Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
GEMMA
When I have you again, you’ll be sober.
When, not if, Grim said. A promise.
It had been over two weeks since I last saw Grim, and two weeks ago, I’d found my underwear. Used. I knew immediately it was Grim. I had picked them up to throw them away when, like a fucking psycho, I kept them.
I blame it on the drugs.
Now, it was sunny outside and warm, too warm for January, which meant the cold would come soon and harsh.
We were due for a snowstorm, anyway. Kennedy, Blaire, and I lay out by my heated pool, smoking Kennedy’s newest hand-rolled joint, while near the garden, yet another anniversary party was being set up.
I shouldn’t even be thinking about him, wondering where he was. Because that was our relationship. Grim would disappear for stretches and then only reappear to demand something of me, or take it.
So I could never fully forget him.
I shouldn’t even be thinking about him, wondering where he was. Because that was our relationship. Grim would disappear for stretches and then only reappear to demand something of me, or take it.
So I could never fully forget him.
There were rules the Horsemen stuck to, a code. They never fraternized with their contracted, and they only met to discuss the terms of the contract.
I guess I got a little thrill knowing he broke them for me.
But those rules were there for protection—my protection. Every time he broke them, it eroded that safety net.
Lust fogged my mind. It felt like I was in a steam room. As my friends talked about random shit, I thought wrong, dirty thoughts. Like wondering if Grim had ever done something like that in my room before. Picturing his thick and tattooed cock—
“Gemma?” Kennedy said.
“What?” I blinked out of the fantasy.
I couldn’t think straight.
Obsessed. That’s what I am.
“Are we ever going to talk about Geoff?” Kennedy asked, half dipping her toes in the heated infinity pool that bled seamlessly into the horizon.
“What about him?” Blaire asked, taking the joint from Kennedy.
“He’s a missing person,” Kennedy said.
“Right, but what’s there to talk about?”
“He’s missing?” I asked. “Since when?”
Kennedy shrugged. “Your mom’s party, I think.”
I ghosted my touch along my arm, along bruises that had long since faded, remembering the look in Grim’s eyes.
“It was leaked to one of the Crowne stan accounts.”
Stan accounts: people who dedicated their entire lives to either worshipping us or tearing us down—sometimes both.
“He’s probably on a bender. Remember last year when he stole his stepdad’s yacht to France and tried to join the foreign legion?”
“Yeah…” I stared off, feeling hot. Sticky.
Some part of me knew I should be alarmed. My life was quickly changing, warping into something I couldn’t recognize. Maybe that was why I had such a visceral reaction to being a godmother. It was another thing highlighting the chasm between my two selves that was quickly growing too wide to cross.
I grabbed my towel, covering up my naked chest, staring out at the ocean.
“Gemma, you’re blocking my sun,” Kennedy moaned.
“Good,” Blaire snapped. “You’re not even wearing sunscreen.”
“It’s winter.”
“And? The sun still exists in winter.”
“I swear to God, Blaire,” Kennedy said, “if you go on another one of your skincare rants.”
“At least Gemma put sunscreen on her boobs,” Blaire said, gesturing to me. “Your tits are gonna look like raisins.”
“Remind me to record this and tag all the stans who think you’re body positive,” Kennedy muttered.
It was already four. The sun falling in the sky. That stiff, hot feeling in the air when the sun has already hung around for too long.
“Shit.” Kennedy sat up. “We should probably start getting ready.”
“For?” I asked.
They stared at me. “The sponsored event in New York? You know, that new tech brand paying us to party.”
Oh, right.
There was no reason for me not to go. I should be going. I’d have to pay a huge fee for breaking contract, not to mention it was great press.
So I don’t know why the lie left my lips. “Oh, right. There was some contract issue.” I slipped my sunglasses on, hoping they wouldn’t question me. “Can’t go anymore.”
“Fucking lame,” Blaire said. “Can we still use the helicopter?”
“Wait,” Kennedy interrupted. “Are you still going to the tea tomorrow?”
I’d completely forgotten about it. It was like every other event in my world, somehow both perilously important and utterly banal.
It wasn’t like I was missing something once-in-a-lifetime, but the thing is, the more you miss in this world, the less you matter.
I’d always understood that rule, but lately it was getting harder to follow it.
“I’m not sure,” I said honestly.
They shared a look, what the fuck is wrong with her? written on their faces.
After agreeing to let them use the Crowne family helicopter, they left. I watched them disappear, wondering if this was what insanity was: knowing what I was supposed to do, and doing the wrong thing anyway.
I know he’s bad for me. I know I shouldn’t be near him.
And yet.
A few hours later, when I was supposed to be America’s Princess, I instead found myself at the Underworld.
My attraction to Grim, to this place, wasn’t logical. It was the antithesis of what I should be. I promised my mom—myself—I would find another Horace, I would somehow find a way to make Crowne acceptable again.
I traveled up the glowing stairs, the steps changing colors beneath my feet from pink, to purple, to blue.
My fingers glided across the silky gold railing, and I looked down at the partiers below me, their bodies moving in snakelike unison with the beat.
I’d tried to wear something nondescript.
Not my usual platforms and mini. Opting for a skirt, an oversize tee, and hat.
Because Gemma Crowne had every reason to be on that club floor, but no reason to be on these stairs.
Our eyes locked the second my foot hit the floor.
His black eyes were a nightmare.
Savage.
Deadly.
And it fed me.
The balcony was packed. Grim sat on a black velvet couch, arms spread wide on the top. Women danced, but no one touched him. Bodies blurred around him and he was frozen in time, a god passing time with mortals.
I didn’t know how it was possible that just eye contact had the room dissolving. Our souls vibrating.
He raised a hand. The room emptied.
Even after everyone had gone down the stairs behind me, I stood there. The beat of the club pulsated between us.
Grim wasn’t like anyone I’d met. He dripped sex and confidence like smoke. Every time I was in his presence, I got sucked in. I think he might be the only person I’d ever met who actually knew who he was, and that was so goddamn intoxicating, because I have no idea who I am.
I’d only ever slept with him once, and it was enough to fucking hypnotize me for life. Trying to figure him out drove me insane.
I’d never seen him with a girl but I know he’s fucking. He had to be. So I just had to wonder. Who was warming Grim’s bed?
He crooked a finger.
Without thought I walked over and climbed on top of him, thighs spread on either side of him. His hands found my thighs easily, with a familiar possession that made my gut flip.
I looked for the other Horsemen. “Are they here too?”
A slow shake of his head angled his jaw left, the deep purple light sharpening his jaw. His hands slid up my thighs, to my waist.
“Someone I know went missing,” I said, leaning into the touch.
“That so?”
His eyes flared. One of his hands slid from my waist, back to the arch of my spine, dragging me closer. His dark, earthy scent sent my thoughts scrambling.
“Did you do it?” I started grinding into him. Addicted to that deep, dragging darkness in his stare, pulling on my chest like a fishhook.
He pulled my head closer, lips at my neck. “I don’t like it when people touch my things.”
My heart slammed against my chest. Something hot and pulsating dripped down my stomach, pooling hot and throbbing between my legs.
Grim pulled back, but was still close, our noses almost touching, then, wordlessly, he shifted me so I was pressed flat against his denim-covered cock. Hard. Throbbing. A shuddery breath racked through his body. He wanted this. I could feel it.
He stared where my thighs spread.
I was wearing the same panties he’d ruined—now cleaned. Was that why the muscle jerked in his jaw? Did he recognize them?
I hoped so.
All he’d have to do was move my underwear aside, and I wanted him to, but he just stared, jaw clenched. I was mesmerized by him, by this dark liquor between us that we couldn’t stop drinking.
Grim kept his soul behind a twenty-foot-thick concrete wall. He once told me his insides were radioactive, an inky glowing well of poison that corroded whatever and whomever they touched.
Many years ago, before Grim became my reaper, in a dimly lit spare high school room, he whispered a confession to me.
I’m poison, Gemma. Stay away.
“I’m poison too,” I said.
His eyes flashed up, inky like always, but for a moment they glowed.
And I latched on to that.
My thighs slid farther open. His hands slid to my ass, pushing my skirt up to my hips. He tugged at my thong, pulling it tight enough to spread me.
His lips found my throat as I gasped.
This was the only language we ever spoke fluently.
I once read an explanation of suicide that said it was like someone jumping out of a burning building. They didn’t jump because they wanted to die, but because they feared the fire.
I ground myself onto Grim’s denim-covered cock as that explanation ran circles in my head. He gripped my hips, pushing me even deeper.
We were like two people stuck in a building. Refusing to jump or ask for help. Lying in the fire until it consumed us. But it wasn’t the fire that drew us together, it was the smell of the smoke and ashes. The promise of ruin, and peace that follows.
I wondered if that was why he couldn’t let me go. If he felt the same irrational, self-destructive, and fucking deadly need.
I know that’s why I can’t.
“Don’t hold out for me, Gemma,” he said against my skin, moving with me. “I’m already dead and gone.”
Something stupid and insane overcame me, driven by the hungry, pained way he stared at me, or maybe the way his hands dragged down my back as if trying to pull me into his soul.
“There hasn’t been anyone since you,” I whispered. “Not since that night on…on the beach.”
I wished I could swallow it back into my mouth.
He knotted his hand in my hair, yanking my head back to find my eyes. Like he wanted to see if I was telling the truth.
A moment later he groaned. “Don’t tell me that.” The jagged, pained sound slid into my bones.
He grabbed me by the hips and flipped me onto the soft velvet couch. The music thrummed through the fabric, vibrating against my back. One leg between mine, an arm above my head, I was caged.
“No one’s taken care of you?” he asked.
This moment was different from any we’d shared. There was an urgency, a hunger in him. His head was bent, hair falling across his eyes, but beneath the locks I could see the gleam.
Feral. Predatory.
I shook my head.
“Poor girl.” His free hand skated across my pussy, a soft restraint in his touch that did not match the savage gleam in his eyes. I nearly jolted when he found the soft, bare skin he’d exposed.
“No one’s made you come?” He stroked the backs of his knuckles along my pussy. Soft. Light. Too in control.
“You must be so strung out.” As he spoke, one knuckle parted me.
My mouth dropped, but I said nothing. I could only nod frantically, like some possessed thing. I was strung out. I was losing it. And the too light way he touched me wasn’t helping.
He stilled. “Why?”
I know he knew why. He wanted to hear it from me. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t give in to that. I couldn’t tell him it was because he fucking ruined me. Because just the thought of someone else touching me made me want to dry heave. Because it was like everything about me was waiting for him.
I bit my lip. His eyes dropped to it. He lowered the distance between us, so close I could once again taste the whiskey. Grim’s kiss was forever burned inside me. Punishing, insatiable. I closed my eyes.
This is it. After five years of nothing, we’ll finally kiss.
All at once he pushed off me, putting distance between us, sitting on the edge of the couch.
“Fuck,” he hissed, dragging his hands through his hair. Head in one hand, he craned his neck to look at me, eyes dropping to where my skirt was still pushed up. He shook his head. “God fucking dammit.”
He looked oddly, surprisingly human.
“You need to go,” he said.
The demand wasn’t coated in the cruel venom he usually stabbed me with. His whole body was tense, and it sounded more like he was asking me to go, begging me to go. So that was why I didn’t argue. Why I didn’t pout.
I just stood up and pushed my skirt back down.
Eventually I called my car and made it home as the sun was rising above the sparkling, iron ocean. I made my way through the cavernous insides of my home in a daze.
What the fuck did I just do?
I’d always had these dark, uncontrollable thoughts. These stark and vivid scenes that just flew into my brain. When I was still in school, I used to stare at the windows, and they’d explode. The glass would fly at me, slicing open my skin.
And then my friends would say something and the windows were magically whole again.
I’d died, but was still there.
Being with Grim was like that, too, in a way.
So I guess what I was saying was, there was a part of me that didn’t just want to know how far down the rabbit hole goes. I wanted the darkness to swallow me—
I stopped short.
Lock was on my bed, his shoes on and feet crossed.
“What the fuck?”
I should have known something was off right away, because when I got to my wing, my guards were gone. I was too in my head, though. I felt like I was on the Titanic, my perfect world slowly colliding with the darkness, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
As I spoke, I caught a glimpse of a second shadow on my balcony—Wraith—and then I saw a third body at my desk, looking out the window—Raze.
Three Horsemen were in my bedroom.
Raze slowly turned around, facing me. “You’re home late, Barbie.”