Chapter 20 Taste like mine
Eva
My beloved shithole of an apartment was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I locked the door, pushed the chair against the doorknob, and sank to the floor, my body trembling with adrenaline and relief.
I was free, alive, and yet a moron. A complete and utter moron.
I'd left my Glock.
My Ducati. God, my baby. And my phone. All of it, still in that damn mountain.
I cursed myself for being such a fool. For a goddamn, starry-eyed fool who'd let a monster with a tragic backstory get to her. I needed a plan: a new life plan that included a new identity, a new continent, and definitely, a new bike.
I pushed myself up and walked to the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face. I looked in the mirror. A stranger stared back, her eyes wide and glassy. I looked at the place behind my ear. The birthmark was there, pale and almost invisible.
But I could feel it. A low, throbbing ache.
I entered the bedroom and sank onto the bed, pressing my face into the pillow: my own pillow, my bed, and my familiar, slightly stinky sheets. I was finally home and safe.
I was halfway to falling asleep, my face mashed into my pillow, when the lights in the apartment flickered once. My eyes snap open, and then a smell hits me. Moonshine. Pine. Cold earth.
My gaze flicks toward the end of my room, where he was sitting. Legs spread, elbows on his knees, silver eyes glowing in the dark like twin full moons.
The torc dangled from one finger, spinning slowly, catching the streetlight through the blinds. I shot upright, heart pounding against my ribs so hard it hurt.
“How the fuck—” I didn’t finish.
Because the birthmark behind my ear wasn’t just aching anymore, it was burning.
And when I looked at his fingers, the silver torc was gone. My throat suddenly tightened.
My hand shot to my neck, and my fingers touched cold metal. A perfect fit.
“Told you, baby,” he said as he stood up, moving silently to the foot of my bed. The mattress dipped as his knee sank into it. "I told you to run. You didn't run far enough."
I scrambled back until my back hit the headboard, my hands clawing at the torc. I tried to pull it over my head, but it wouldn’t budge. It was like it was fused to my skin. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
“What did you do?” I gasped, my fingers scrabbling at the unyielding metal.
“Nothing you didn’t already do,” he said, and he started crawling toward me.
All predatory grace, a wolf in a human body. “The bond is woven, Eva. One touch, a shared meal, a near-kiss... And now that you’ve tried to run, the bond had to get its pound of flesh.” He was close now, his face inches from mine, the moonlight from the window catching the scars on his chest. "It’s sealing the deal.”
His hand slammed down on the mattress right next to my hip, caging me in. He lowered his head, and I was trapped in the silver furnace of his eyes.
“Evangeline,” he whispered, and the use of my real name made me shudder. "I tried to be patient. I tried to be the good guy. But you are making it very, very difficult.”
Malach was on me before I could even get a gasp out. One hand clenched my hair, yanking my head back so hard it made my spine bend. The other tore my shirt straight down the middle, the fabric ripping like wet paper. My tits spilled out, nipples already peaked and aching from nothing but the look in his eyes.
And then I felt him, hot and impossibly hard, against my thigh. I bucked. I arched. I tried to bite. He shifted, shoving my legs apart with his knee, his heavy, muscular thigh pressing right up against the pulsing ache I was trying to deny.
“Hate it all you want, sweetheart,” he rumbled, his voice a dark vibration against my skin. His free hand shoved between my legs, cupping me through soaked denim, grinding the seam of my jeans against my clit until my hips jerked helplessly.
“Fuck, you’re drenched,” he growled against my skin, biting down hard enough to leave a mark. “Been wet for me since the catwalk, haven’t you?”
I tried to snarl no. It came out as a broken moan. He shoved my jeans down, my panties along with them, the rough denim scraping my skin. I was completely exposed to him, the torc a heavy, damning weight around my neck. The cool air hit my bare cunt. His fingers dug into my hips, holding me open as he looked his fill.
“Look at that,” he whispered, almost reverently. “Still just as perfect as the day I saw you on the moon.”
He shoved two thick fingers inside me without warning. My back bowed off the bed, a strangled cry tearing from my throat.
He set a punishing, brutal rhythm that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with possession. His thumb rubbed my clit in tight, hard circles.
The pleasure was sharp, blinding, and humiliatingly intense. My body was a traitor, arching into the touch, meeting every brutal thrust of his fingers.
He curled his fingers inside me, hitting that spot that made my vision go white, and I shattered. Oh holy shit, I came so hard I saw stars, the same stars from the memory, my cunt clenching around his fingers like a fist.
He didn’t stop.
He fucked me through it until I was sobbing. Only when I was limp and shaking, tears and sweat streaking my face, did he finally pull his fingers free.
He brought them to his mouth and licked them clean, his eyes locked on mine the whole time.
“Taste like mine.”