Chapter 22 #2
“Oh, Rose,” he groans. “You wanna know the secret to making me feel good?” His hands shift beneath my shirt.
They’re so cold, wet from snow, but against the heat of my skin, they make me shiver blissfully.
I feel the electricity of his touch go straight to the aching points of my chest, the tightening heat below my belly button.
“The secret”—he kisses my throat—“has always been”—his mouth finds my mine, and he drags his tongue along my bottom lip—“to make you feel good.”
As a punctuation, his hand goes to the button on my jeans.
“Rose,” he says, his voice all husk. “Can I—”
“Please,” I beg, and with a simple flex of his fingers, my button goes flying somewhere over his shoulder, the placket unzipped.
“Shit, sorry,” he grunts, a flash of worry in his eyes. But the pinch of fear at the show of his strength somehow makes everything hotter, the knowledge that I’m making him lose control too. I grab his hand and slide it down the front of my jeans. His eyelids flutter, and he releases a dark moan.
His deft fingers delicately trace the lace of my panties. I shiver, hypersensitive, trembling from just the gentle slide of his touch along the bottom of my stomach. I’m already losing it, writhing impatiently against him, my mouth dragging open, messy kisses along his neck, his cheek.
“Let me touch you too,” I say, half wild. “I want to feel you too, please. Wanna make you feel good.”
“You do. You are. And of course I want you to.” There’s a strained quality to his voice. “Let this be about you—” But I’m impatient, so I find the placket at his pants, unbutton it, and slip my hands down the front.
When my fingers find the cool velvet marble of him, bigger than I’d imagined—and I had imagined it, I can finally admit—I let out a rough, shocked gasp.
“Holy fucking—Rose,” Hayden gasps out when I touch him. The fingers he has against the skin of my stomach begin to tremble violently, and his fangs are impossibly long and sharp. “You have to— You don’t—”
“Show me,” I say fiercely, slowly curling my fingers around him. “Show me what you like.”
“This,” he snarls, rearing up suddenly to rip the collar of my shirt open with his teeth, revealing my bra. I lose my breath, frozen in anticipation and more arousal than I’ve ever felt in my life.
For a crystal-clear moment, I relish the cold bite of the wind against my bare neck, the sight of the skeletal silhouettes of trees surrounding us, the ocean behind Hayden’s snow-dusted hair.
I feel a sense of belonging here, of connection to everything I’ve been searching for my entire life, here with Hayden on my grave, the dead bearing witness to our love.
“I like this.” Hayden’s eyes flash, a dark promise, and then his fangs rip the fabric of my bra, baring my chest to the open air for only a moment before his mouth and tongue cover my aching skin.
“Hayden,” I cry, arching against his mouth, the fingers around him going still, squeezing, and my other hand anchoring in his hair, holding on for dear life.
He kisses and licks me, his tongue swirling in ways I never knew were possible.
I’m making the most ungodly sounds. He’s pulling them from me with each suck of his mouth, each lap of his tongue.
I had no idea. No idea it could be like this.
“Hayden,” I groan. “Hayden, I love you, I love you, I love you.”
Hayden raises his head, panting hard, blinking at me like I’ve just said the most beautiful thing in the world.
“Really?” he breathes, his voice ruined, and my god, is he serious? I bow forward, capture his mouth with mine, licking hard against the roof of his mouth, his tongue, boldly around his large, sharp fangs.
Hayden’s eyes get very dark and he slips the teasing hand in my jeans into my panties. He plunges them down until he finds me. He bares his fangs when his fingers feel the effect he’s had on me, how I’ve probably ruined not just my underwear but my jeans as well.
“Say it again,” he snarls. “Say it, Rose.”
“I love you,” I whine as his hands move exquisitely against me.
“Put your mouth on me.” Hayden makes a hungry noise, lunges at my chest, continuing his urgent ministrations.
“I…Oh god, I’ve never felt this good. It feels so good; you feel so good.
” I don’t care what I’m saying, it’s all tumbling out, my body and mouth moving with a mind of their own.
I’m an instrument of pleasure played by a virtuoso, and Hayden’s smug smile is only making it hotter.
A tight, electric climb is starting to happen. I don’t know where it’s going, what I’m going to do when I get there. My hand finds his hair, and I pull hard. He groans, and I hear a crumbling noise, the sound of rocks crushing.
“Hayden,” I pant, my hips moving, sweat beading my forehead and neck despite the snow around us. I blink open my eyes, take in the darkening gray, the thickening fog shrinking our world to just the graveyard, just Hayden and me, our mouths and hands on each other.
“You know why no one’s touched you, Rose?” Hayden grates out. “It’s because they knew. They knew you were mine. And I’ll take care of you. I’ve got you. Now let go, Rose.”
Something inside me’s going to explode. My whining ratchets higher and higher.
“Hayden,” I plead, frightened from the pleasure, afraid it might end me.
Hayden’s fangs drag against the bare skin of my flesh, and I scream, arching violently against him, just as his fingers slip inside me.
“I love you,” I cry for the world to hear.
“I love you,” I cry loud enough to wake the dead all around us.
“That’s it.” Hayden laughs raggedly against me, holding me close. “You’re perfect, Rose.” In a smooth, graceful shuffle, Hayden wraps my trembling body tightly in his leather jacket, cradling me against him.
“Wh-what about you?” I gasp, quivering with aftershocks of impossible pleasure. “I want you to feel good.” I feel newborn, like I’ve never used my limbs before. Hayden’s eyes are black and hungry. I’ve never seen his fangs so sharp, so large.
Nothing about him looks human right now.
“In all of my existence,” he rumbles, “I’ve never felt so good.
” But I can still feel him, pressed against me.
I wriggle against him, and his eyes get impossibly more black.
“Don’t,” he says, warning. “It’s not safe.
I’m afraid I’ll…lose control.” A tiny frisson of vulnerability colors the darkness in his eyes.
“And I’m not losing you again, Rose. I’m not.
” He pulls me in for a deep, rich kiss. I can taste his yearning. His agony. His fear.
And I think, without any question, graveyards are the most romantic places on earth.