Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
GEMMA
Grim hooked one finger into the cleavage of my dress, dragging me to him. “I really hate when you wear this shit.”
I smiled. “So take it off me.”
His gaze sharpened, but then his head tilted slightly, his lips lifting, and a softness overcame his features that made the wire in my gut tighten.
“The fuck did you take this time?” He wasn’t angry. He sounded…a little humored, and a lot hungry.
I scrunched my face into a frown. “I didn’t take anything.”
I was tall, taller than all the girls at my old school, but with Grim, I still had to crane my neck to see into his eyes. Grim had such beautiful eyes. They were always hidden under his hair or a hoodie, but up close…they were dark, glittering, mesmerizing—
“You only look at me like this when you’re fucked up.” He laughed. I liked his laugh. Like everything about Grim, it was rough. Vicious. Secret. And only for me.
He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth and dipped his head to catch my gaze, a black lock of hair falling over one eye.
He looked boyish.
Predatory.
Deadly.
All at once.
“That’s not true,” I breathed.
The waves crashed on the beach, a visceral, jagged reminder of the only day Grim had ever looked at me with anything other than nothing.
The reason I couldn’t stop looking at him.
“Who sold to you?” he asked.
I opened my eyes, not realizing I’d closed them, finding Grim’s glare.
“Why?” I bit my smile. “Gonna kill them too?”
Grim’s face was iron. “Yes.” He tugged me closer, pulling at the pink material of my dress until it stretched. Until I was pressed hard against his chest.
My breath hitched at his cock throbbing hard on my stomach.
I slid my hands into his hair. “You could sell to me again.”
I couldn’t stop touching him. The soft stubble of his cheek. The angle of his jaw. My stomach was warm, and I wanted him. His soft, his hard, his breath on my lips and flesh.
Somewhere in my brain, I know this is the drugs. I know I’ll regret this, but I liked it too much to stop.
“A better boy wouldn’t take advantage of me in this state,” I breathed.
He pulled me harder against his cock on a dark laugh. “I’m not a better boy.”
Some sliver of the sober part of me said to pull back. You couldn’t be fuck buddies with the guy you were indebted to, with the man who owned your life.
But this close to him I could see the half-moon scar on his bottom lip.
“Prove it.”
I had a second for my heartbeat to skyrocket at the heat in his eyes, before his hand was between my thighs.
He hissed, eyes black, when he realized I wasn’t wearing panties.
His hand completely enveloped my pussy. And I suddenly couldn’t think of anything else but Grim touching me, his hand chilled from the winter air against my hot flesh.
I barely inhaled and his eyes dropped to my mouth, muscle twerking with the clench of his jaw. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. My heart hammering.
The air felt leaden with his stare.
His free hand gripped my hip, as if trying to hold himself back.
It was because of that dichotomy I was so spun out—that wire inside me hot and vibrating and about to snap.
The picture of him in my head was like a mirage.
Every time I got close, it vanished between my fingers.
I wanted him on me. In me. To just feel what he was doing to me.
My mouth parted, heart skipping in my chest, waiting for him to just do it and cross the line we’d drawn years ago.
I arched, trying to get him inside me, but his hand stayed firm and unmoving. I felt deliciously trapped and at his mercy. That hot, throbbing part of my soul came loose. The part that wanted to drop to my knees and do anything for him, let him do anything for me.
His palm curled ever so slightly tighter against my pussy, like he could read the filthy, desperate pleas in my mind.
“When I have you again, you’ll be sober,” he said, parting me with his thumb and lightly touching the aching center of me. “Remember every cutting, jagged edge.”
Then he stepped back, the night air cold between my thighs.
I knew I should pull the skirt of my dress down, move—something. I stayed frozen. His eyes dropped between my thighs, smoldering like the cigarette at my feet. Then he turned without another word, disappearing down the beach.