Chapter 20
CHAPTER
TWENTY
Annie
Ithought about her words long time after I hung up with my mom.
I watched the sparkle of the lake and the shimmer of heat off the demon sands, and I tried to picture what my life would look like if I went back right now, right this second.
I didn’t feel fixed, or braver, or even especially together.
I felt the same as always—too much and not enough, too loud, too hungry, too ready to throw myself into the fire even if I knew it would burn.
But the thought of seeing Samiel again made my entire body buzz, a frequency so high I could barely sit still. The cat, sensing my mood, pawed at the front door until I got up and opened it, then promptly planted herself on the doormat, as if to say It's about damn time.
I threw my stuff in the GTO, scooped Fluoxetine into the passenger seat, and cranked the ignition.
She yowled the entire way down the mountain, a banshee howl of complaint that made me feel less alone.
The wind through the open window tangled my hair and dried the sweat on my upper lip, and all I could think of was how, in less than fifteen minutes, I’d be home.
Our home. I wanted it to be that, and I wasn't going to pretend otherwise, not anymore.
I barely parked the car before I was out of it. The cat launched herself from the window, claws out, and immediately began patrolling the perimeter with the focus of a military scout. I stood in the driveway, heart raw and wide open, waiting for the first flicker of movement from inside.
He was at the door before I even knocked, like he’d been standing there the whole day, like he’d known I would come back as soon as the sun hit high noon. I braced myself for some speech, but he just reached for my face and held it like I was the last piece of glass left in a shattered cathedral.
“I missed you,” he said.
I tried to say something cool, or make a joke, or even just speak, but instead I started ugly-crying on his shirt.
He smelled like oranges and dust and the salt I’d left behind on his skin, and I felt his arms go gentle-wild around me, holding me up, holding me tight, holding me like he’d already decided we were forever and was just waiting for me to catch up.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he said, but there was no threat in it. Just a splintery relief, sharp and honest.
“You are a fucking disaster,” I said, which made him snort laugh against my hair.
“Your disaster,” he said. “If you want.”
I wanted. More than anything.
We stood on the porch for a long time, neither of us moving, like the moment might disappear if we stepped away. The cat wound around our ankles, tail high, and I thought: This is it. This is what I came here for.
He pulled away just enough to look at me, wiping with a careful thumb the mascara tracks from my cheeks. His hands were trembling.
“I love you,” he said, and I felt it crack through me like a bullet. “I love you, Annie.”
The words landed so hard I nearly laughed, but it came out as a kind of hiccup, a mess of relief and terror and joy. “I love you too, you absolute monster,” I said, hands fisted in his shirt, and I could feel him exhale, every muscle in his stupid, dangerous body finally letting go.
We didn’t say anything else for a while.
I pressed my forehead to his jaw, breathing him in.
He kissed the top of my head, then my eyelids, then the place just under my earlobe where he said my skin tasted like cold stars.
I wanted to say a hundred things, all at once—that I was sorry for running, that I’d always come back, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life arguing with him over nothing and fucking him against every surface we owned.
We didn't even make it to the bedroom. The front door slammed against the wall, and Samiel lifted me with hands that burned against my thighs, his claws pricking through the denim.
My back hit the kitchen counter hard enough to rattle dishes, my legs instinctively wrapping around his waist, feeling the rigid heat of him press against my center.
His mouth crashed into mine, all hunger and possession, fangs grazing my bottom lip as I arched into him.
The low growl vibrating from his chest sent electricity straight between my legs.
He tasted like every dark fantasy I'd ever had, his tongue sliding against mine as his hands gripped my ass, pulling me harder against him.
He broke the kiss, pupils blown wide in those red-gold eyes, a thin trail of saliva connecting our lips.
"Say it again," he demanded, voice rough as gravel.
His hips ground against me in a slow, deliberate circle that made my eyelids flutter.
The hard ridge of him pressed exactly where I needed it, and I couldn't stop the desperate sound that escaped my throat as his fangs extended fully, gleaming and deadly against his flushed lips.
“I love you. I love you more than anything.” It came out cracked and needy, and the second I said it, the mask slipped.
He made this noise, half-groan, half something wild and wordless, and hitched my thighs up until my ass was right at the edge, body spread open for him, trusting he wouldn’t let me fall.
He tore my jeans off—not just a figure of speech, literally shredded them on the diagonal with his claws, the fabric unraveling in a spiral of blue and white over my skin.
I shrieked, then started laughing, then shrieked again with the shock of bare air on skin, and he just pressed his face straight between my legs, shoulders pinning me to the countertop, tongue hot and alive.
He ate me out like he'd spent four days thinking about it, like every second apart had been rehearsed with his mouth on air, waiting for the taste of me.
His forked tongue flickered against me—two precise points of pleasure that somehow reached everywhere at once.
I clung to him, knuckles white, as he worked me slow at first, then with inhuman speed and dexterity, each split tip finding separate nerves to torment simultaneously.
The more I bucked against his mouth, the deeper he moaned, the hungrier he got.
When both tips of his tongue circled my clit in opposite directions before he sealed his lips around it and sucked, I thought I'd bite through my own tongue.
The pressure was unreal, and I could feel the edges of his fangs graze, careful but there, reminding me what I was giving myself to.
I lost the thread of language. I was just sound and heat and shaking, every nerve in my body ratcheted up to the point of pain.
Then he slid two fingers inside me, then three, working me with a precision that was obscene in every sense.
He curled them just right, and when he dragged his tongue up the seam of me with his other hand pinning my hips, I saw stars—not metaphorical, actual bursts of white behind my eyelids.
Then something happened I'd never experienced before—a sudden, intense release that shocked me as much as it soaked him.
I gasped, mortified and exhilarated all at once, certain this wasn't supposed to happen outside of porn.
But his tongue never stopped, not even to catch a breath.
He just buried his face deeper and groaned like he'd discovered something precious that had been hidden from him until now.
I twitched so hard I nearly rolled off the counter, but he caught me with one massive hand, holding me in place while he licked me slowly, up and down, savoring every aftershock.
When I finally went limp, every muscle in my body spent, he nuzzled his face against my thigh and breathed out, “I love you.” It was muffled and wet and so vulnerable that I almost cried.
For half a second, all I wanted was to let him keep going until I disappeared.
But the greedy, competitive part of my brain fired back to life.
I remembered the way he’d looked at me the night we met, starving and certain at the same time, and I realized I wanted to wreck him again, to see if his hands would shake the way mine had.
“Incredible,” I gasped, hair damp and clinging to my cheeks, legs trembling like jelly. “But if you think I’m letting this be all about me, you’re delirious.”
He lifted his head, the tip of his tongue gliding over his lower lip, eyes dark with challenge.
I cut him off, pressing my palms to his broad shoulders and shoving until he stumbled back.
Sliding off the counter, I landed soft on the cool tile.
My knees nearly buckled, so I braced myself on the sink’s porcelain edge, laughing in ragged breaths.
Then I let myself drop, kneeling on the kitchen floor.
He hadn’t seen it coming. He was still undoing his jeans when my hand found him—rock-hard, pulsing.
I spat in my palm—raw, impulsive—and wrapped my fingers around the length of his shaft, reveling in the taut swirl of veins beneath.
I wanted him undone, to dissolve four lonely days with the warmth of my mouth alone.
I took him in slowly at first, then relaxed my throat and welcomed him deeper, letting him glide past that tight ring of resistance until my nose brushed against the coarse curls at his base.
My eyes stung with tears as I fought the instinct to pull back, drawing him down into my throat, feeling his pulse throb against me.
He emitted a low, savage groan—part growl, part plea—one hand gripping the countertop, the other tangling in my hair, pulling me closer until every nerve ignited.
He set the pace now. His grip tightened, and he thrust forward, driving me down his shaft with wanton desperation.
The knot at the base of his length bounced against my lips, growing thicker with each powerful push.
I surrendered completely—my mouth, my throat, my will.
Spit glossed my chin like molten silk as he hammered a punishing rhythm.
Through tear-blurred eyes I met his gaze, felt the raw possessiveness there, the unspoken agreement that this was our reckoning.
I moaned around him, urging him deeper, faster.
With each flick of my tongue and twist of my wrist, he grew louder, more ragged.
“Annie,” he rasped, voice thick with need. “Annie, I’m—”
His plea cut off as he drove home in one final, shuddering thrust. My vision blurred, my body quivering around him as he emptied himself in fiery pulses—some swallowed, some dribbling down my chin.
My legs gave way, and he scooped me up, carrying me toward the bedroom. My head lolled against his chest, every nerve humming in a delicious afterglow.