CHAPTER 10 - Madeline #3
I shake my head in desperate protest, my cheeks flushed with a heat that has nothing to do with the night air. I'm embarrassed, confused, and dangerously close to breaking. But he doesn’t force me. In fact, he surprises me completely.
”Please?”
He yearns. The word is a whisper, a plea, and yet his tone remains dark and demanding.
My body is betraying every principle I’ve ever held. I can feel the sudden, heavy wetness soaking into my lace panties, a reaction I can't stop, caused by the very man who forced me on my knees only an hour ago.
I slowly pull my hand away from my mouth. He smiles against my skin, the heat of his breath sending a jolt through my entire nervous system.
“Good girl,” he praises, the words dripping with a dark satisfaction.
His kisses slide slowly, agonizingly, up my thigh. I can feel the tension in his shoulders, the sheer power he’s holding back. Each inch he gains up my leg feels like he’s reclaiming territory that was always meant to be his.
“Is this... is this your definition of ‘easing the pain’?”
I breathe out, my voice trembling so much I can barely recognize myself.
He stops, his face just inches away from the edge of my silk underwear. He looks up at me, his dark eyes clouded with a hunger that makes my knees buckle.
“Does your mind still concentrate on the pain, or something else?”
His tone is almost amused. A predatory edge to his smirk. He doesn't wait for an answer. Instead, he reaches up, his fingers hooking into the sides of my panties, pulling me flush against him while he's still on his knees.
The heat radiating from his body is intoxicating. I find myself leaning into him, my fingers tangling in his dark hair, pulling him closer even though every rational cell in my brain is screaming at me to run.
"Answer me, Mali," he growls, his nose brushing against the damp fabric.
"Where is the pain now?"
"Gone," I whisper, my head falling back against the tree.
"It's gone."
"Good," he murmurs, as he pulls me even closer to his face.
"Because I haven't even started with the cure yet."
He doesn't wait for me to recover. His hands, large and warm, slide around to cup me, his fingers digging into my skin with a possessive firmness that anchors me to this moment.
"Gone," I whisper again, my voice trailing off into a broken hum. The pain in my knee is a distant memory, replaced by a thrumming, electric heat that is centered entirely where his mouth is.
With a sudden, fluid movement, he hooks his teeth into the delicate lace at my hip and tugs. My breath hitches, a sharp gasp escaping my throat as I feel the fabric give way. He isn't being gentle anymore; the "care" has shifted into something much more primal.
He strips the remaining silk down my legs, leaving me completely exposed to the biting night air and his relentless, burning gaze.
I feel raw. Vulnerable. But as he looks up at me, kneeling between my trembling thighs, I don't see a killer. I see my own personal eclipse.
"You’re shaking, Mali," he notes, his thumbs tracing the line of my hip bones.
"Is it the cold? Or is it me?"
"You know exactly what it is," I manage to choke out.
He smirks, a flash of white teeth in the moonlight, and then he leans forward. His tongue licks a slow, agonizing path from the inside of my thigh upward. I whimper, my fingers tightening in his hair, pulling him closer in a silent plea.
"Patience," he whispers, his hands moving up to grip my waist, pinning me so hard against the tree that I can feel the ridges of the bark through my shirt.
"I want to feel every heartbeat. I want to know exactly when you lose yourself to me."
He buries his face in me like a starving man, his tongue finding the center of my chaos with a devastating precision. My knees buckle. I would have collapsed into the mud if he wasn't holding me up with such brutal strength.
A loud, unrestrained moan breaks from my lips, echoing through the silent, dark forest. He was right. The only hand that should be suppressing my voice is his, but right now, he wants to hear every shattered sound I make.
He drinks me in, his movements steady and rhythmic, driving me toward a cliff I didn't even know existed. The world starts to blur. The trees, the moon, the fear. It all melts away until there is nothing left but the sensation of his lips and the overwhelming power he radiates.
I’m a pathologist; I know the human body inside and out. I know where every nerve ends. But he... he isn't just touching me. He's rewriting me. He’s devouring my soul.
As the first wave of release starts to crash over me, he pulls back just an inch, looking up at me again.
"Who owns you, Madeline?"
He demands, his voice thick with a hunger that matches my own.
"Tell me who owns this moment."
"You," I gasp, my eyes fluttering shut as the peak hits me, my body arching into his.
"Only you..."
He catches me, his arms wrapping around me as the tremors take over, holding me close to his chest while I sob for breath. I’m a mess, covered in mud, half-naked in a dark forest, held by the city’s most dangerous phantom.
I’m leaning against the cold, rough bark of the oak, my legs still trembling from the aftershocks of a pleasure that felt more like a surrender.
He holds me for a moment longer than necessary, his strength is the only thing keeping me upright. My mind is a chaotic mess of professional ethics, pure terror, and a new, dark addiction I can't even name.
He is the person who put Jake on my table. He is the shadow that ruined my peace. And yet, as I breathe in the scent of him, I feel more alive than I have in years.
He slowly pulls back, his hands lingering on my waist before he reaches down to pick up my discarded clothes from the mud.
He doesn't say a word as he helps me step into my pants, his movements efficient and strangely devoid of the heat from moments ago.
The "care" is back, but it’s cold now. Clinical.
"I have to go," I whisper, the words feeling heavy in the night air.
"I... I don't even know who you are. To me, you’re just a stranger. A title. The Arbiter."
He pauses, his hand stopping mid-air as he was about to tuck a stray, damp lock of hair behind my ear. He looks at me, and for the first time, the predatory mask slips just enough for me to see the man underneath. A man who looks tired, haunted, and ancient despite his handsome features.
"The Arbiter is what the city calls me, Madeline," he says, his voice a low, melodic vibration that seems to blend with the rustling leaves.
"It’s a role I play for the Elite. A judge for those who think they are above the law."
He leans in, his lips brushing against my temple one last time.
"But you... you don't answer to a title. And I don't want you calling me by one. Not anymore."
He takes a step back into the shadows, his silhouette starting to dissolve into the darkness of the trees.
"My name is Deimos."
The name hangs in the air between us like a curse. Deimos. The Greek God of terror. It fits him so perfectly it makes my blood run cold.
"Go home, Madeline," he commands, his voice now coming from the darkness, further away.
"Lock your doors. Not that it will stop me, but it might help you sleep."
And then, he’s gone.
No sound of footsteps, no snapping branches. Just the wind and the distant hum of the forest. I’m left standing alone in the mud, my body still humming from his touch, my knee throbbing with a dull ache, and his name echoing in my head.
I stumble back toward the road, my hands shaking as I find my car. I sit behind the wheel, staring at my reflection in the rearview mirror, mud-stained, lips swollen, eyes wide with a haunting light and the reality hits me like a physical blow.
I didn't just let a stranger touch me. I let a mass murderer, a man I’ve been studying on my autopsy table for months, take me in a forest. No, hunt me in the forest. I’m a woman of science, logic and justice, but tonight, I traded all of it for a name and a feeling.
"What have I done?"
I whisper to the empty car.
I start the engine, but the war inside me is far from over. I’m terrified of him. I should hate him. I should drive straight to the precinct and tell Lucy everything.
But as I pull away from the forest, my fingers ghost over the spot on my neck where his lips were, and a terrifying realization settles in my chest.
I am no longer just the pathologist observing this case. I’ve become part of the evidence.