Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
MASON
Micah’s lips slanted over mine, his tongue pushing into my mouth as he shoved me back against the wall, aligning our bodies. Every inch of me responded to him the same way I had years ago, now with a new edge of disdain that only made my blood pump harder, my skin burn hotter.
I grabbed his jaw, kissing him back. Harder, deeper, messier, fingers digging into his cheek, needing him to hurt.
Kill.
His scent surrounded me, sending all my blood rushing to my cock. Deep forest shadows, rain-slick pine branches like the kind he’d crashed through when he fell.
I could remember it perfectly—the blood and ichor trickling from a hundred lacerations all over his body, his broken ribs, broken wrist, night-dark wings powerful behind his shoulders, rain streaming down his desperate face.
The ocean water in my mouth, washing over my own new black feathers and tired muscles.
My first real taste of low-neon air.
Dizziness surging in my brain.
And him.
I snaked one hand around to the back of his head, fingers threading tightly through his blond hair. Micah sharply sank his teeth into my lower lip and I tasted the blood on my tongue, the slightly metallic hint of ichor.
Glass from the broken photo frame was still embedded in my heel, my blood marking Micah’s carpet and hardwood, my pain staining his new world. I kissed him more viciously.
Micah brought the full length of our bodies together, pressing hot against me from heaving chest to seizing abdomen to aching hips…
I suppressed a groan, thighs tensing.
My anger at him—my rage—fueled me, fueled my need to thrust and fuck and come, to do it all with the person who’d wrecked me in the first place. And I hated it. Hated how fucking badly I wanted this, how goddamn incapable I was of resisting him.
But hatred couldn’t make me stop. Couldn’t make me slow down.
Kill.
Kill. Kill. Kill.
Micah ground the ridge of his erection against mine. Deliberately. And the rest of my sanity funneled away into pitch-black desire. Pure, physical, sexual need shredded any semblance of restraint I’d ever hoped to hold against him.
Pure aggression. Pent-up lust that I hadn’t had an outlet for in years.
I raked my hands down his sides, then under his shirt on his back, fingers clenching the fabric as I tore it clean in half. Shredded cotton fell to the ground and then I was taking my own shirt off, barely able to stop kissing him long enough to yank it over my head.
Somehow, knowing he’d fucked Dakota only made me need him worse. Thinking about all the tight places his cock had been recently was screwing up my brain.
In her wet little pussy, shoved down her throat, hard under her thigh while she kissed him all sloppy and pathetic.
And now, grinding against mine…
I am losing my mind.
A low noise rumbled in his chest, like a growl. Our bodies writhed together, warm skin on warm skin, sweat on sweat, hateful mouth on hateful mouth.
I was panting, tongue sliding along Micah’s, my cock throbbing with the pressure. He moved, rolling his hips against mine, hard dick grinding into my own, hand collaring the front of my throat, fingers cutting off the blood flow to my brain.
“I fucking hate you,” I gritted out as he dragged his open mouth over my jaw.
“And I don’t fucking care,” he said in my ear, holding me pinned against the wall. “The feeling is mutual.”
My fingers scraped up the back of his neck, yanking his head back again by his hair and I dove forward towards his exposed throat. Flattening my tongue against his hot skin, I licked a line up his throat, over his strong pulse, over his Adam’s apple, then clamped down with my teeth.
His grip tightened on my neck and I bit him harder, tongue flicking against his skin.
“Look at me,” Micah growled, cutting off all my air with his palm on my throat and slamming me back.
My head snapped up, but there wasn’t a second to breathe before he was on me. We crashed together with the specific bruised shade of violence I’d missed most from him. Tongues, teeth, lips, breath.
Fucking insatiable.
I angled my head, deepening the kiss as I reached down between us to grab Micah’s bulge, cupping him firmly, wrapping my fingers around him through his shorts as best as I could.
His grip tightened on my throat, his hips pushing into my touch, his swollen cock hard against my palm. He didn’t stop me. Didn’t even try.
“You—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Micah cut me off, his free hand traveling towards my waistband, wedged between our bodies. A knot of heat tightened low in my stomach, muscles flexing where he touched me. Yeah, we’re doing this.
My breathing turned shaky, every inch of me buzzing with sick anticipation.
Then Micah shoved his hand straight down my shorts without an ounce of hesitation, making my eyes roll.
“Jesus,” he mumbled, wrapping his strong grip around my bare cock.
“Jesus? You sound so human,” I managed to grit out through the heat clawing at my throat.
“And you sound desperate.” He stroked me base to tip, rubbing his thumb through the precum beaded on my slit.
“Do I feel big?” I panted, trying not to thrust into his large hand, inhaling his suffocating kapnos to the depths of my lungs. I pushed my hand down between us to squeeze his balls, relishing in the way his breath caught, just for an instant. “Huh? You loved asking her that, didn’t you?”
“Loved watching you obey me so willingly, too.”
“And watching me hit her,” I added, to which he yanked his hand out of my shorts and hit me across the face so hard I almost couldn’t breathe for a second. I turned to look at him, cheek burning, heart pumping, my dick harder than ever.
“Quit talking about her or I’ll give you something better to do with your mouth.”
Electricity skittered through my veins, and I punched him square in the jaw. He was quick to retaliate, stealing my sight for the instant it took him to slam his fist into my nose. My eyes watered with the impact, but I wasn’t deterred, despite the blood starting to trickle down my face.
I liked it. Obviously.
I tackled him to the ground, his skull crashing into the baseboard on the other side of the hall and my shoulder slamming into the leg of a decorative fucking table, cracking the wood.
This area of the house was too damn small for both of us.
It was starting to look like a war zone with all the glass and blood, the cracked plaster, the broken table.
All the ways I’d subtly been destroying Micah’s house over the past few weeks felt meaningful in a way. Splintered frames, shattered teaching awards, scratched leather, broken tables and lamps. Slowly, I’d put my mark right back on the life he’d tried to build without me.
Fuck him.
I laid on top of him, pinning his arms to the floor, leaning down to sink my teeth into his lower lip.
My hips settled between his thighs and I didn’t even try to stop myself from grinding into him again, craving every inch of contact I could get.
Blood from my nose dripped onto his upper lip, rolling down his cheek, along his sharp jaw.
“Open,” I taunted as I lifted my head, tightening my grip on his wrists.
He didn’t.
So I spit on his fucking face.
Micah had me on my back before I could even blink, his mouth running over mine.
“Don’t do that shit,” he warned hoarsely, lips barely skimming my own when he spoke. There were a few shards of glass embedded in his triceps I could see, along with the flow of his blood down to his elbows.
Blood on his arms, dripping, running down his warm skin to his palms…
Micah angled his head lower, moving down to lick my neck, to suck my skin into his mouth.
Chills raced across my body, contrasting the unbearable heat rolling through my veins.
I’d been craving this feeling for enough years that I’d do anything to get it back.
This mindless, boundless, infuriating addiction I had to his body.
I wanted to make him come. Feel him come.
He backed up, getting on his knees, hooking his thumbs in the waistband of his shorts. His cold blue eyes locked onto mine.
I reached down to grab my cock, palming it over my shorts, watching him over me as my chest heaved. He smelled so ridiculously good it was clouding my entire brain, suffocating all my thoughts, making me even more mindless than I wanted to be.
But I just inhaled deeper, feeling my cock throbbing with every breath, getting the sensation only he gave me. The one that almost made me feel like I could come from smelling his kapnos alone.
As much as I wish I didn’t, I fucking missed this.
He was breathing hard, sweat shining on his face and neck, his stare simmering low and dark.
Do it.
Fucking do it.
He pushed his shorts halfway down his thighs, jerking his head at me to get me to push my own shorts down. I did, my whole body going taut with the sort of brutal lust that shredded every rational thought as I stared at his thick cock.
I was running on the high of violence and bad decisions and the ex that’d ruined my life.
“Ash,” he mumbled.
“Kill,” I said in response. It was too familiar, too automatic.
Dangerous. Too dangerous.
Micah angled his dick towards mine, leaning into me, his eyebrows pushed together and his jaw tensed. His eyes were so dark now, that outer ring eclipsing the steel, his pupils expanding to fill the rest, that I would’ve begged him to continue if he tried to stop now. Fucking begged. For anything.
My abdomen was tense, my thighs flexing, my mind spiraling into this obsession which had always been at the core of me. I was made of this obsession. As much as I hated it.
I kept my thumb on top of my cock, using the rest of my fingers to cup my balls, panting like a bitch. He moved again, brushing the head of his cock against the underside of mine, a shuddering breath escaping both of us at the contact.
All our years of separation dissolved away in a single instant.
Immediately, I hooked a hand around the back of his neck, dragging his mouth back down to meet mine.
The length of his erection lined up with mine, nothing between us now, his hips rolling as our tongues tangled. Time warped, slowing and speeding, everything a blur of lust and my own lack of impulse control. I kissed him deeper as I grabbed his cock, every part of me aching.
“You piss me off,” I gritted out.
“Good. Use that,” Micah said as he worked his shorts the rest of the way down, biting my lips, his arms flexing with his effort.
I lifted my hips to take my own shorts off, every movement rushed and sloppy.
If we slowed now, there might be a second to think about what we were actually doing, so we didn’t.
“Gonna suck it?” he questioned against my mouth. His voice was pure gravel.
“Yeah.”
Pointless to lie now.
He pushed off me, rising to his full height.
I didn’t even try to stand up.
I gripped his thigh, pushing my hand up towards his cock. Fuck, fuck, fuck. My dick was so hard it hurt. When one of his hands found the back of my head and the other held the base of his cock, squeezing, pumping himself a bit, I didn’t do a thing to resist my urges.
Without pause, I leaned forward and licked up the length of his thick cock, fighting the urge to groan at the weight of him on my tongue.