Though the room was freezing, sweat dripped down the sides of my hot face. But Stone was cold and heavy like a dead body pressed against me.
Just then, thick muddied vines adorned with black lilies poked and slipped through the cracks in the floorboards. They shot up, twisting and curling like muscled claws, wrapping around my thighs, spiraling my torso, squeezing and crushing my lungs, circling my wrists. They pulled me tight, fastening me to the wall.
Petals fell from the vines and stuck to my dirty skin as my eyes bulged.
The earth helped him. He somehow controlled it.
A scream ripped out of me. “You’re a witch,” I half shouted, half croaked while the vines took full possession of me. Stone’s forehead fell to mine, and he looked into my eyes with forlorn hunger.
I recognized the starvation that lived within them. The hollow, too.
“And you’re perfect,” he said with a wince, removing his gloves. “You’re the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen in my miserable existence.” Sweat dripped off the tip of his nose when he collected blood on his fingers, then dragged them through my slit. I froze from the feeling arousing my every cell, watching the sensation break across his features, too. “You’re perfect, but not like this,” he rasped into my mouth, intensity dripping from his words. “Once I’m inside you, you’ll be as revolting as you think I am.”
I wanted to clench my thighs together from the friction, but I was trapped against the wall, my thighs spread, unable to move. My blood pumped hot and heavy, and I hated how I was equally disgusted and deprived.
An icy breath swept across my lips, and I closed my eyes.
“Not like this,” I sputtered through a shattered breath. I hated the clashing sensations, the finality of the now, the wrongfulness and indiscretion, and how badly I wanted him to just plunge inside me already.
“I can’t stop,” he almost forced out, his bare hands dragging across my skin. Like this feeling was too severe. Like he wanted to touch me everywhere. “Even if I wanted to.”
And Stone’s eyes were glistening, maddened when he dragged his tongue up my cheek to collect a bead of sweat. Like my ocean, always taking.
His mouth swept across my cheek, ear, and jaw like he already knew every part of me. Then the pad of his thumb stroked my bottom lip, and in an instant flash in my mind, I could see us days earlier:a snowstorm raging outside, a dusty noir room inside, heart slamming just the same, breath on my lips, my hands shaking as we kissed—gentle, gentle.
Stone’s eyes sobered, softened, his body thawed from a trance.
Something changed between us then, and his thumb wouldn’t let go, unearthing this memory that I could somehow see in the corner of my mind as though it were happening at the same time as this moment.
I remained still. Waiting, watching as realization dawned on his expression. At this, the vines and roots scratched my skin as they withered away and disappeared beneath the floorboards.
Stone’s hand fell from my mouth, and the memory vanished with him.
He took a step back, his lungs letting go and heaving. The hideous thing wrapped in scars between his legs made my vision shake. I looked down between my legs where it had almost been. Blood coated me, black petals sticking to the insides of my thighs. I folded into myself, squeezing my legs closed with my sex pounding and … missing him.
And we stood there for a while, our breaths competing with silence.
I was confused and angry and somehow empty and cold without him even though all my scratches were on fire. His blood was soaked into my skin.
He hadn’t fucked me, but I was still tattooed by him.
I looked at him standing in front of me.
He was still staring at me with utter shock in his tragic-black eyes.
On wobbly legs, I took a step closer, petals sticking to the soles of my feet.
And I struck him in the face.
Stone’s head swung to the side—a nasty cut next to his left eye.
Blood slid down his cheek when he turned his head to look at me again.
“That’s going to leave another ugly scar,” I swore through my teeth, my cheeks flaming hot and my hands trembling. “Every time you look in the mirror, I want you to remember this moment. The one and only time I showed you mercy. There will not be another.”
I stepped back and collapsed against the wall, trying to catch my breath.
Stone’s hardened gaze never left me. Blood dripped from the cut, down his jawline, and across his neck. He wiped the side of his face, and blood smeared across his cheek.
