by Trisha Wolfe
I palm her face and stare into those dark eyes. The gold flecks sheen with the reflective sparkle of keys. “We never have to stop. Never. I no longer have my penance to bear, just as you no longer have to live a lie. Shame doesn’t exist between us. As for the maddening need…” I drag the dress down her body, letting it fall to the ground. “We’ll find a way to satisfy ourselves.”
Bathed in starlight, her body is achingly beautiful. A tantalizing tease finally within reach. I’m drunk on the sight of her. I lower my mouth to her shoulder, tasting the hint of lilac on her skin—my aphrodisiac, my drug. She’s my addiction.
Her breath hitches as I grasp her tiny waist in my hands. Then as she tilts her head back, surrendering to the spell, I drop kisses to her flesh. Greedily taking every bare inch of her for myself.
Her gaze slips to the trap, where our victim erodes into nothing. “It’s too much—keep touching me, Grayson. I’m burning up. I need more.”
“God, I love it when you talk dirty. Tell me all the bad things we’re going to do.” My knees hit the ground. I suck a trail over the soft skin of her pelvis, loving the way she grips my shoulders, her legs trembling from need.
“We can do anything,” she says, the throaty rasp of her voice tearing at my control.
I graze my fingers down her thighs, then bring one of her legs over my shoulder and bury my mouth against the tender flesh of her inner thigh. She jolts at the feel of my teeth, and I groan when her heat touches my face. Her hands sink into my hair as I kiss and bite my way up her thigh, her breathy, broken cries making my cock so hard it aches against my jeans.
I taste her then. I grasp her ass and force her sweet center to my mouth, my tongue slipping between her silky lips. She’s wet and hot and I can feel every constriction of her muscles as she grinds against my face.
“Grayson…” My name is a prayer on her lips. It makes me crazy. The need for her unbearable. My desire roams wild, tasting her until she’s throbbing against my tongue.
I pull away and push off the ground. I lift her into my arms, seating her right up against the achingly hard member of my body that yearns only for her.
“Take me,” she breathes over my mouth before she nips my bottom lip. I groan, thrusting a hand into her hair and pulling her down against me. “Fuck me until I’m begging you to stop…until we’re on the brink of death.”
“Shite.” I tremble as I lower her to the earth, every muscle and sinew strung tight in anticipation. “Christ, you’re so fucking perfect. I won’t ever hold back with you. That would be a sin.”
Her hands fight to remove my shirt, her nails digging into my skin. It’s agonizing and pleasurable and unadulterated. I hiss out a tense breath as her fingers hit the fresh wound on my stomach.
“Do it again,” I say.
She strokes the injury she inflicted with a sure hand, owning me. “Is this what love feels like?”
I crave her pain like my lungs crave oxygen. “This is what our love feels like.”
“Then make me a sinner, Grayson. I don’t want redemption. I want us.”
I kiss the cuts on her wrists. The marks I put there. It heightens the urge to mark her body even more, to make her mine in a way that she’s belonged to no one else. I rake my teeth over her shoulder, then sink into her neck, eliciting a soft, breathless cry.
We work my clothes off in a frenzy of stolen touches and heated avowals, impatient. Ravenous. The pain building to a staccato beat between us that pulses with insatiable need. To be closer. To be skin to skin. The hard slab of earth beneath us amplifies my awareness, the night clear and flawless. Nothing impure to hold us back.
I roll her on top of me, gazing up at her naked body, breasts bared to me with no trace of shame in her bottomless eyes. I flatten my hand along her stomach as she arches her back, working a string of expletives from me as she grinds her slick lips against the shaft of my cock.
“Fuck. You’re killing me.” I lift up to meet each of the sexy rolls of her hips.
She falls over me, her hair cascading down her shoulder and creating a curtain to shield us from the world. I let her cage me in, the undeniable power flowing from her limbs jacking my heart rate. She wears her sin beautifully.
“What if I could?” she whispers into the shell of my ear. Her teeth nick my flesh as she finds purchase on the ground to push back hard, decimating my restraint.
A growl works free, and I capture her wrist. I bring her hand to my throat and squeeze her fingers to my jugular. “If you’re going to tease, you better be willing to back it up.”
A deviant glint ignites her eyes. “You’re serious.”
“I’d suffer any torture willingly if it came at your hands. My sick matches your sick.” I move her fingers to my mouth and suck the pads, tasting her fevered arousal. “Touch yourself,” I command.
She does. Arcing back, she pushes those delicate fingers to her clit, rubbing and ratcheting her desire higher. I groan at the feel of her heated flesh sliding over me. Torture doesn’t begin to describe how punishing the feel of her is. Her mounting orgasm grabs hold, and her thighs grip me, her muscles clenching for release.
Wild and unfettered, with zero control tying me down, I rise up and hook an arm around her lower back. I anchor her to me, swallowing her gasp, as I sink into her. Our gazes connect. Every torturous second I hold still inside of her is an eternity.
Her nails slice into my back, and that simple action triggers her body to flex around me, detonating an explosive response. I slam into her. Gripping at the dirt behind me, I thrust into the perfect center of her, unrestrained. Her breathy cries fall close to my mouth. I taste her pleas, answering each one with another unguarded thrust.
The feel of being inside her annihilates every single belief I had before her.
This is heaven. The only heaven I care to witness.
She’s my truth now—the rules ours to make.
She peaks, I peak. Our bodies rise and lower in tandem, cresting higher, falling farther. The emotion thrumming our bodies almost unbearable. The desire to inflict and experience pain is damn near overwhelming. It’s too much. Feeling is too much. It’s maddening.
“Hurt me,” she pleads.
A violent shiver riots through me.
When pain is the only emotion you’ve ever known, it’s all you crave. It lets you know you’re alive.
My hands are touching, roving over every delicate region of her flesh. I scrape my fingers down her skin, marking her body with dirt from my hands. The abrasive grit of it rubs between us as we fuck. There’s nothing tender in this moment as every ravenous desire demands to be sated. We’re filthy. Fucking like two insatiable, wild animals that are starving for each other.
I bite down on the firm peak of her nipple, and she throws her head back, welcoming the sharp pain. Too many ways in which I can hurt her assaults my thoughts, tearing at my weakening control.
I cup her shoulders from behind, forcing her to arch and bare her tits to me. As I drive into her, the need to be deeper seizes my sanity. “It’s not enough.”
“Fucking make it enough, Grayson. Hurt me.”
I growl and force her onto the ground, dragging her leg over my shoulder and slamming our hips together. Her fingers splay over the hard slab of muscles along my stomach as I rut into her. The need still demands more.
Her petite body fits seamlessly against me, begging me to manhandle her into any position I want. With a low growl, I flip her over and slip a hand beneath her pelvis, angling her beautiful ass up. Then I grab her wrists and anchor them to her back.
The position makes her vulnerable and bared, my cock throbbing as I ease up behind her, my heart thundering. I push inside her to the hilt. Her body bucks at the pressure, but then she’s undulating those sexy hips, begging for more.
“Fucking hell,” I breathe as I thrust deeper, forcing her wrists toward the middle of her slim back.
She releases a throaty curse, her core pulsing and tightening around me. I’m a
starved animal with no remorse, my desire to fill her and take her all at once unfurling in the sweetest agony.
I fuck her violently. I fuck her brutally. Against the cold, unforgiving earth, under the open night sky, I make love the only way I know how to the woman who’s dominated my being since I first tasted her.
As the most shattering pleasure claims me, I’m lost. Her name a chant ripping free.
She comes shamelessly. She comes with abandon. She comes so hard she nearly pushes me out, but I crash back into her, breaking against her wave.
For a few tender seconds as London and I come down, ethereal bliss suspends the pain, and I fall against her, heaving strenuous breaths, sweeping my mouth over her so I can consume every bit of her and this moment.
Euphoria.
She frees herself of my weight and pushes me to the ground, where she curls on top of my body. “Peace,” she whispers.
I wrap my arms around her. I’ve never felt peace before. I cradle her to me, allowing this foreign emotion to own me the same way she possesses me entirely. We lie like this beneath the canopy of red until her breathing evens out.
I don’t want it to end.
But all too soon, the world and its constant constraint reminds me there’s still work to be done. There’s only one way for London to be completely free.
30
Burn
London
A blazing heat like a furnace warms the side of my face. The startling contrast of hot and cool rips me out of a dreamless sleep, awareness hurtling me out of my calm and sated cocoon.
For once, my mind is blissfully quelled from all thoughts of the past and present. Then, reality bleeds in, drawing me into a new realm of anxiety.
A heated orange and red flickers against my eyelids. I reach for Grayson, and hear a rattling clink as my wrist is pinched and the cool kiss of metal drags across my arm. Eyes straining to open, an alarm sounds within me, my heart pounds in my ears as blood rushes my arteries.
I feel disconnected. Woozy. I blink a few times to clear my vision, and the sight hollows out my chest. Fire blazes high into the early morning sky. Flames seam the edges of deep-blue, blending into the mosaic of red and orange clouds, unable to separate the two entities.
“Grayson—” I say, panic lacing my voice. Then as I start to shout his name, the realization of where I am and what’s happening crashes into me.
I yank at the cuffs. A chain circles the scaffold, shackling me to the trap that Grayson and I used to kill a man. Beyond the maze, the house is engulfed in fire. The pop and snap of burning beams reaches my ears before the faint siren.
Frantic, I examine my body. I’m again wearing the black satin dress Grayson chose for me. An irrational thought circles my mind—that this must be another test. I glance up. One of the keys must set me free. Only the keys are gone.
My chest pangs with an empty, resonating ache.
Grayson told me he would let me go.
Oh, God. I didn’t imagine it. I didn’t invent what happened between us. No, my memories are firmly in place, undisturbed. Everything that transpired is still with me, a part of me—the world more transparent than ever.
Only Grayson is missing.
He let me go.
I tug at the handcuffs, desperate to flee and find him and…
What?
Run off into the sunset like some deranged Bonnie and Clyde? Running from the law, living on love and danger and…resentment. That’s the whim of a little girl. Not the reality for a woman.
I sag against the scaffold. My bones weary, my muscles lethargic. Reality is a black hole.
I couldn’t see past the immediate and instant gratification—but Grayson could.
Still, he didn’t give me a choice. He decided for me.
The flash of police lights bounce against the pines. As the flames rise higher, smoke billowing into the callous morning, the shouts of firefighters and authorities clash. A moroseness settles in the pit of my stomach. Misery acute and damning.
Then voices drift toward the clearing.
“Dr. Noble?”
The dull talons of melancholy drag me under. I can’t respond. I can’t breathe.
“Dr. London Noble. I found her! Are you all right?”
My unseeing gaze snags on a significant detail. The dark suit before me brandishes an FBI pin clipped to the gray tie. “I’m Special Agent Nelson. You’re safe now.”
The agent lays a hand on my bare shoulder in a show of comfort. “Let’s get some help over here!” he shouts.
My body curls around the scaffold. Clinging to the solidness. Only moments before, I was free. Free in a way I never dared to imagine, with vibrant colors and textures. And in a blink, I’ve been thrust back into the dull and guilt-leaden world.
The pain tears a seam inside me, and an ache clogs my throat. I choke on the bile of bitterness. But I sniff hard, shoving the ache down. I have to.
I was a performer once. I can be again. At least now, I know the difference.
As the agent walks the perimeter of the tank, I erect my shield. He mutters a swear when he completes his round. “Holy mother of God.”
“Please, get these off me,” I manage to say.
Agent Nelson directs his attention on me. “Of course.” He slips on a pair of Latex gloves. While he’s working the cuff mechanism, more agents and police officials enter the clearing.
In a matter of seconds, uniforms and Tyvek-suited medical examiners have the clearing yellow-taped and marked off as a crime scene. Plastic sheets cover what was—just hours ago—my and Grayson’s sacred haven.
“I’m sorry to have to ask this, London.” The agent searches my gaze. He’s not sorry at all. “But I’m going to need you to undergo medical screening.”
Heat blazes my chest. “You mean a rape kit.”
“Yes.” With a resounding click, the cuffs release my wrists. He shakes out an evidence bag and slips them inside. The only hint to his remorse is the slight crease at the corners of his eyes. We’re both professionals. This is standard. “I’ll also need your statement shortly afterward.”
I rub my wrists, the beveled ridges of scrapes a painful reminder of what I’ve lost. Agent Nelson tries to help me stand, but I fend him off with an outstretched hand. “I’m all right,” I assure. And I am. The pain that normally plagues me hasn’t returned, vanishing the moment acceptance took root.
Later, I’ll analyze this phenomena. But I can’t think of it now.
“I’m ready,” I announce.
The agent guides me out of the maze and toward an ambulance parked a distance away from the blaze. Chaos swamps the once peaceful woods as firefighters fight back the inferno before it spreads.
I face the fire, let the heat touch my skin. I feel it deep in my marrow, that electric pulse of chaos and disaster. Grayson’s artwork framed within a pale canvas of sky. I watch the flames dance and tease higher, until the agent forces me away.
“Any evidence must be in there,” one of the agents says as he passes, his gaze cast on the smoldering house. “We’ve recovered nothing so far.”
Agent Nelson nods him on. “Keep searching.”
I close my eyes. Just for a second to gather my bearings. I can’t do this. Not without him. Grayson said I was the key—but he was the one to unlock me. Now we’re both damned.
A medical personnel wraps a warm blanket around me, directing me farther away from the scene. Agent Nelson follows. “Dr. Noble, is he in there?” he asks.
My gaze flicks to the blackened, charred bones of the house. The fire still burns, brilliant orange and red and raging, licking the limbs of pines and sending embers into the dusky sky.
Grayson burned it all for me.
He set me free in more ways than one.
And in doing so, he destroyed my path to him. The answers to the man now ash.
Some things are meant to remain shrouded in mystery, I suppose. Where you’re not fed the answer. You have to search for it.
; I wrench an answer for the agent from the dregs of my soul. “Yes,” I say. “He’s in there.”
A gentle shake of the agent’s head reveals his disbelief.
“How did you find me?” I ask.
He tears his attention from the fire and refocuses on me. “An anonymous call,” he says simply.
A young EMT urges me to sit on the back of the ambulance. She asks me standard-issued questions about my wellbeing, then sets to work bandaging obvious cuts, being as careful as possible not to disturb any potential evidence.
It hits me then that the dress will be confiscated.
I sniff back my anger and look up at the agent. “There is no such thing as an anonymous call,” I say, not attempting to hide the accusation in my tone.
His light brows create a furrow between his eyes. “No. There’s not,” he confesses. “The call led officials to an abducted boy that was being held in a warehouse. They then traced the call back to a wireless number in Grayson Sullivan’s name. This address was listed on the account.”
I turn my head to hide my outrage. Grayson knew it would only be a short matter of time before they discovered the location once they made the connection. It’s so blatant it’s almost stupid. Not the act of a highly intelligent man or criminal. Surely the FBI has to see that.
“The boy is all right?” I ask.
Nelson nods. “Yes. The parents are with him at the hospital.”
I tug the blanket tighter around me. “The man who kidnapped him is in that rancid container.”
“Jesus.” The agent drives a hand through his shaggy hair. “Did you witness this?”
I consider the question. Grayson isn’t inside the burning house. I know this just as the agent knows this fact.
The tests I endured and passed told me all the answers I ever sought. No more hiding. No more suppressing. No more lying. Grayson set fire to his life for me, so that I can start over. So that when I’m ready—truly ready—we can start over.
