CHAPTER 23
GRAYCIE
The air is stale but charged in a way it shouldn’t be.
“No,” I gasp.
Because I know why the air is different. I know what his feeling is. Turner is here, but he shouldn’t be here. No, this is the last place he should be.
I’m looking around for him, but he’s not there. But I can feel him. He’s somewhere.
The lights are dim and I can’t tell if I’m getting anywhere. It doesn’t feel like it. But I keep moving because Turner is here. Somewhere.
“You always were a bad omen,” my mom’s posh voice rings around me. Her words echo, and I want to cover my ears. But I can’t.
“It’s why we couldn’t stand to be around you,” my father’s voice, filled with affected boredom, hits me in the middle of my chest.
Because there was a time, even though it didn’t last long, when I thought things with Dad could have turned around. They never did.
I was wrong.
Tears sting my eyes and something tugs at me, the feeling deep in my belly. I want to follow the feeling, but I’m not sure where it is.
It has to be him.
“Turner,” I scream his name into the void, into the emptiness between seconds and sense.
Then a light clicks on. White bathes the space, but there’s nothing holy happening in the illuminated circle. And my heart breaks.
Turner is chained down and Sylvester is standing over him holding a whip. But it’s not the same one he used on me. No, this one has a wicked end that looks like a serrated hook.
I swallow hard and try to run toward Turner. Needing to rescue him.
But I don’t get any closer. Because of course I don’t get closer.
“Turner,” I sob.
He doesn’t turn his head in my direction. But Sylvester does.
“I’m so glad you joined us, Graycie,” he sneers my name like it’s a curse.
All I can hear, can feel, is the way Turner whispers that I’m his angel.
Angel.
Angel.
When Sylvester flicks his wrist, I fall to my knees. Tears are streaming down my face making it harder to see, but it’s like I can see everything with a clarity that just can’t be real.
Turner doesn’t make a sound when the whip cuts across his skin, tearing into it and then ripping free.
Not the first lash.
Not the second.
When the third lands. Everything changes, flips.
Everything that was nothing becomes pure light and the circle of light holding my tortured soul—because that’s all such a scene could be—is nothing. Gone.
The scream that rips out of Turner’s chest is something born of a primordial pain, one which should never be experienced or inflicted. It rattles the world around me and the foundation of everything that could be.
Angel.
Angel.
I can hear the whip moving through the air. I brace for the scream, for the way it squeezes my heart and won’t let go.
Instead, the hooked end, with teeth covered in blood, sings straight for me. The air shifts around me and I beg my body to move.
But I don’t.
“Angel,” Turner barks in my face.
My eyes snap open and he’s right there. Right fucking there.
I fling myself at him, not entirely sure which way is up but knowing he’ll catch me, hold me, and chase away the last of my nightmare.
Tears are streaming down my face, and Turner clutches me to his chest. He rolls us slightly, moving until he’s sitting up against the headboard and I’m cradled in his lap. It feels like I can’t breathe with all the air being stolen by the echo of his scream.
“I’ve got you, Angel,” he murmurs.
My eyes slide closed with his nickname for me. “You were trying to wake me up,” I whisper the words, broken as they are, and don’t pose it as a question.
Because it’s not. He had almost gotten through so many times.
Then he did.
“I’m sorry it took me a moment to get through,” his voice is a deep rumble, and I bury my face in the crook of his neck.
“No sorry,” I mumble, my words slurring slightly.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I peek up at him, trying to figure out if he’s serious or if he’s just asking because he feels like he’s supposed to. He’s looking down at me, open and focused. It gives me just enough strength.
“He was hurting you,” I murmur, “and I couldn’t get to you.”
“Oh Graycie-girl.” He kisses my forehead, his lips lingering for a beat too long. But it’s what I need.
There’s something about being in his arms that chases away all the bad. Maybe it’s because he really is the other half of me? Is that possible?
“He’ll never lay a hand on me,” he sounds so sure and I find myself nodding as if he can guarantee something like that. “If he ever has me,” his eyes go hard, “you run.”
My lips part as I stare at him, words failing me completely. Where do I even start?
How could he ask me to do that?
And leave him?
“No,” I whisper.
Instead of arguing with me, Turner presses his mouth to mine. It’s sweet and soft at first. Like he wants to simply assure me he’s here. He’s right here.
Our kisses never stay soft and sweet though. The hunger that is always licking at our skin takes over. It consumes us.
“Please,” I moan and arch into his body. “Chase away the shadows.”
Turner freezes for a second before his hand wraps around my throat. He holds me steady while pulling back enough to be able to study my face.
“Are you sure?” His eyes bounce between mine, watching, assessing. “Because the way you were thrashing and muttering has me on edge. I didn’t like it.” Possessiveness coats his words, “I don’t want him to have access to you, even in your dreams.”
“I’m sure,” there’s no hesitation in my voice, just the dregs of my nightmare. “Take it all away.”
He starts by kissing my chest, right where my heart is pounding from the vestiges of my dream. The fear. The pain. It’s still so vivid.
When he trails his mouth over and sucks one of my hard nipples into his mouth, my back arches and my thighs wrap around his hips to try and pull him closer. I need it. Need the heat of him, the feel of his skin against mine.
Turner bites down on my nipple before sucking hard and I let out a moan that should make me embarrassed, but I just don’t have it in me. “Please,” I whimper, “I need you inside me.”
He releases my flesh with a wet plop before he trails his mouth across my chest and toward my other breast. “You’ll take what I give you, Angel,” his voice is husky and slightly muffled against my skin.
The length of his shaft finds my slick slit, sliding between my pussy lips and getting soaked in the process. He lets out a growl of approval as he sucks my other nipple into his mouth. I swear he tries to inhale as much of my tit as he can get.
And the man has a big fucking mouth.
It’s delicious. His mouth. And what it can do to me.
My fingers slide into his hair and I tug.
Not to pull him away from my body, but to bring him impossibly closer.
When he rocks his hips, the head of his cock slides over my clit and my pussy clenches around nothing.
I tug a little harder on his hair, arching my back even more and offering myself to him.
Always.
“You need my cock, Graycie-girl?” He rumbles the question and my hips rock against him, seeking more friction, needing more. “I can feel how wet you are for me. So, fucking responsive,” his words wash over me like praise.
“Fuck me,” I plead. “Stretch me. Need to feel you fill me,” my words come out half-formed and half teeming with madness.
My head is whirling, but I know that he’ll make it all stop. I don’t know how he does it, but he does. My man. Pure fucking magic.
I feel him pull his hips back slightly and the crown of his cock notches at my entrance. Just as he shunts his hips forward, he bites down on my nipple. The warring sensations make me fly right over the edge.
Turner growls, the sound low, and feral. His eyes slide closed as he huffs a breath out of his nose like an angry fucking bull. When his eyes snap open, his gray depths are lit with a hunger I feel curling in my own gut.
Then he starts to move. There’s no finesse to his movements, only desire and need.
Every glide of his length inside of me, the way my walls stretch around his dick, has me panting out a pained breath. Not because he’s hurting me, but because he’s giving me exactly what I need.
My mind blanks as the pleasure builds. Again. It tightens inside of me; a spring lost in the gathering of energy. Ready to unspool.
Tighter.
Almost.
“I feel your pretty pussy getting tighter around me,” he grits the words out through his teeth.
His head is tipped back slightly while the corded muscles of his neck strain to show me the last of his control. My fingers slide down the back of his head to find purchase at the nape of his neck. And I hold on tight.
He pulls almost all the way out before he slams back home again. Over and over. A metronome of bliss our bodies keep time with naturally. Easily.
As if we just know; as if our souls just know.
We move together. Pushing. Pulling. A balance that I have only felt with him.
The last of my nightmare disappears, leaving behind only light, the darkness chased away by the rough slide of his cock inside me. He’s not gentle and I don’t want him to be.
“Turner,” I mewl his name. “Yes,” I gasp, “don’t stop.”
He grips my hip and tilts it just slightly. Perfectly.
When he slams inside of me again, burying himself deep, he hits the spot inside me that has stars falling around me like fireworks. “Fuck,” the word comes out as a groan, low and husky. “Right there.”
“I’ve got you, Angel,” he growls the words and I feel them flowing through me and pushing me closer to the edge.
“Need your cum,” I pant out the words, something taking root in the depth of my soul. Something special. Something sacred.
He grunts, “I’m going to give you every drop.”
The sound of our moans mix with the sound of our skin slapping together. He fucks me hard and fast, pushing and chasing.
“Graycie,” his voice is strained, “your sweet cunt is begging me for my cum. Gonna put my baby in your belly, tie you to me, claim you for forever,” his words are broken puffs of air mixed with growls and need.
His words make my orgasm rip through me. My nails dig into the skin at the nape of his neck as my eyes roll back in my head. He fucks me right through my pleasure, heightening it to the edge of it being too much.
My entire body feels like a live wire, like I’m electrified and just waiting to be grounded.
Turner takes my mouth in a kiss which is beautiful in its devastation, and brutality. It’s all snarls and teeth and feral need. When I moan into the kiss, he swallows down the sound and thrusts into me once, twice, and then buries himself deep.
I feel every jet of his cum with a clarity that has me clinging to him. I ride the aftershocks of my pleasure, the walls of my channel milking his length as he roars out my name.
I’m a panting mess, the air sawing in and out of my lungs. The bliss rushing through me ebbs just enough to make it feel like I’m no longer free falling.
“Mine,” he growls against my lips before he sucks my lower lip into his mouth and nips at it like he can’t help himself. “You’re mine, Graycie-girl.”
“Yours,” my words are choppy with my labored breathing.
My limbs feel heavy and I cling to him, not wanting to let go of him, needing to keep him close. His murmured words, soft and sweet filter through and take root.
“You’re so damn beautiful,” his breath fans over my skin. “Watching you fall apart for me is a fucking gift. You have no idea how grateful I am that you trust me with your body. I’ll have your heart and soul soon, too.”
His words don’t feel like a threat, they feel like a vow.
I sink into the feeling, the nightmare forgotten. Those fears are crushed under the weight of our pleasure, of the connection between us.
It’s there like ink under my skin. It binds us and pulls us together.
And words of love, the same ones I blurted out carelessly and pulled back in fear, are on the tip of my tongue begging to be spoken aloud and given wings. I hold them back, for now.
But I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to.
My man deserves to know how I feel. I should tell him he’s my everything, but the thought evaporates as a dreamless sleep pulls me under. I let it, knowing I’m safe in my biker’s arms.