I should be shaken up. I should not be filled with this weird, restless energy. I feel like I’ve just had a shot of pure adrenaline into my veins.
“I had to do it, didn’t I? I had to hurt her?” My voice shakes as I come to a stop, knowing Art is just behind me.
“You did exactly what you needed to do.”
His deep, honey-like voice is a balm even when I know what I’ve seen should have me running for the hills.
I turn to face him.
A lamp in the corner is our only light. I look up at Art, his golden hair a rumpled mess, his arm soaked crimson, his black t-shirt clinging to his torso.
He’s covered in blood. I watched him kill a man.
And yet he’s never looked better. Pure dark energy and power, his lips curving into a smile as he steps closer.
“Nenoka.”
He slides his hands around my waist and it’s like a switch flips. I need more. Now. In the next second, if possible.
I don’t want him, I need him.
Art’s mouth crashes against mine and it feels electric. Like every nerve in my body is firing an extra signal.
Neither of us says a single thing. But our mouths, our hands, our bodies scream with urgency.
Touching Art feels as necessary as breathing right now.
Instinct takes over and demands that I feel him, all of him, as close to me as he can get.
I tear his shirt over his head, and he unbuttons his pants. He pulls me close to him, thrusts inside me with no foreplay, and I’m soaked enough that it somehow feels good.
I lean back against the wall, angling my hips so that I take him deeper, and he groans his approval. He pushes me back against the wall, lifting my legs so they’re looped around him.
Just Art and the wall holding me up. I can’t stop myself from sinking further onto his cock with each thrust.
He fists my hair, his teeth grazing against my lip. The blood that was coating his arm clings to me too. Some of it ends up in my mouth, smeared across my lips, the metallic taste coating my tongue.
We are wordless, breathless, craving and skin. He’s rough, but I don’t let him destroy me. I give as good as I get, raking my teeth over his racing pulse, digging my nails into his bicep as he stretches mewith each thrust.
In the dark, it doesn’t matter.
Tomorrow, we’ll wake up with the stains of this night on us. The undeniable proof that we always crave each other at the wrong moment.
We can’t talk, I’m furious with this man, and I don’t understand where he’s coming from half the time. But as he wraps a hand around my throat and slams into me, I want nothing more than him.
I am breathlessly moaning against his mouth as he claims me with decisive strokes. The sensation builds deep inside me until I feel myself coming apart around him, my legs wrapped tight around his hips.
I cry out his name when I come, and he follows with a low grunt, sinking his teeth into my shoulder as he finishes.
I melt against him and he holds me tighter.
“I knew you’d come back to me,” he murmurs, placing a rough kiss against my jaw.His stubble rasps against me.
And it feels easy to nod, to lean into his messy kiss, even though I’m not sure I have come back to him.
I didn’t hate what I saw tonight, and that terrifies me.
Even as I melt in his arms. Even as he showers me and puts me in bed gently, smoothing my hair until I fall asleep, while he looks into the distance and stays wide awake.
