Titus kissed me all over, licking my cuts and tracing the welts with the metal bead of his piercing.
“Fuck me dead,” he groaned against my throat. “All I want to do is take you right now against this tree.” His brow pressed against mine, his chest heaving with labored breaths, his muscles flexing against his inky flesh. He was restraining himself.
I could almost sense him straddling the line between his human side and his devil side. One half wanted to protect me. The other wanted to eat me alive.
He set me to my feet, took me by the hand and led us deeper into the woods. “We have to find shelter and wait the night out.”
“What if the cult finds us?”
“We have to take our chances. There are monsters that roam the night that are worse than a mob of devils.”
“Worse than you?”
“Depends. What do you mean by ‘worse?’ If you’re talking about monsters who want to tear you apart and have you for dinner, they’re worse.” He turned around so fast I almost crashed into his chest. “But if your idea of a truly heinous monster is the kind that can rip you apart from the inside, then, baby, I’m your worst nightmare.”
Chapter Six
Lore
IfTituswasmyworst nightmare, then I was dreaming and I never wanted to wake up.
Did that make me a bad person? Maybe. Either way, I didn’t care. I was scared for my life, yet somehow I was still the happiest I’d ever been.
We wandered through the dark, but we didn’t meander aimlessly. Titus seemed to know where he was leading us.
I breathed a sigh of relief when we came to an abandoned shack. The Pine Barrens had countless ruins of burned-out factories, dilapidated hovels from century-old ghost towns and other long-forgotten buildings, but this was the first intact structure we’d encountered since leaving Bishop.
The cabin was one room. By the look and feel, no one had lived here in years. It was still better than sleeping outside though.
“There’s a fireplace!”
“No fire,” Titus grunted, slinging his backpack onto a wooden table beside the door. “The light from the windows will give away our location.”
I wrapped my arms around my shivering body. “But I’m cold.”
Titus turned his back to me, rustling through his backpack for a minute before twisting around to toss a small, rolled-up blanket at me. “That’s for covering the bed so you don’t have to lie in filth. I’ll be what keeps you warm tonight.”
“What else do you have in there?” I asked as I unrolled the blanket and spread it over the ancient mattress.
“All sorts of shit. Whenever I had to get away from my dad or the town, I took off and rugged it out in the woods for days at a time. I always have my backpack stocked with emergency gear. I would have been better prepared if I knew you were going to total my truck.” He tossed a granola bar onto the bed. “Dinner. I’d hunt something for you, but I can’t light a fire to cook. So, you’re stuck with this for now.”
“Hunt? Do you have a gun in there?”
He held up his claws and gave them a wiggle. “Don’t need one.”
I quietly ate my granola bar as I imagined Titus stalking the woods for prey.
After several moments of intense silence, Titus pulled off his flannel shirt and stalked toward the bed. My mind went slack at the way he prowled toward me, his muscles flexing beneath his tight-fitting black tee.
He offered me the bundle of fabric. “You can use this as a pillow. And tomorrow you can wear it to keep you warm.”
I worried my lip. “What if you get cold?”
He smiled darkly. “Then I’ll wear you.”
My core turned molten as he got up on the bed and crawled over to me on his hands and knees, his white-hot eye pinning me down. “Go to sleep, little lamb. We have a big day tomorrow trying to keep you away from the slaughter.”
Wrapping an arm around my middle, he tucked me into the cradle of his body.
