Thayer’s gaze traces every single inch of my skin. His eyes are dark, completely consumed by an obsessive, primal hunger that makes the breath entirely vanish from my lungs. He catalogues the rapid, terrified rise and fall of my chest, the violent shiver wracking my bare shoulders, and the deep, flushed heat pooling between my thighs.
"Come here," he growls.
He wraps his right arm entirely around my waist, his massive hand splaying wide across the bare skin of my lower back. He hauls me upward and forward, pulling my entire body onto the bed with him.
I gasp as my bare knees hit the cheap, rough fabric of the bedspread. I am forced to straddle his hips, my thighs bracketing his waist, keeping my weight entirely suspended to avoid pressing against his ruined left shoulder.
The sheer physical friction of my sensitive center pressing directly against the heavy, hard ridge of his arousal, hidden only by the dark fabric of his tactical trousers, is a violent electrical shock.
I throw my head back, a sharp, breathless moan tearing from my throat.
"Look at me," Thayer commands, his voice dropping into a dark, guttural frequency that makes the tiny hairs on my arms stand straight up.
I force my eyes open, looking down at the devil I just saved from the fire.
His right hand slides up my spine, completely unhooking the clasp of my lace bra with a single, deft movement. He pushes the delicate straps off my shoulders, exposing my bare breasts to the cold air.
He doesn't gently caress me. He is fighting the excruciating pain of his wound and the terrifying reality of our isolation. His touch is desperate, completely possessive. He cups my heavy breast with his rough, calloused palm, his thumb dragging aggressively over my tightening peak.
A ragged, fractured cry completely escapes my lips. My internal muscles clamp down violently, a heavy, dark liquid heat flooding my core, completely soaking the fabric between us.
"You belong to me," Thayer hisses, his fingers tangling in my hair, dragging my face down until our mouths collide.
His kiss is a brutal, unapologetic invasion. He devours my mouth, entirely consuming my breath, swallowing my moans. He tastes like blood, survival, and pure, intoxicating obsession.
I completely surrender. I wrap my arms carefully around his thick neck, anchoring myself entirely to the monster who burned my world to the ground just to reign in the ashes with me.
We are locked in a dirty motel room, hunted by the entire federal government, completely severed from everything we have ever known. But as his heavy, unyielding hands violently map the curves of my bare skin in the dark, I realize the terrifying, inescapable truth.
This is exactly where we were always meant to be.
CHAPTER 18 THE NEEDLE AND THE THREAD POV: THAYER
There is a precise, terrifying moment when the human body realizes that willpower is no longer enough to sustain it.
I am suspended in that agonizing purgatory. The high of Sybil’s climax—the violent, beautiful shattering of her control that just coated my fingers and seared itself permanently into my brain—is rapidly evaporating, replaced by a cold, suffocating darkness that is clawing its way up from the edges of my vision.
The cheap, sagging mattress of the Starlight Motel feels like a slab of concrete beneath my spine. The sickly pink neon light bleeding through the edges of the blackout curtains pulses in time with the erratic, thudding rhythm of my failing heart. I can hear the rain lashing against the thin glass of the window, a relentless drumbeat that mocks the silence inside the room.
I am bleeding to death.
The pressure bandages Sybil wrapped around my shoulder in the cabin have entirely failed. The dark, heavy warmth of my own blood is pooling beneath my back, soaking into the cheap, floral bedspread. The fever is a roaring inferno inside my skull,baking my brain inside my own skull, turning my thoughts into a fragmented, chaotic mess of paranoia and primal instinct.
Sybil is still straddling my hips. Her chest heaves with ragged, exhausted gasps, her bare skin glowing ethereally in the pink light. Her head hangs forward, her dark, damp hair falling like a curtain over her face, her hands resting flat against my uninjured right pectoral. She is completely undone. Completely claimed.
But I am failing her.
"Sybil," I rasp. The word barely scrapes past the razor blades lining my throat. It sounds weak. A dying man's whisper. I despise it.
She immediately snaps her head up. Her midnight-blue eyes, still dilated and hazy with the aftershocks of her orgasm, instantly snap into sharp, terrified focus the moment she looks at my face.
"Thayer," she breathes, her hands flying to my cheeks. Her skin is freezing, a sharp, beautiful contrast to the boiling heat radiating from my face. "You're burning up. And you're so pale. Oh my god, you're bleeding again."
She looks down, her eyes widening in horror at the dark, spreading stain ruining the mattress beneath my left shoulder.
"Listen to me," I command, forcing the dark, lethal authority of the Don back into my voice through sheer, agonizing force of will. I reach up with my heavy right hand, my fingers wrapping around her delicate wrist to stop her from scrambling off me in a panic. "I need you to focus. Do not panic."
"We have to go to a hospital," she begs, tears instantly welling in her eyes, threatening to spill over her dark lashes. "Please, Thayer. You're going to die here."
