15. Your Time Starts Now
15
Your Time Starts Now
Theron
It was like seeing in color after a lifetime of living in black and white. Her skin was warm below my touch, electrified like the air before lightning strikes and yet gentle as the sea before a storm. I’d spent years chasing a feeling, any feeling, at the end of a scalpel when Ever was who I needed all along. She was the sun, the moon and the stars — and I could hang her where I pleased.
Our breaths moved as one, sharing air between feverish lips and bloodthirsty tongues that screamed for more, more, more. I wanted all of her — to consume her in every sense of the word. I need to be close to her or I might cease to exist.
My teeth sunk into her bottom lip, and she let out a cry as both of our mouths were filled with the sharp tang of blood. I pushed my tongue deeper as she moaned in a heady mixture of pain
“Yes ,” I cooed at her. “ You’re mine. ”
The blade slipped from Ever’s hand and fell to the patio floor, her fingers now reaching to twine in my hair. “Theron,” she begged me. Neither of us knew what she was asking for, but we both knew she needed something. Needed more, and I would give her the world if she were to only ask, but I wanted to enjoy my catch.
Reluctantly I tore myself from her, our panting breaths coming out in white plumes. Her cheeks were a bright red, flushed with desire and tinged rose from the cold. She gave a groan of protest, but pressed my fingers to her swollen lips with a smile.
“Don’t worry, rabbit, all in good time.” I promised her before taking off the watch my father had given me as a graduation present from medical school. It was a leather-banded Patek Philippe, passed down from his father to him when he opened his first private practice. I gently took her wrist as her brows furrowed.
“Five minutes, little rabbit, and then we play,” I murmured as I fastened it to her narrow arm. I leaned down, my eyes trained on hers, and lay an open mouth kiss to the pulse of her wrist.
Her gaze darkened, mouth parted slightly as her tongue swept along the pillow of her lower lip. She wanted this just as much as I.
I turned the watch face, and spun the bezel to mark the minute. “Your time starts now.”
* * *
Ever
My breath was audible as I raced back down the spiraling staircase in the library, Theron’s goading laugh and absolute look of pure glee mocking me as I fled his company. I had five minutes to hide myself, or I was at his mercy. Completely and utterly his.
Would that be such a bad thing? I asked myself this but shuttered inwardly. There was no telling what a psychopath such as Dr. Hawthorne could do with a night of unrestricted access to my body. Would I like some of it? Probably yes. Should I? Absolutely not. I ran back into the long hallway of medical prints and diagrams, the warm glow of the lights now haunting and taunting me.
Where will you go? They asked.
Argh! This place was a maze, it was a shame Theron hadn’t given me a map. The townhome had three levels, but I’d only been shown the main entry and the quick walk to the library. This was Theron’s home . He likely knew every nook and cranny a body could find itself stuffed in — maybe from experience. I went back down the hallway and to the main floor of the house, my eyes ping-ponging from corner to corner in hopes of seeing a closet I could climb into or a cabinet big enough to hide in.
I looked down at the watch he’d attached to my wrist and, to my dismay, saw that two minutes had already lapsed. It was a rather nice watch, now that I was looking at it — focus Ever!
Ducking into a room at random I found myself in a small sitting area, I cursed knowing it would be of no use. All the furnishings were too small, not counting the oversized Victorian chairs and couches of crushed velvet. There was the curtain that hung the length of the floor to ceiling windows in gentle waves, but that would be predictable. I’d be standing there, my boots sticking out like the first girl to die in a horror film, Theron would rip back the drapes and smile down at me like a cat who had caught its mouse.
Fuck, two minutes left!
Rounding a corner I skidded into a modern kitchen. The walls were a delicate cream, royal blue cabinets cluttered with cook books and draping greenery lined three sides. The whole scene was so inviting I nearly forgot the game, even the worn butcher’s block counter tops beckoned me closer. My eyes landed on a door on the far side of the room — a security system blinking beside it. It had to be a cellar , and though I wasn’t really looking to escape, I didn’t quite know if getting caught was what I had planned either. I’d rather be the one in control of how tonight goes.
I half expected it to be locked, but sure enough when I twisted the handle, I was at the top of a set of stairs that descended into darkness. I knew that there’d be more places to stash myself in a cellar than Theron’s meticulously curated home. I winced as the first step creaked below my foot, and quickly quashed my fears of dark creatures lurking in basements. There was a creature with far more nefarious intentions upstairs. What I’d failed to notice, was the red light that glowed bright on the security pad when I pulled open the door.
Closing the door gently behind me, I switched on my phone flashlight and followed the stairs to the sub-level. The cellar didn’t smell musky or damp as many others did in New England, and when the torchlight shone over the railing I could see that it was finished with cement floors and row on row of tall, steel racks lined with storage containers.
I looked around the room, skipping over the washer and dryer, a door that likely went to the trash area, and a corner where the water heater was situated. It was the rows and rows of containers that drew me in, some of the tubs being black with no telling as to what was in them and other clear ones with vacuum-sealed linen and old medical textbooks. I held onto my phone in my left hand and let my right one skim over the pristine plastic that held so much of Dr. Hawthorne. They may have been in the basement, but they were well-kept and clean.
This part of his house seemed so — ordinary. I wondered if he had Christmas decorations and baby clothes in these boxes, making him no different than the rest of society who closed and stored away their belongings. It was oddly humanizing to see.
Walking deeper into the racks, the game all but forgotten, I could no longer see the staircase. The rows were so close together I felt I’d entered a labyrinth enclosing me physically while my mind was free to wonder what sort of secrets a man like Theron could hide in his basement. I’d nearly reached the far wall of the room by now and in the corner, I spied s a steel box with the name Hawthorne, Friedrich printed in faded letters. It looked like an old munitions container with no locks and only a metal latch. It stuck out in comparison to everything else, and I quirked a brow.
Letting my curiosity drive me, I kneeled down and pulled it from the shelf. It wasn’t too heavy, but I could tell there were metal items rolling around on the inside that weren’t bullets. I flipped the latch, shining the phone light over the container and then blinking in confusion. Inside the box were assorted gold wedding rings. They all looked similar but varied in size and small details. I picked one up, tipping it into the light and reading the inscription in the band.
Richard and Gladys ‘42
Placing the ring back into the box, I picked up another one that was smaller and white-gold. There was a bible verse on the inside, nearly faded but still readable. I’d gone through years of institutional Catholicism, Sundays suffocated in itchy ankle length dresses, and days spent under the sneer of nuns who swore they were doing the world a favor by beating my ass blue. It was one from creation when God declared that man would need a woman.
Genesis 2:18
There must have been dozens of wedding bands in here, all of them masculine and scuffed with many holding sentimental inscriptions. These were items that were held dear to someone and represented an undying love at one point. Now, they lie discarded in this old munitions box like spare coins in a jar, just collecting dust and memories. My neck heated as I thought of serial killers who kept trophies from their victims, but all the rings were old. Really old. I flashed the light over the name on the box again and bit my cheek. Friedrich Hawthorne — it must be a relative of his.
I was too busy sticking my nose over the side of the box to hear the footsteps approaching me, two arms wrapped around me, one on my mouth and the other at my shoulders, as I was forced back into an unyielding chest of muscles. I wanted to scream, but I was suffocated by his hand — a hand that smelt of cedar and books.
“Your curiosity got the best of you, rabbit.” Theron taunted me in my ear, breath warm and tantalizing. “What should we do with little rabbits that snoop where they don’t belong?”
I was shaking like a scared animal, caught out in the open when I should have been hiding! Now that he’s caught me going through his possessions, was I in danger?
“Arghmm,” I garbled through his hand. I wanted to cry in embarrassment - how did I let this happen?! And without even trying to conceal myself — I had my phone torch on for fuck’s sake. Now, I was at his mercy and I’d been caught looking in places that I almost certainly shouldn’t be. Oh God, surely not, surely there was another explanation.
My phone had been knocked from my hand when Theron caught me, now the torchlight was shining up at the many rows of steel racks and illuminating the corner I’d found myself in. Theron reached down, picking up a few of the rings in his hand and holding them to the light. They flashed bright gold in the beam, and he dropped them unceremoniously back into the tin.
Clink, clink, clink, clink — clink.
“Momentos,” Theron mused before closing the box with one hand and pushing it back into place. “Ones that were passed down to me from my grandfather — an excellent doctor who was ahead of his time in the field of neuropsychology.”
His family business was — I shook my shoulders, trying to get free of Theron’s hold, but it was no use. He was so much stronger than me, and I was at the disadvantage of being on the floor; my legs crumbled below me as he knelt behind me.
“Shh, shh, shhh,” Theron hushed as he pressed his cheek beside mine. The warmth from his skin felt like a hot skillet, melting and branding my body with the essence of him. “I’ve never been as sentimental as that — nor foolish enough to keep items from a hunt.”
A hunt? Wasn’t that what he was doing to me? An actual hunt?!
Tears started to fall from my eyes, and I groaned against the tight hold of his hand across my mouth. I should have known better than to allow myself to be fixated by the handsome doctor. He came from a whole family of killers, didn’t he? This was the family business. Those rings were from the victims of his grandfather, and now I was going to be Theron’s victim. How foolish I’d been, thinking that this was just a dark infatuation. I was sobbing below him.
He hadn’t been kidding about the black market organs… and I’d been stupid enough to think he wanted to give me one when certainly the opposite was true…
Theron suddenly dropped his hand and allowed me to take a shaky breath before I begged him to let me go.
“Please,” I said through tears. “I won’t tell anyone. I’m dying anyway, and no one would believe me.”
His strong hands spun me around until I was staring up into his midnight eyes, now alight with confusion. “What are you on about, little rabbit?”
I sputtered, my body trembling as my hands wrapped around the cotton of his shirt. I was trapped down in his basement — had willingly played his little game! How could I have been so stupid as to think a man like him would actually want me for something other than a plaything before he killed me? He knows I have no family — no one to mourn or even look for me if I disappeared. The doctors at the hospital will probably assume I’d thrown myself into the bay.
“I didn’t mean to find this,” I promised him. “I can pretend I never saw it.”
Theron’s right eye twitched, jaw tight. He brought his hands up on either side of my face, holding me gently. His own face was half illuminated by the harsh, white light of my phone’s shadows dancing upward around his furrowed brows . His dark curls hung above his eyes, and fuck was he beautiful. An ethereal, fallen angel that was going to take my soul and devour it whole.
“I’ve already told you that you have nothing to fear from me,” he said quietly as the tears continued to fall freely down my cheeks. His thumbs ran over them, wiping them away as more took their place. “It is true that I am a killer, Ever, but not without direction or cause.”
I shook my head in confusion, trying to hold back more sobs. “I don’t understand,” I confessed. “What cause could you have to be a serial killer? That’s what you are, aren’t you? What all this is? The family business?”
Theron’s lip twitched upward, and he looked almost amused. “Can you honestly say that there are not those among us who deserve to die and who society and the law allow to walk free?”
I swallowed hard, mind shifting briefly to the image of a curly haired young man who turned my life to hell so many years ago with his own hands and body. Hands that had held mine in the movie theater on our first date and also slammed into my face in the front seat of his car before school. He’d ruined a very innocent part of me, but did that mean he deserved to die? Did I deserve to make that determination, or anyone else?
“I admit that taking their lives does satisfy a very dark urge inside of me — one that showed itself when I was too young to understand how to wield it. But, I’ve since found a way to feed this carnal hunger while also helping others in the process.”
I blinked. “The heart,” I said slowly. “The heart you were going to give me would have come from one of your victims …”
Theron bit the inside of his cheek, expression pained. “ Will be giving you, and I don’t think they’re my victims, but victims of their own heinous acts that have come back to haunt them in the form of a very skilled surgeon with the means to right their wrongs.”
“You’re still killing people,” I murmured. “Who are you to be judge, jury, and executioner?”
He sighed through his nose, like he was trying to reason with a petulant child. Theron was a man of means, he’d already told me that when he wanted something, he took it. It was clear to me now that he was also a man who came from a family of those who took justice into their own hands as a form of sick pleasure.
“Your father did this too, and your grandfather.” It wasn’t really a question, but he answered me with a slow nod. “I read that your father was also a doctor.”
“Orlo Hawthorne saw the signs, and taught me how to channel my dark impulses into something good. I was a very sick child, Ever. Without his direction, there’s no telling who I could have hurt who didn’t deserve it. I was adopted, and I don’t think my father had intended on passing along his mantle to one of us, but it happened so naturally.”
“Who deserves to have their organs stolen? To be brutalized and chopped up —”
“Rapists,” he said quickly. “Child abusers and wife-beaters. People who are harming innocent people. Why should they get to live their lives? They’re causing so much suffering while there are people who are in more need of the things God so frivolously gives — like a healthy heart.”
It felt like there was a golf ball in my throat, I could barely breath around the lump. I’d let myself fantasize that somehow Theron could help me, but I’d never allowed myself to think too deeply about where the help would be coming from. Who would have to die in order for me to live. Could I really accept a heart, knowing how he got it?
“So you kill people — ”
“They aren’t people ,” Theron hissed, his hand quickly briefly around my cheeks. “They’re worse than animals, spreading their vile filth and infecting the weak. I kill monsters, Ever. I hunt monsters .”
“Okay,” I said, closing my eyes and trying to even my breaths. My heart was beating a mile a minute. “So you kill these monsters , and then take their organs and — what? How are you sure their organs are given to those who need them? Black market organ rings are known to prey on the desperate by extorting them for everything they have.”
“No,” he said with a stiff shake of his head. “I do it all for free, finding patients who can’t make the list and giving them treatment at no cost by doing the operations myself.”
“Oh,” I breathed. I couldn’t hide the flash of relief I felt at hearing these words. Did it make the situation I found myself in better at all? No. Absolutely not.
Well — maybe a little?
“I’m not a good person, Ever. I know that,” Theron’s hands had started to smooth away the curls that had fallen across my face. He was trying to calm and reassure me, and damn him, it seemed to be working. I didn’t want it to, but it was. “I might be a monster from the shadows, but not to you. Not to people who don’t deserve my wrath.”
“I’m scared,” I confessed in a whimper. My lips were quivering, body shaking in his hold. The wolf staring down the rabbit and promising it safety. Every instinct, every fiber of my being told me to run and never look back.
Theron’s face softened, and then he was crushing me into his chest in a suffocating hug. He buried his nose in my hair, the warmth of his body spreading through me like a balm. I felt myself relax into him, and against my better judgment, felt safe. Protected. Like nothing could touch me so long as I let this man hold me. Not even death.
“It’s okay to feel fear, rabbit. It’s what keeps us alive.”
I felt that fear burning hot in my chest as chills swept it away. A war of molten lava falling into the sea, being cooled, and forming something new. I wanted to be new, and Theron Hawthorne was the only one who made me feel like everything I’d been through was worth it. All the pain, psyche wards, and doctors’ offices. The mountains of stress and loneliness were all leading me to this moment. I couldn’t let it go. Not yet.
I closed my eyes, knowing I was seconds away from giving in. I took a breath.
“Kiss me, Theron, and chase away the fear. Kiss me now or I might never let you do it again.”
He pulled me from his chest and peered down into my eyes as his hands cupped my cheeks. I could drown in his midnight gaze, trapped below lashes so long they tickled his brows and made me swoon. My fallen angel.
“You have to be sure, Ever, because once I have you, there is no going back. You’ll be mine, and I’ll take care of you — I will give you everything you ever wished for and more but hear me now. I am not a good man. You must be certain” Theron swallowed, adding in a thick voice. “I’m afraid I have a fear, you see, and it’s you.”
“Me?” I asked with shock.
He gave a small nod, eyes roaming over my face like he was peering at the Mona Lisa. Brought to tears by beauty and awe, and it made me feel larger than life. Divine. No one had ever looked at me as if I were irreplaceable before.
“I’ve lived a half-life for over thirty years, but when I saw you, it was like looking into the face of God. A new birth, and a purpose higher than anything I’d ever needed nor asked for. You’re my only fear because you’re the only thing that can truly be taken from me.”
My lips connected with his and we were like two supernovas, the world around us fading away like the inky-darkness of space while where we touched burned with the heat of a thousand stars. He tasted like sin, coating my mouth with lust and wrath as my head spun in ecstasy. Theron’s arms held me tight, fingers digging into my ribs like he could meld us together — one body and one soul. I clawed at his shirt, ripping it off his body until his flesh was beneath my claws. I raked them down his back, shaking as he groaned atop of me.
“Fuck, Ever. Don’t stop,” he pleaded opened, mouthed against my lips as my nails raked down his chiseled chest and abdomen. He was begging me.
“Please,” I begged back as my fingers grasped for purchase. “Take me, Theron. I need you.”
An animalistic growl escaped his lips as he pushed me back onto the cold floor and latched his teeth into my neck. “Argh!” I screamed in pleasure when he bit down and then sucked my pulse into his mouth. Theron ripped off his shirt, and his hot chest pressed me further into the frigid floor as he dominated the space.
“So perfect,” he crooned as he started to kiss down my throat, and his hands pulled at the bottom of my dress. He slid down my body. “My beautiful girl. Say you’re mine,” he commanded me as his tongue darted out to lick across the tender flesh of my belly. “Tell me you belong to me.”
I sucked in a breath, my back arching on instinct as he pulled roughly at my leggings. I was trying to force air into my lungs, my breath coming out ragged now while he peeled away my boots and clothing until I was bare against the floor. A blush of shame covered me, but when I tried to close my knees, Theron was there to part them and growl down at me.
“Let me see what’s mine,” he said while grabbing my hips and dragging me closer to him. The mysterious doctor and gentlemen who showed me his library was gone, and in his place was a carnal and devout priest of pleasure. He would demand obedience from my body the same way a god did his followers, and I had no plan of disobeying. I whimpered.
“I can’t hear you, Ever.”
“Theron,” I moaned. I didn’t know what I was begging for, but I needed him. I ached to be devoured, to feel his lust pour over me like a tidal wave. Days of being frightened of his intense obsession evaporated like they’d never existed, replaced with a power I didn’t yet know how to wield. I felt like I could command him to bring me the world, and he’d do it on his knees. So long as I offered him my body and soul, he would give me anything and everything in return.
His lips met the inside of my knee, nipping at the sensitive skin before his eyes met mine again. “Who do you belong to?”
“Please!” I felt like there was a fire was burning inside of me, melting me from the inside out. If Hell was feeling, then it was the ache I felt from needing him so wholly that I felt broken without his touch.
“Say it!” He demanded before inserting his finger roughly into my cunt and making my eyes fly open in shock. I was already wet, creating a pool of arousal on the floor below us, but the sudden intrusion made me see stars. His fingers curled upward, searching for the notch inside of me that would ignite the fuse.
“Say it, and you’ll never want for anything ever again. Say it, and I’ll never let you go.”
“You!” I screamed as my body tensed around his digit, morphing around him like a glove and trying to pull him closer.
“Who’s pussy is this?” He asked as he furthered his finger inside of me, commanding me like a puppet on a string. My hips lifted with him, my feet planted on the floor while my neck took on the weight of my body.
“It’s yours!”
He hummed in approval before diving between my legs, his sharp and wicked tongue darting across my throbbing clit. “Fuck!” I screamed and involuntarily bucked into his face.
Theron smiled against my cunt, lips curling along my entrance as he tried to bury himself within me. His lips smeared my arousal from the crease of my thighs all the way down to my ass, before he settled with his tongue prodding above where his finger was still inside me. He was consuming — feasting on me.
“I’m going to make you come so hard your honey will stain my basement, and then I’m going to fuck you into the floor and bathe you in my cum. What do you say to that?”
“Yes!” I panted. “Please, Theron!”
His lips wrapped around my clit, and then sucked so hard I thought he was trying to pull the elixir of life from between my legs. I couldn’t even scream as my limbs shook violently around his head, but he groaned into my pussy like it was a decadent dessert he wished to savor. He took his time, suckling on my throbbing pearl as I cried out over and over again.
“Yes! Yes! Fuck, Theron!”
My fingers wound through his raven locks, tugging hard as I yowled like a cat below his touch. I was wantonly convulsing on the floor, moaning his name like a prayer. He’d begun to fuck me with his finger, inserting a second that stretched me deliciously as he grazed my innermost walls. He sped up to a wrist breaking speed, jerking me back into the steel racks as I groaned.
“Theron.” Please, don’t stop.
“Fuck, Theron.” I would fall apart without you.
“Please!” I’m yours.
When the dam broke, my back arched upward, and my hips drove violently into his mouth while he held onto my thighs for dear life. He was being suffocated by pussy, and ravishing it with delight. My pleasure was ripped from my body, and I came explosively onto the floor with a scream. My thighs were slick and wet, Theron’s tongue lapping at me with a glorious hunger as he consumed everything I could give him.
“Such a good girl,” he praised me between licks. “You taste like mine .”
I felt drugged, the basement dark except for the flashlight of my phone pointed narrowly up at the ceiling, and even that seemed to distort and bend under the wave of endorphins coursing through my body. Theron’s fingers ran appreciatively over my slippery sex, spreading the clear signs of my pleasure like an oil which he then used to massage my thighs.
“Argh,” I groaned as I started to come back into my body. My vision was still blurry, and my legs felt as if they’d run a marathon.
“Open,” he commanded me as his fingers came into my line of sight. I obeyed, and he pressed two digits into my mouth before pressing down on my tongue and forcing me to suck my own cum from his hand. “That’s right,” he purred. “Taste how fucking good I can make you feel. I’m the only one who can make you feel this way.”
Yes. Only you.
While sucking on Theron’s fingers like they were made of chocolate and ecstasy, I heard his belt buckle click. He did it all with one hand, the other still quite occupied by my mouth as I moaned my encouragement. When the hot, rigid tip of his cock pressed against my wet sex I had only a second before he drove into me and I felt like I was being ripped in half. There was a sharp pinch, and sensation of being filled and then everything else faded into the madness.
“Hmhm!” I screamed around his fingers before my teeth dug into his calloused skin. He didn’t stop to let me adjust before he was pulled out and slammed back into me like he was trying to knock a hole up through my ribcage. I tasted the sharp tinge of copper as I screamed and screamed, muffled by the knuckles in my mouth. I was trying to breathe through my nose, but I couldn’t get my body to obey. I was latched onto his fingers, bearing down with my teeth.
When Theron finally pulled them free, he hissed. “That’s it, rabbit. Don’t fight it.”
“Ah, fuck!” I groaned, my head thumping off the storage racks, the colliding of our flesh echoing wetly through the dark expanse of his basement.
Slap — thump!
Slap — thump!
“You’re my little fucktoy, aren’t you?” He growled out between sharp snaps of his hips. “You belong to me, and I take care of what’s mine.” Theron pulled both of my legs over his shoulders, reaching out to glide his bleeding hand up my breasts.
My only response was a low moan that escaped my lips and sounded like a whimper. His fingers were around my cheeks again, tightening painfully before he drug his bleeding hand down my neck and held me tight. His blood smeared across my flesh, marking me as his. It was intoxicating, thrilling, and disorientating. I was having an out-of-body experience as Theron took what he wanted from me, stretching me and making me fit around his cock like I was made for him. Made to be his.
“Tell me that you belong to me,” he commanded as his hips slowed.
“I belong to you,” I gasped, giddy from pleasure.
“Promise me you’ll never leave me.”
I felt the head of his cock slip out, rubbing against my sensitive ball of nerves as his shaft melded with sex. It was a slow and luxurious sort of feeling, shattered when he pulled back and drove into me again with a growl. “Say it!”
“I promise!” I cried as he pounded into my pussy like his personal plaything. “I’ll never leave!”
“Fuck!” Theron bellowed before pulling out and shooting his cum all over my chest. He fisted his cock, pumping it furiously over my sex while I basked in his release. I was panting like an animal in heat, feeling empty without him inside of me.
“Such a pretty little rabbit,” he cooed while reaching forward and collecting some of his cum in his fingers before pushing them through my ravaged lips. “Fuck, I’d love to see you swollen with my baby.”
“Oh,” I breathed out as he slowly started to finger fuck me again. He was gentle at first, but then he started to pick up speed as my moans grew louder. Why was that so hot to me? I could feel myself on the edge of another release, my walls closing around his fingers until it was hard for him to force them deeper.
“Dripping with my cum.” Thrust . “Not until you’re healthy, of course, but one day, everyone will know who you belonged to. You won’t be able to hide it.” Thrust . “I could carve my name into your flesh, rabbit.” Thrust.
When his thumb swept across my clit, I let go. My knees shook around his shoulders before I no longer had the strength to hold them up, and I let my legs slide to the cold floor, where they settled in the pool of my own cum. Warm liquid gushed from my body, coating Theron’s hand as he coaxed every drop from me, praising me all the while.
“You’re such a good girl.”
“Look how perfectly you fall apart for me.”
“I own this cunt.”
I couldn’t respond, and when he pulled his fingers free I groaned and let my head fall to the side. Theron suddenly pulled me away, and I made a small noise of protest at the loss of his warmth before he was scooping me up in his arms and holding me to his chest like I weighed no more than a kitten. We were both wet and sticky, our bodies flushed with heat as he kissed the top of my head.
“I’m never letting you go, Ever. I promise you that.”
It should have sounded ominous, but the warm afterglow of my orgasms tinged the statement in a rosy light. Theron carried me up the steps, through the house and to the second floor all while I kept my eyes closed and my face pressed into his neck. I hadn’t an ounce of strength left in me. The feeling of his skin against mine was all I needed. It was like starving your entire life and then finally being full. Something inside of me was soothed and healed just by being in his arms.
I was being set down on a plush bed when Theron unwrapped my arms from his neck, his own hands clasped around my wrists as he spoke softly. “Look at me, Ever.”
I did as I was told, opening my eyes slowly and focusing on the man who could be my salvation, or ruin. My guardian angel, or grim reaper. The owner of my pain and pleasure.
“I’m going to take care of you,” he promised me with a conviction so strong I was sure it could bend worlds. “Your darkness doesn’t frighten me, rabbit. In fact, it seduces me.”
I believed every word he said, and that was terrifying. Letting someone get this close to me was terrifying. But looking up into his fathomless eyes, my body still wet with the evidence of both our pleasure, I knew I was all in.