the far side of his will, a wild creature rattling at the iron bars of his restraint, a force so much greater than she could understand.
And she wanted the monster in him. The unleashed. The crazed.
Against everything that made any kind of sense, she wanted him to devour her, master her, take her down onto the hard floor right here, right now, and pin her under his naked, pumping body until she had no thoughts of who or even what he was.
Who or even what she herself was.
“Wipe me clean,” she heard herself say against his mouth. “Take everything away for me until I know only you. Make everything disappear … but you.”
She had been stewing for two years in pain, isolation and disillusionment, stagnating and tied to a past that her present wouldn’t release her from and her future couldn’t uphold. And then there was what she had found out about that lab, and the boy, and the rabbit hole she had gone down to be here, in this strange place with Murhder, with his people.
She was exhausted with feeling lost. And questioning herself over Gerry. And wondering where to go in a world full of opportunities that had once been exciting, but now seemed consolations to a death she was not over.
This man—this vampire—could make all that go away. Even if it was only for a brief spell, she wanted the weight lifted, the toxic swill pushed back, the path cleared of debris.
Her soul, buried under damp blankets of grief she could not seem to shed, needed to breathe.
“Why do you cry?” he whispered.
“Am I?”
His thumb stroked over her cheek and he turned it toward her, the gleam of her tear on the pad catching the light.
“I don’t want to think,” she told him. Begged him.
After a moment, he nodded gravely, as if they had forged some kind of pact. “Then I shall make you feel …”
Murhder told himself he should hate the pain inside of this human woman who stood, trusting and aroused, before him. He told himself that he should vanquish whoever had caused her the marrow-splitting grief that he had not, until this moment, sensed within her. He told himself that her tears meant that she was not ready for what they were about to do.
And all of that was true.
But there was another layer to it.
As he stared down at her face, he felt like he was looking into a mirror at himself. She was where he had been—and still was. He knew exactly the agony of the burden of loss she carried—sure, not the particulars of what had caused it, not the descriptions or details, but certainly the crushing sadness and confusion that came when your world was turned upside down and you had no idea where you could safely land.
They were separated by a species divide.
Identical in destiny.
This time, when he kissed her, he knew they were not going to stop because what she wanted from him was the very thing she represented to him. He wanted to be wiped clean as well. He needed a break from the past that haunted him, too. He was as exhausted with grief and regrets as she was.
And dearest Virgin Scribe, the feel of her: Her mouth moved against his like they had been made to fit together, and then her body was flush to his own, her curves accommodating his straightaways, her much smaller stature belying all the power she had over him.
Murhder drew her over to a couch in the corner, and the idea that they were going to make love in this cafeteria, with a TV on mute, and a bank of soft drinks in a cooler, and an industrial dishwasher quietly humming across the way, made him pray that this would not be the only time.
Not that he wouldn’t have asked for that anyway: He hadn’t even had her yet and he was desperate to take her again.
They sat down together at one end of the sofa, all tangled legs and arms, and to cure the contortion, he rolled back and pulled her on top of him—oh, yeeees. His hips arched up, his erection seeking the pressure of her weight and wanting more of the friction as they shifted against each other. And then his hands learned her body, stroking her back and cupping her hips … before slipping onto her thighs.
When he eased under her shirt, finding warm, smooth skin, he groaned and she backed off from the kisses.