“You can always let them kill me.” I shrugged. “You’re not supposed to be saving me,Reaper.”
I saw a flash of some emotion in his eyes, briefly, before Grim bent down, ripping the shoes off my feet. He pulled my leg up and I teetered, forced to hop on one foot and grab his shoulder. But when he ripped the other shoe off, I fell to my ass.
Grim threw my shoes into the ocean. The pink satin bobbed up and down with the black current, until the pearly tips disappeared beneath the ink.
Silence settled. Grim wasn’t someone who talked to fill in the silence. He didn’t feel discomfort, he created it. It made the moments when he spoke so fucking addicting.
My gaze shifted to the thick veins and sinewy muscles on his forearm, to the tattoo of a skeleton hand holding a dead rose.
A wicker branch peeking out of the sleeve of his bicep.
My family’sseal on his wrist.
All with a single, haphazard line drawn through them.
Tattoos—contracts. Horsemen didn’t take contracts lightly, because their reputation, their livelihood, their very existence, depended on them. When a line was drawn through the tattoo, the contract was complete.
My eyes wandered back to his chest, where beneath soft black fabric scratch marks lay etched on his left pectoral. His one unmarked tattoo, his one unfinished debt—me.
Lines that bound us and said my soul belonged to his forever. A tattoo he’d gotten because of me.
For me.
Inspiteof me.
“Do the rest of your Horsemen know you’re here?” I stood back up, brushing sand off my dress, and laughed when he looked to the side. “Uh-oh. Guess I’m not the only one breaking rules. Bad things happen when they’re not around to watch?—”
He gripped my chin, bruising. “Piss off another monster and I’m letting it drag you under the bed.”
“No, you won’t.” I angled my chin into his grip, smiling. “You want to be the one dragging me under too badly.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth, in the dark depths some kind of emotion burning that was too real for the game we played.
Danger,some small part me whispered.
Instinctively, I took a step back when Grim grabbed me, cutting off my train of thought, and tore one sleeve of my dress down, stretching the gown until it hung limp on my bicep. His lips crashed against my neck, sucking hard, making his own marks where the man’s thumbs had been.
He was entirely unaffected. As if I was a chore. As if stopping monsters from getting me was the same as vacuuming.
I swallowed my gasp, trying to appear as bored as him, but with each swipe of his tongue my legs turned to jelly.
Then as quickly as he started, he stopped. His eyes pulsed, lips wet.
“Where were you, Gemma?” he asked, emotionless.
I took a deep, stuttering breath, feeling like the salty night breeze could topple me if not for his grip on my bicep.
But I knew the answer he wanted.
“With a boy,” I rasped. “I don’t remember his name. Someone from the party.”
He didn’t release me right away, tracing his knuckles from my neck down to my elbow. He paused when he reached the marks Geoff had left. For a single moment, shorter than it took a drop of rain to hit the ocean, Grim’s mask dropped.
There was more than anger in his eyes. It was fury—possession—and it curled around my gut like a wire. As quickly as it came, it left, and Grim stepped away.
He nodded toward the house at my back. “Go.”
And just like that, we fell into our game. Tomorrow we would pretend none of this happened. I would go back to being Gemma Crowne, and he would be the reaper who owned my soul.
