As the haze clears, I become aware of his rapid breathing, the tension in his body, and the unmistakable feeling of him still hard inside me as he grips the couch cushion like he’s afraid to move.
When I shift against him again, a pained sound escapes him.
“You don’t have to keep going if it’s too much,” he says, although his hips twitch slightly beneath me, letting me know how much he needs this.
“No. I want to.” I shift against him again, and his breath stutters. “Unless you don’t want me to?”
“You have no idea how much I want you to,” he says, and it’s barely a whisper. “I just don’t know?—”
I start to move before he can finish, and his head falls back against the couch, his breathing getting faster and harsher as I find my rhythm again.
He grips my waist, a groan tearing out of him as his hips jerk up to meet mine with a force that knocks the air out of my lungs. I gasp, my hands flying to his chest to steady myself, but he’salready doing it again, driving up into me so hard my knees lift off the cushion. Three times. Four. Each one is harder than the last, his breathing turning ragged, his jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck standing out like he’s fighting a war inside his body and losing.
“Avery…” My name sounds like it’s being torn out of him, and he lifts his head to look at me.
His eyes are silver. Pale and burning, with no trace of the soft blue I’ve been staring at all night. And before I can react, his hands clamp down on my hips, the world spins, and my back slams into the cushions.
The air leaves my lungs as the control I had is gone in a single motion.
He’s above me now, pressing me into the couch, his hips snapping forward with a force that steals my breath from my lungs. The angle’s deeper, my body’s tender from before, and each thrust is too intense, bordering on painful.
“Tobias—” I start to say, but his lips crash onto mine, his tongue sweeping my mouth to swallow my words as he keeps slamming into me.
I squirm beneath him, and then his teeth are scraping my throat, and his hands are pinning my wrists above my head, and all that’s left is pain and pressure as he drives himself harder and deeper, his nails digging into my wrists hard enough to draw blood.
I can’t breathe. I can’t move. And the man above me isn’t Tobias anymore. Those eight centuries of memories are taking over—they have to be. I might have only met him two weeks ago, but he’s been in my mind, and this isn’t him. I’m absolutely sure of it.
“Tobias,stop!”The words tear out of me, and his body goes rigid, his breath catching in his throat.
Then, slowly, he lifts his head.
The silver’s receding, blue flooding back in, horror dawning across his face as he gazes down at me.
“Avery.” My name comes out broken when he says it, and he pulls out of me and scrambles off the couch, moving back until he’s pressed against the far wall. “They’ve never done that before. I felt it happening and couldn’t stop it, but I swear to you, they’ve never taken over like that before. I don’t…” He brings both hands to his face and slides down the wall so he’s sitting on the floor, his whole body shaking. “I don’t know what happened.”
I sit up slowly. My wrists ache where he pinned them, and there’s blood on my skin there. My hips throb from his grip, and there’s a soreness between my legs that makes me wince.
My hands are shaking. My whole body’s shaking, and I can’t make it stop. So, I pull my knees up and press them against my chest, making myself as small as possible on the couch where a few minutes ago, I was on top of a man I trusted, who’d been inside my mind and accepted who I am.
For the first time in my life, I let myself act instead of stepping back, and this is where it got me—bleeding and sore on a couch in a crumbling tower, while the person I opened myself up to can’t even look at me.
“I hurt you.” He keeps his fingers pressed to his temples, still not looking up. “If you hadn’t screamed…”
He lets the sentence trail off, and I don’t try to finish it, since we’re both perfectly aware of what almost happened.
I just reach for my clothes with shaking hands, needing to cover myself, needing to not be so exposed right now. He stands and gathers his clothing as well, neither of us talking as we do.
“We need to get you back,” he says after he’s dressed, his eyes fixed on the wall behind me, as if looking at my face would destroy him. “The tide’s already rising.”
Right. Back to Hydra Hall. Back to the old Avery who never took chances because she wanted to stay safe.
Maybe there were good reasons for wanting to stay safe. Or maybe no matter what I do, I’ll always end up hurt, trusting people I shouldn’t and giving them ways to break me.
But he’s looking at me now, so shaken and broken it makes my chest hurt, and the silence is unbearable.
“Are you okay?” I ask, because I’m always the one checking on the people around me, and I don’t know what else to say.
“No, I’m not okay.” He tears his fingers through his hair so hard that I think he might rip it out of his head. “I carry eight centuries of vampire memories in my skull, I didn’t know they could take over completely until it was already happening, and by then, I couldn’t stop it.” He stops and swallows, and the devastation in his eyes is downright heartbreaking. “You never should have trusted me.”
