across the hollows of her eyes.
“You just had a deviant dragging you out the door with a knife pressed to your throat. You are one of the strongest people I know. This force that forced its way right into my life. Shaking up everything that I thought I knew and making me see something else.”
I was worried right then that she might be the only one who could see me.
“I’m going to take you back to the house,” I finally forced out, peeling myself from her gravity, though I still couldn’t seem to let go of her face.
Needing the connection.
To feel the life beat of her under my palms.
Shaking her head, she swiped away some of the moisture from her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“I need to work.”
“Not happening. You need to rest.”
And I needed to get far the hell away from her.
Clear my fucking head.
Put about three states between us because the only thing I wanted to do was dive back in.
That need was almost as excruciating as the thirst to spill the blood of the wicked.
And spilling blood seemed like a really good plan right about then.
Brinley peered up at me.
Face tear-stained and this bright hope shining through the torment that she’d suffered.
Girl nothing but light.
That connection I felt to her spun and churned and worked itself into something different than it’d been.
My soul shifting to understanding.
“Please, don’t fight me on this,” I murmured. “Let me take you back to the house so you can wash that scum off your body. Can’t fucking handle that he had his hands on you.”
If I thought I’d felt protective of her before? That need had bloomed into something desperate and complete.
Like maybe it was the one fucking reason I’d been born.
To be there.
Right then.
To set her free.
Brinley sniffled. “Okay. Getting out of these clothes is probably a decent idea. I’m kind of a mess.”
Was she really agreeing that easily? I wondered how messed up it was that I wanted her to fight me.
“I kinda like the mess you are.” I knew with the way my smile went soft that I was completely fucked.
She shook her head. Sadness filling the motion.
No doubt, she was aware that she and I were teetering on a very precarious cliff.
Getting attached in a way that we couldn’t.
And fuck me. I wanted to keep her.
Claim her.
Put a property patch on her back and make her mine.
My mother’s face flashed through my mind.
My guts toiled.
Hatred burned and guilt constricted.
I couldn’t do that.
My life was destruction, and I refused to cause her harm the way I did with everything that I touched.
Refused to subject her to a life of heartache.
To pain and suffering and horror.
I made a silent promise right then that I would somehow find a way to shield her from it.
From her brother.
From the old wounds that held her hostage.
Most of all, from me.