CHAPTER FOUR #2
"Mine too," Grayson ground out, his jaw clenched so tightly it looked as though it might shatter.
He stood up, but his knees buckled slightly, forcing him to catch himself heavily against the edge of the desk.
The drug was ravaging his system, stripping away the layers of polished restraint, leaving only a chaotic, overwhelming surge of primal demand.
He looked at Kennedy. In the silver moonlight, the emerald green of her dress looked black.
Her chest was rising and falling rapidly.
To Grayson’s clouded, fractured mind, she wasn't Kennedy the childhood friend. She was just a woman. A beautiful, tragic woman standing in his space, radiating the same desperate, agonizing heat that was consuming him alive.
Kennedy stared at him, her heart hammering a frantic, deafening rhythm against her ribs.
Every rational alarm bell in her mind was screaming.
Leave. Turn around. Open the door. Find Spencer.
Find Olivia. Call for an ambulance. She knew exactly what she was supposed to do.
She knew that Grayson was not himself, that she was not herself, and that whatever was happening to their bodies was artificial and dangerous.
But as she looked at him—the man she had loved in agonizing, silent secrecy since she was fifteen years old—the rational part of her brain began to drown.
For fifteen years, Kennedy had watched him love other people.
She had smiled through his relationships, celebrated his business victories, and accepted his cold, platonic indifference as her inevitable punishment for daring to love him at all.
Even tonight, he had looked at her with pure disdain, defending a woman who didn't even understand the world he inhabited.
Kennedy had spent her entire adult life burying her heart under layers of sarcasm, designer clothes, and unshakeable pride.
But the drug tore those layers away in seconds. It bypassed her morality, weaponizing her deepest, most suppressed desires.
"I should go," Kennedy whispered. Her voice was a broken, fragile thing. A tear slipped down her cheek, burning hot against her flushed skin. "Grayson, I should leave. I have to get someone."
"Kennedy," Grayson whispered back, his voice dropping into a register of raw, gravelly need. He took an unsteady step out from behind the desk. He didn't ask her to stay, but the way he looked at her—the consuming hunger in his eyes—was an anchor pulling her down into the abyss.
Kennedy didn't take a step backward. She took a step forward.
Just one, a treacherous, drug-addled voice whispered in her mind. Just one kiss. You’ve waited fifteen years. Just to know what it feels like. Then you can walk away.
It was a lie, and somewhere in the fading recesses of her logic, she knew it.
But the heat in her blood was blinding. She crossed the remaining distance between them, her high heels sinking into the thick Persian rug.
She looked up at him, her hazel eyes swimming with a lifetime of unspoken longing and immediate, chemical desperation.
"I’m sorry," Kennedy whispered, the words brushing against his jaw.
She reached up, her trembling hands framing his face, and pressed her lips to his.
For a fraction of a second, Grayson froze.
His body tensed, perfectly rigid, as the ghost of his rational mind tried to intervene.
He knew who she was. He knew this was Kennedy.
He knew he belonged to Olivia. But the moment Kennedy’s lips parted against his, the drug obliterated the final barricade of his control.
Grayson let out a raw, animalistic groan, his large hands coming up to grip her waist with bruising force.
He didn't kiss her back; he devoured her.
It was a catastrophic collision, void of any romance or gentleness.
It was a brutal, all-consuming explosion of heat and desperation.
He backed her up, his frame driving her backward until her spine slammed against the towering mahogany bookshelves, dislodging several leather-bound volumes that crashed to the floor around them.
Neither of them noticed the noise. Neither of them cared.
Kennedy gasped into his mouth, her hands tangling desperately in his hair as he devoured her lips, her jaw, the exposed skin of her neck.
His mouth was scorching hot, his breath coming in ragged, harsh pants against her skin.
She had imagined kissing him a thousand times in her youth, but this was nothing like her fantasies. This was a storm. This was survival.
Grayson’s hands were frantic, tearing at the velvet of her gown, hauling her flush against his burning body.
The drug had erased all societal polish, leaving only an unyielding lust that demanded satisfaction.
Kennedy met his ferocity with her own, her fingernails biting into the bare skin of his chest, matching his desperate, frantic pace.
She whimpered his name, the sound lost in the heated silence of the study.
They tore at each other’s clothes, a chaotic tangle of limbs, sweat, and frantic, ragged breathing.
Grayson lifted her, sweeping the crystal decanters and brass lamps off the edge of the mahogany desk with a violent crash.
Glass shattered across the floor, but he didn't care.
He laid her back against the cool wood of the desk, his frame covering hers, plunging them both into an abyss of all-consuming, brutal, unadulterated lust. It was a fever dream, a violent, desperate joining driven by chemical fire and fractured souls.
They drowned in it, unable to stop, unable to think, until the fire finally burned itself out, leaving nothing but ashes in its wake.
Time lost all meaning. It could have been an hour; it could have been three.
When the chemical haze finally began to recede, it did not leave gently. It drained away like the receding tide, exposing the brutal, jagged rocks beneath.
Grayson’s eyes snapped open.
The study was freezing cold. The moonlight still filtered through the windows, casting long, damning shadows across the destruction of the room.
He was lying on the floor, his back against the leg of his father’s desk.
His chest was heaving, covered in a cold sweat.
He blinked, the blinding fog lifting from his brain, replaced by a sudden, agonizing wave of clarity.
He looked down at his own body. His shirt was torn off. He looked at the floor, littered with shattered crystal, scattered books, and the shredded remains of a midnight-blue velvet dress.
And then, he looked across the room.
Kennedy was sitting in the corner, huddled against the leather sofa.
She was clutching a woven throw blanket tightly around her bare shoulders.
Her hair was a wild, tangled mess, her lips bruised and swollen.
She was shivering violently, her eyes wide, glassy, and hollowed out as she stared blankly at the shattered glass on the floor.
The horror hit Grayson with the force of a physical blow.
He scrambled backward, his heart stopping in his chest. Olivia.
The name screamed through his mind, followed instantly by the sickening, crushing weight of what he had just done.
He couldn't breathe. The nausea rose violently in his throat.
He looked at his hands, then back to the woman shivering in the corner.