“Even if I beg you to stop,” I whisper, licking my dry lips, “don’t hold back.”
“Christ, Collins,” he says, his voice a harsh caress, “you have no idea what you’re asking of me.” The evidence of his arousal presses hard against my backside. “The things I want to do to you for making me want you this badly—unholy, punishing things.”
His unfiltered words fall across my shoulder like a brand, an accusation. “Like when I tell you how wet I am,” I say, my defiance prodding those dark urges. “Unless you want to feel for yourself?—”
He makes a tortured sound from the base of his throat, raw and guttural. The vibration drags along my back, sending an electric shiver up my spinal column. His entire body coils tighter around mine, hips pressing with an involuntary thrust against my lower back. “Don’t tempt me, angel,” he growls into my shoulder.
My skin flushes, wet heat pooling low as an illicit thrill trickles through my veins. A smile steals across my lips in the dark. Gaining leverage over Orion is more seductively arousing than the stimulation strumming over my nerves.
Triggering this deviant violence within him is reckless. But he’s built a fortress around himself in this observatory. Here, his walls are just as high as the towering spires of Stonehurst.
He’s secluded, controlled. Structured.
Yet I’ve seen what lurks beneath those cold blocks of stone. Out there where he hunts, when the urge can no longer be contained. I know the wild carnage he’s capable of—and I’m tired of carving at his stone.
I want his walls to come crashing down.
A deep sound rumbles through his chest before tension grips the tie, and I brace myself. I latch onto the fading ember of rage buried beneath my fear, fanning it into a blaze with my next stolen breath.
I’ve been stealing every single one since that fatal moment.
A fierce growl is the only warning I’m given before the tie jerks taut.
My head snaps back, and I strain to hold my place against the vibrating speakers as he sadistically strangles my throat. He chokes up on the tie with both hands, sealing off the last drop of air from my lungs as the intensity of sound grows in strength.
I curl my hand into a fist against the thumping speaker. Feel the shell crack in my palm. The dirt creeping in. The canvas clogging my airway.
With the next wave of sound, my eyes slam shut against the burst of pleasure, stars sparking behind my lids. The unearthly, rhythmic beat crashes through me, relentless. Bass hits over and over until my body tightens, desire turning molten between my hips.
And I’m lost beneath the onslaught.
He loosens his grip, allowing me a thin ribbon of air. “Fucking hell, you’re beautiful,” he says, his gruff tone raking over me. “I hate that I can’t look into your starry eyes as you come apart.”
An ache blooms in the hollow of my chest. It’s been longer than six years for me since I’ve been intimately close with anyone. The fact that it’s Orion who’s taking me to the brink more than terrifies me.
“Hold on, fire. Don’t move your hands from that speaker.”
That’s the last warning I’m given before the soft drone of music tapers away, and the only sound is the heavy rise and fall of our mingled breaths?—
Then an explosion of sound.
The burst of music is a white-hot pulse through my body. Currents of sensation course through me, and an arousing frisson covers my skin. My senses come alive, wanting to experience the ruthless feel of his touch.
Touched by the hands of death.
When you’ve come so close, you almost crave its cruel caress.
And some part of me craves this from Orion. For him to claw at the callus, unfeeling parts of me. To sink his fangs into my flesh. Siphon the poison from my veins.
To have his mouth seal over mine and swallow the last of my breath?—
He straps the necktie tighter, and whatever’s left of the fear falls away. I’m exhausted by the struggle. The constant dread.
The fight against the inevitable.
As the music crescendos, the rise is relentless, an unyielding swell that makes me shiver under its furious climb—and the climb feels impossible.
The frantic bursts are a jagged rattle behind my sternum. The caged muscle hammers painfully against valves, the erratic tempo striking against my ribs. Adrenaline pours into the constricted chambers, speeding my heart beyond its limit. My vision flickers as blood-oxygen falters, cells starved.
