He spun, eyes ravenous.
I rubbed my temples. Not now. Not this memory. Salty sea drenched the ends of my dress, staining the pink silk.
The first and last time I ever kissed Grim was a night like this, the night I tried to kill myself. He dragged me from the ocean, and I woke to him giving me CPR. Water dripped from his inky-black hair, down his full lips. There was a look in his eyes that didn’t make sense. We didn’t know each other. We’d metonce—barely.
He didn’t take me to the hospital or call for help. He fucked me. On the wet sand. Moments after ripping mefrom the waves. With the cold ocean dragging at our ankles, salt stinging cuts on my skin.
I would never forget the wildness in his eyes. The fever in his touch. He fucked me like he was mad—like he wanted to heal me, so he could then steal back the life he breathed into me.
I think people might say it was wrong, because I was vulnerable. Weak. That wasn’t wrong but…it wasn’trighteither. He didn’t heal me. I didn’t suddenly walk away all happy and shit, like his perfect dick had healed my broken soul.
Maybe that was why it happened. Why he’d shown up with the tattoo. Why my soul became so twisted in his. Because he did breathe life into me, for a few hours on that beach.
I still didn’t know why or how he’d found me that night. Why he wouldn’t let go…what hewanted. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe he loved me or evenlikedme.
My cigarette whispered fingerlings of smoke into the air. I watched it tango with the clouds in the sky when I heard the muted brush of sand beneath shoes. I turned around, expecting one of the girls, and instead met a man. He was just under six feet, with snow-white hair.
I had no second to react before he wrapped his hands around my throat. My cigarette fell burning to the sand.
I held his wrists, my mouth parting, and soon all thoughts faded as his thumbs pressed deeper into my throat. My body relaxed.
This wasn’t a bad day to die.
My mom might find my body, and I’d give her some trauma. That thought would have made me laugh if my throat wasn’t being crushed.
Suddenly he stopped choking me, eyes wide and frozen.A wet, surprised-sounding gurgle slipped from his lips, followed by a cough of blood. I closed my eyes against the wet spray.
Ew.
His whole body went slack, and he fell to the ground.
In his place a shadow of a person stood, knife in hand.
Dripping blood.
Grim.
FIVE
GEMMA
“Who was he, Gemma?” Grim asked, staring at the foggy ocean waves. His voice betrayed no emotion, but the muscle in his neck flexed, making the tattoos there jump threateningly.
“Who?”
“The guy I just killed.” Grim’s mouth was set in a flat line, pearly black eyes staring out at the ocean.
I glanced down at the body lying gracelessly in the sand. In the night, blood stained the achromatic sand black. Specks of blood stained my heirloom flats, red seeping into the two-hundred-year-old silk.
I looked back to Grim. “How would I know?”
I knew better than to ask or even question how Grim had gotten inside Crowne Hall, a place more heavily guarded than the White House. He was always like carbon monoxide, sliding in without detection until it was too late.
“Wanna try that answer again?” Behind him, featheryblack clouds swallowed the white moon, snuffing what little light we had. He turned to me, the slightest hint of irritation on his lips.
Oh, so he doesn’t want to play the gamehestarted?
Whatever.
