of muscle on his arms, glued itself to the plains of his chest and ridged stomach.
Dark hair hung in dripping locks over eyes of burning amber. She stared into them with every shred of self-hatred boiling up inside her.
“Let me go!” She pulled against his hold with all the strength she had left, lurching toward the dock’s edge.
“No.” His grip tightened on her arms, giving her something solid to thrash against.
And she did.
Like a wild cat, like an alligator, like every untamed beast she had ever witnessed meeting its end in the hands of a predator against whom there was no victory. She knew her own fight to be just as futile, but didn’t care. Maybe the end would come quicker. Maybe she could bring the curtain down upon them all.
Another clap of thunder stole the end of a throaty growl that served as her only warning. Nick bared his teeth and propelled her backward until the wooden railing sent pain rattling up her spine. The length of his body came flush with hers, pinning her in place. He caught her wrists and forced them away from her chest. They hit the wood with bone-jarring force.
“You can’t win.” Stinging stubble from his jaw rasped against her ear. “Not against me.”
“Don’t bet on it,” she snarled. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
“It’s you who have no idea what you’re capable of, Moira. Which is why you will keep destroying every life you touch.”
“What would you know about it?”
“More than you are capable of comprehending.”
“Just let me go. Let me be.” She could hear the strength ebbing from her words the same way it was ebbing from her body. Joining with the raindrops to slide down into the sea.
“So you can run? So you can hide? You think power like yours will be satisfied with that end? You think you know misery now. Wait until what lives inside you has no outlet.”
Moira met Nick’s eyes for the first time since he’d laid hands on her. She searched his face hoping to find the truth promised in his words. “What am I supposed to do?” Her throat closed over the sob she had been strangling her whole life long. “I didn’t ask to be made like this. I didn’t ask for this…this curse. All I ever wanted is to help. But all I ever do is…hurt.”
When the tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, they were as warm on her cheeks as the driving rain was cold.
“What you have is a gift. But it will act like a curse as long as you treat it like one. You force it to help others time and again. Have you ever, even once, taken pleasure in it? Have you ever taken anything? Just for yourself. Just because you wanted it? You want your gift to stop devouring everything in its path? Feed it.”
The thunderclap could have been the sound of her ribs cracking open, her heart naked to the open air. She was seen. She was known.
Moira looked at him. Looked at the ruthless beauty of this stranger laying her bare. “Who are you?”
Nick leaned close enough for her to feel his words cool the drops running in rivulets down her cheeks. “Reckoning.”
10
Never since the earth’s dawning had Nick been surprised.
Until now.
Moira lunged at him with the speed of the lightning that tore the sky above them, and yet she still only made it halfway to him before he crashed into her. The force of their mouths meeting sent searing heat through his lips and into his jaw where it doubled back in a hungry, hollow ache.
She grabbed handfuls of his sodden shirt, her fingers scraping his ribcage through the thin fabric. Her teeth sank into his lower lip and she bit down hard enough to drag a mingled moan of pain and pleasure from his chest. Sharper than a dagger’s point, exquisite and clear, coloring the world around him in a palette more vivid than the human eye could see. Abandoning himself to it would see his cock inside her in less time than it would take to shoot a bullet from a gun.
Her tongue swept across his and he answered in kind, drinking in the heady taste of her. She was the sex-saturated air of sultry spring. The answering call of a mate in the darkness. The end and beginning of a cycle older than time itself.
Her exploration had become a teasing torment, the small, wet tip of her tongue