CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN #3
“You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. About us,” he breathed. His voice was sin incarnate and claimed every fragment of her attention. “Tell me, angel, what is it you think of when you read that filthy book? When you have those pretty little fingers between your legs?”
Emmery gasped. She should shove him away, put as much distance between them as possible, but she couldn’t move. She was tangled in Destonne’s web and no hope remained of freeing herself now. So she laid her hand on his chest and fisted his shirt, unsure if she intended to kill him or kiss him.
Quietly, he continued, “Because I lie awake thinking of you. Every night. And nothing brings relief. Nothing.” Destonne teased the column of her neck with the softest brush of his lips. “It’s driving me mad.”
A delicious tingle shot down Emmery’s spine, swelled in her belly, and as he traced the tip of his nose back up the path his lips had followed, she bit back a tiny moan. “Don’t blame your instability on me,” she said, her voice quivering like her insides.
“How can I not? You are…” He sighed against her skin. “You’re complicating everything, Emmery.”
Her heart inflated as he placed a kiss on the delicate skin beneath her ear and waited for her to pull away.
When she didn’t, he pressed another under her jaw, and another, leaving behind a string of heat, and her skin flushed, burning for him, until merely a sliver of space remained between them and temptation saturated the air.
His brow rested against hers, and his lips lingered so close all she would have to do is lean in to claim them.
And he smelled of mint, and chilled night breezes, and everything she couldn’t have.
It’s not real, Emmery told herself. This couldn’t be. In this place her skin felt clean, her hair fell loose down her back, and both her and Destonne wore fresh clothes. This had to be some hallucination. This couldn’t actually be him. Besides, he wouldn't hold her like this. Touch her this way.
And yet, it felt real.
“What if I said I wanted you?” he breathed, his air becoming hers. “What if I begged? What if I got on my knees? Would you even look at me, Emmery? Would you actually see me? Because sometimes … sometimes I swear, you do.”
“Destonne—”
“Tell me. Tell me you feel this.” A frustrated groan rumbled in the back of his throat. “Say you want me too. Admit it. Say it out loud.”
“I—you don’t … what are you doing?” she whispered. Her grip tightened on his shirt as Emmery stared up into his endlessly black eyes. Wandered. Lost her way. But now she realized she didn’t fear the dark. In fact, she revelled in it. Thrived even.
“Something foolish,” he murmured, pain in his words. “Something completely, and utterly foolish.”
Destonne consumed that sliver of space, his lips met hers, and Emmery surrendered to his darkness.
His kiss embodied the embrace of shadow and light, a mix of wrong and right battling inside her chest, because his lips were warm and pillowy soft, and he kissed her with impossible gentleness as if she might reduce to dust in his arms and fade away. As if he couldn’t believe she was real.
He sighed against her, the sound aching of relief, like sinking into a warm bath on a frigid day, a twisted reprieve from a need he couldn’t pinpoint. A hunger his empty heart hadn’t warned him would only grow and swell until he consumed what he craved.
Only when he panted as if she’d stolen all his air did Destonne break away. But he groaned and kissed her again, this time with the intensity of what they had watched. His tongue parted her lips and, gods, he devoured her as a tidal wave stole land.
Reached inside her soul and claimed it for himself.
Maybe because the last few days had been torture, or she’d truly lost her mind, she kissed him back. Greedily. Insatiably. Her soul yawned open after years of loneliness and despair and solitude, and she couldn’t get enough as the monster inside her roared to seize what she wanted.
All she could see or feel or taste was him.
And it was too damn good.
So she opened to him. Her kiss transformed into something raging and fiery and simultaneously a balm for that empty chasm inside her, filling it with sunlight and chasing the shadows away.
His short stubble grazed her face and his hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head back as if he too couldn’t get enough.
His mouth claimed all of her—her cheek, her neck, and back to her lips, skilled and perfect and soft.
Emmery’s hands found his face, and they slickened with blood as she traced the curve of his cheekbones and jaw, imprinting the feel of him into her memory.
Destonne’s grip tightened on her waist as if in pain, as if this kiss was killing him as it was slowly killing her too. Desperately, Emmery sank into him and pressed her breasts against his chest. Craved for him to touch her. Her fingers wove into his hair and she yanked him closer.
She wanted more, wanted his hands on her, wanted everything.
Wanted him.
But even in this reality, whatever insane pocket of destitute torture she had stumbled into, the thorns tore through his chest, and Destonne pushed her away as he always did.