CHAPTER 13 - Madeline #4
I should push him away. I should tell him this is a desecration of everything I stand for. But as I look at the blood on his neck, the wound I gave him, a terrifying realization washes over me. I don’t want him to leave. I want to see how much further this darkness goes.
My life has been a routine for years, focused only on work. I needed to be sharp, hollow. To not feel. Emotions and pathology don't mix. But now? I feel alive again. Not just as the Doctor, but as a woman who's actually being chosen. My desperation drove me to this. To him.
The silence of the morgue is no longer empty. It’s heavy. It’s expectant. It’s a stage, just like he said, and the lights are finally exactly where he wants them.
Deimos leans in, his shadow swallowing me whole in the red-tinted gloom. He expects me to freeze, to tremble, or perhaps to plead. He is so certain of his control, so sure of the walls he has built around me, that he doesn't see it coming.
My hands rise. Slowly. Deliberately. I don't reach for a scalpel. I don't reach for the edge of the table to push him away. Instead, I let my palms settle against his chest. I can feel the heat of his skin through the layers, the sheer, solid mass of him.
He freezes.
The low, predatory rumble in his throat cuts off abruptly. For the first time since I met him, the stillness in his body isn't an act of calculated intimidation. It’s a genuine, raw shock.
His grip on my waist doesn't loosen, but his fingers twitch against my skin. He looks down at my hands on his heart as if I’ve just pressed a live wire to his chest.
“Madeline...”
A breathless, fractured whisper escapes his lips.
I slide my fingers upward, feeling the frantic, heavy thud of his heartbeat. It’s faster now. Violent. I reach the collar of his shirt and move higher, my fingertips finally grazing the warm, damp skin of his neck, right over the shallow cut I gave him.
I don’t flinch at the blood. I lean forward, closing the small gap he left between us, until I can see the flicker of something almost human, something terrified and desperate, behind the amber of his eyes.
“You said I was yours, Deimos. But you never asked if I was ready to take what belongs to me.”
The silence that follows is electric, heavy with the weight of a shifted power. He is no longer just the ghost in the machine or the monster. He is a man, caught in the grip of the one person who isn't afraid to touch the fire.
He let me go before. But as I pull him closer, I realize he has no intention of letting me go again. He is almost touching my lips with his.
He takes one final look into my eyes, as if he is searching for a reaction or waiting for permission. When I look up to meet his gaze, my eyes are no longer cold. They are holding something far more dangerous.
That’s all it takes for him to bridge the distance. Our lips collide in a bruising, desperate kiss. He growls into my mouth, starving, wanting. He tastes his own blood on my lips as he bites through my lower lip harshly, our blood mixing together in a metallic tang.
Our tongues tangle in a hungry, chaotic rhythm. His hands are grazing all over my body, touching every part he can reach, possessive and frantic. I moan into the kiss, my hands anchoring themselves around his neck, pulling him closer.
Suddenly, he pulls away, his breath hitching in his throat. The sound is like ice cracking before a storm.
“Lie down,” he commands.
And I do. I do it because, at this moment, I am already far too gone from sanity to even think of resisting.
. In one swift motion, he rips my pants off.
I gasp at the sound of tearing fabric as I look down at him.
His eyes are pitch black, utterly demonic.
I can see the hunger in them spreading through him like poison. Dark, intoxicating, and unstoppable.
He parts my legs, and the cold metal under me makes my skin shiver, a stark contrast to the fire he’s igniting.
He bites me through the lace of my panties, through that last thin barrier that still separates him from the place that craves him the most. My eyes roll back in desperate need as I feel the searing heat of his lips.
“Deimos.”
I breathe his name like a prayer. Not to anything innocent. It's a plea to the devil devouring my body as if I were the last woman on earth.
“Hearing you moan my name like that… that’s the only thing I need to hear in my life from this moment on,” he whispers between kisses, sending electric shocks through my whole body, straight into my spine.
My back is arching unconsciously. He leaves marks on my thighs with his lips as he rips the last silk barrier off too. He briefly licks my bare skin with his tongue in a tortuously slow motion.
Then he stops abruptly and leans over me, his hands pinning my wrists to the cold surface. His dark eyes scan my face with a terrifying sort of pride.
He leans down, his lips brushing against my ear, his voice dropping to a gravelly, haunting whisper that makes the air in the morgue turn to ice.
“Do you feel the chill of the steel, Mali? Do you realize where you are?”
I shiver, my breath hitching as I look up at the red-tinted ceiling.
“This is the same table,” he murmurs, his teeth grazing my earlobe.
“The same cold metal where you opened him up. Where you touched his dead heart and looked for answers.”
He presses his body harder against mine, forcing me to feel every inch of his heat against the freezing metal.
Suddenly, the cold steel makes contact with my skin again, but not from the table. I gasp as the familiar, cold edge of the scalpel is pressed against my throat.
He applies just enough pressure for me to feel the bite of the blade. It’s a threat, but the way he looks at me, the intense focus on my mouth, the way his body grinds against mine, makes it purely sexual.
“I didn’t just kill him to set you free.
I killed him so I could take his place on your table.
But I’m not a corpse for you to study, Madeline.
I’m the one who’s making you feel alive on the very spot where you watched him rot.
Every time you work here from now on, you’ll feel my weight.
You’ll taste my blood. He’s gone, and I am the only ghost allowed in this room. ”
My eyes roll back in pleasure as his hand slides up my ribcage, his touch possessive and bruising. The sacrilege of it should make me scream, but instead, it only fuels the fire.
“You’re not dissecting tonight,” he growls, his gaze dropping to the space between my legs that is aching for him.
“Tonight, I’m the one taking you apart.”