Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
GEMMA
Instantly, Grim tensed.
We had a rule—unspoken but clear as day. I had just broken it.
Don’t talk about what happens when the contract ends.
Most people who ask something of the Horsemen were looking for revenge, wealth—boring shit like that. So what did I ask for?
Death.
That was why his twisted punishment had been forcing me to live. I turned to face the mirror—and froze. Blood. Everywhere. Smeared on my face, in my hair from the body, on my lips and cheek from him. Just…everywhere…
I turned on the sink.
The silence dragged on as I rinsed the blood out of my hair. I wrung my wet hair until the red water was mostly clear.
Grim slid his hand around my neck, forcing me to stand straight on my tiptoes. My wet hair dripped to the floor, making pale-pink watercolor streaks in the blood. The heat of Grim burned into my back.
“You really wanna die, Gemma?” He said my name with a bite that felt loaded.
I didn’t know much about Grim’s real name, just that I was never supposed to use it. I’d taken enough Spanish to know it meant saint, which was almost too ironic.
Did I want to die?
“I dunno,” I said, his eyes meeting mine in the mirror, grip tightening. “But I’m really looking forward to the day you have to kill me.”
I elbowed him off.
“Gonna be pretty hard to marry some rich asshole when you’re dead,” he said to my back.
That knowing look passed through his eyes, like he was reading parts of my soul I hadn’t yet translated.
I hated that look. Especially after he’d just ripped me open like a barely formed chrysalis.
In the mirror, Grim’s stare locked on mine, a slight lift to one side of his lips.
“Have you given any thought to how you’re going to kill me?” I asked lightly. “Because I have some ideas. You could use a knife…”
I ghosted my touch along his discarded knife.
In one quick movement he shoved the knife away so hard it flew off the counter, smacking into the wall.
“Okay, no knife,” I said. “You could use a gun, but, I don’t know, it’s so impersonal. I want to feel the life leave my body.”
He eyed me in a bored, disaffected way. The only indication what I was saying might be affecting him was the muscles beneath his shirt flexing with my words.
“Know it’s you doing it.” I licked my lips. “So…so, I thought you could choke me—”
He was on top of me before I could finish.
A grin slid across my lips. “Was it something I said?”
His thumbs slid slowly into place on either side of my neck. The air was soft and heavy with our breaths.
He pressed his thumbs into my jugular. “Is this what you want?”
Grim wasn’t a reckless person. He wasn’t like me, emotional and impulsive. He was almost infuriatingly calm. But things happened when he got that rasp in his voice, when sandpaper scratched the back of his throat.
It was like he was feeding off me.
The air around us drunk.
“This what you want?” He pressed his thumbs into my neck.
Yes.
Fuck.
I opened my mouth on a silent, choking gasp, arching into him.
“You want to die?” His voice shredded with smoke as he kneed my legs apart. “Should I fuck you until you die? Feel your cunt squeeze me until your life drains around my cock?”
Oh, fuck. My thighs ached with need, with the fucked-up fantasy only Grim gave me. His teeth scraped down my shoulder, and my breath turned ragged.
“Promises,” I gasped.
He lifted his head, and he was like an old Hollywood star, eyes shadowed under silky, wavy black hair.
There was something in the dark irises, something I couldn’t name, only feel. Feel the too gentle way his thumbs stroked my neck, how his jaw clenched and nostrils flared.
Then all at once he dropped me. My heart raced, my vision blurred. Lightheaded. Dizzy.
“You’re not in control here, Gemma.” Grim pressed me deeper against the sink, my lower back cutting into the marble vanity edge. “You never were. You never will be.”
His eyes softened with pity. I once again got that feeling that I’d started to associate only with the Underworld.
It didn’t matter that I’d been in this world for five years. I still felt like a little kid thrown in the deep end for the first time.
I angled my chin higher. “Then kill me, Grim.”
“Nah, baby, you crave that too much.” He placed his finger under my chin, tilting my head to find his eyes. “When you cease being useful, I’ll give you what you want.”
Words whispered seductively, but they settled like jagged shards of glass in my gut.
His grip on my chin was tight. Unable to turn my head, I stared at his chest, refusing eye contact. Three jagged scratch marks were visible through his unbuttoned shirt, glowing on his olive skin.
The tattoo Grim had used to steal everything.
It felt like it was mocking me.
He released my chin but didn’t step away. There was something in his eyes. That throbbing, aching something that had me hooked like a fish that kept swimming back to the same barb, begging to be hooked again and again.
He looked like he was about to say something.
I leaned for it. Ached for it.
Stupidly.
“Stay away. Don’t leave your world. Don’t come near me. If we need you, we’ll find you.”
I worked my jaw, staring at the jagged red lines on his chest. “But the contract—”
“That’s an order, Gemma,” he growled. “From now on whatever bullshit we had is over. I don’t wanna fucking hear you, see you, know you.”
Anger, indignation, fucking rage made my teeth hurt, my jaw ache.
Fuck you for making me feel this.
Fuck you for taking it away.
Fuck you.
“You made me a promise,” I gritted.
He pushed the hair out of my face. “Don’t go looking for monsters anymore.” His palm lingered on the side of my face. “Where were you, Gemma?”
“With a boy,” I spat. “Some asshole, whose name I’d like to fucking forget.”