Page 15 of Bread by the Grim (Ghostlight Falls #4)

Phil

I feel like I’m on a mission.

It’s a mission to get Grim to have sex with me. A sex mission, if you will, but it’s a mission, nonetheless.

I’ve thought about a dozen different ways to get Grim out of his apartment, but something Kaz said stuck with me the entire walk home.

The little lupigs are big on smell, and Grim seems to be, too.

So maybe we skip the conversation altogether, because I know he’ll argue, and go straight to scent to lure him out?

And if it doesn’t work…I try not to think about that possibility.

It WILL work.

With more nerves than I’ve ever felt in my entire life, I strip out of everything but my T-shirt and panties and lay on the bed. I think my basket of dirty laundry might do the trick, but I want to be sure, really sure, that Grim’s shifted self knows what I’m expecting…what I’m offering.

The plan is simple: cum all over these panties, drop them on top of my dirty laundry basket, leave the entire basket at Grim’s door, ring the bell, and run like hell to make it back down to the basement.

I close my eyes and let my hand slide between my legs.

Immediately, images of my “normal” Grim fill my mind.

I miss my quiet baker.

We’ve only had a few weeks together, but I’ve never felt this way about someone, and I’ve definitely never had anyone make me feel this special, this adored.

Why does he fight me so hard when I just want to help?

I stop .

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Only sexy thoughts.

If this is Grim’s mating season, and I’m committing to this, I have to be all in. Only. Sexy. Thoughts.

I try again. I should have brought something of his down here to sleep with.

He’s not the only one into scents. He always smells amazing, especially at the end of the day when he’s been working near the oven and is just the tiniest bit sweaty.

It makes his natural scent a million times stronger and mixes so well with the bakery smells that cling to him and his clothes that I feel bite-y around him.

Is bite-y even a word?

Maybe I should bite him sometime. He might like that…

I let my hand move down my belly again, trying to keep my mind on Grim and sex when there is a sound from above.

At first I ignore it—it sounds like the wind rattling the back door in its frame, but then there’s a…

RIP.

CRACK.

BANG.

They come one after another, each one louder than the last. My heart stops even as I find myself sitting up and pulling on some sweatpants. This is how people die in movies, my brain argues against my feet as fear fills my gut.

What a great time for Grim to be out of commission. I pocket my cell phone and grab the only thing I can think of–an umbrella–to use as a weapon as I slowly make my way up the stairs.

It’s not dark yet, but the sun is setting, and the kitchen part of the bakery doesn’t have nearly the same amount of natural light as the cafe part. The back door is partially open. I slowly move over to close it only to find it completely off its hinges.

Fuck…what could do that?

For a moment, I find myself frozen, just staring at the door frame like a deer in the headlights, the splintered wood just barely hanging on in the last of the light.

I’m just about to run back down the basement steps and try to squeeze out a window when something clicks in the back of my mind.

Something Bernice told me about Grim rescuing her—he’d pulled the door off the hinges that day.

Someone from her church had to come help him fix it.

They had to redo the door frame completely.

Hope mixes with fear. It could be Grim, but it could just as easily be anyone else.

Okay, not anyone. Not anyone human, at least.

I still need to get out of here, but Doux’s in the bathroom below, and I’m not leaving him alone with gods knows what here in the bakery. I pull out my phone and hold it in my hand, ready to dial, just in case.

Slowly, quietly, I step toward the swinging doors that separate the back from the front of the store. Everything is just as I’d left it. The register is untouched. Carefully, I move to the front of the room and stop.

There is the softest of noises—almost a hiss of a breath from above. My heart begins to pound in my chest. Is it Grim? Is he watching me?

I check the bathroom.

Empty.

I make my way to the storage closet.

Empty.

I walk to the front door, check the lock, then take my time shutting the blinds on the front window. It gives me the excuse I need to look up. There in the corner of the rafters, near the counter, is Grim or rather, my gremlin, in all of his naked shifted glory.

He has changed dramatically. He’s all reptile, all muscle. His scales gleam as they catch the light. His cock stands at attention as he rests on all fours, his tail slowly swishing, eyes on me.

He is no longer the Grim I know. Hopefully, that Grim is still in there somewhere. Now, he is something magical, something breathtaking, something otherworldly.

Well, this is what I wanted—the gremlin out and ready to have sex.

From the looks of his cock, he’s definitely ready. I can think of a thousand places far more comfortable to have sex than the bakery, but beggars can’t be choosers, at least this time.

I turn away from the blinds and dramatically stretch and yawn.

“Oh man, it’s so hot in here.” I step out of my sweatpants as I head across the store, leaving them where they land.

For good measure, I take off my T-shirt, too.

“I think I’m going to have to sleep in the nude, all alone in my bed tonight,” I say obnoxiously loud.

I’m about to head back around the counter when something, no, someone drops down from the rafters and lands softly behind me. A normal person would scream, but a normal person wouldn’t be trying to lure a monster out of hiding to breed with her.

My heart stops beating for what feels like an eternity, and then?—

“Phillllllll,” the gremlin’s voice is a hiss as he wraps his arms around my waist. His huge cock is like a steel rod against my backside.

I want to squeal with delight, definitely not the sexy thoughts I need, but it feels like a victory.

I didn’t even have to coax him out. He came of his own free will.

Now I just have to make sure I don’t scare him off. I lean back into his muscular body and let myself relax against his rock-hard abs, hoping he’ll take it as a sign to keep going. He presses his snout to my neck and takes a deep breath.

“Philllll,” he hisses again. “Clothes. ”

He doesn’t release me, but I manage all the same. I wiggle out of my panties and am incredibly grateful I remembered to close the front blinds.

He sighs and presses his snout to me again. His claws dig into the soft skin of my belly, but it’s hard to focus much on the pain as adrenaline shoots through me.

Grim and I had sex before as he shifted, but this is entirely different. He is completely in his gremlin as he likes to call it. I take a chance and run a hand down the thigh pressed alongside mine. The scales are smooth and glisten in the emergency lights I’ve been keeping on at night.

His hand reaches down and covers mine, threading our fingers together. For a moment, everything feels safe.

My Grim is still in there somewhere.

“Philllllll,” he hisses a third time. “I can’t stop…I need to bite…”

“Do I get to bite you back?” I tease, hoping to lighten the mood.

“Philllll,” he hisses, though it sounds like an admonishment, like my Grim baker coming through. With a sigh, I pull away from him just a little and lean over the counter, my ass within easy reach of his claw-tipped hands.

The cleaning this place is going to need after this is all said and done… .

“Grim, stop worrying and fuck me already, would you?”

His warm body covers mine, and he growls in my ear just before he clamps down on my shoulder with sharp teeth, holding me to the spot. Excruciating pain radiates through my shoulder?—

Not like he didn’t warn you …

I breathe in and out slowly, trying to focus on anything other than the pain. His tail wraps around my left leg as he urges my legs further apart with a foot. One moment my body is shaking from the pain, and then in the next his cock is buried in my pussy as heat begins to fill me.

Every sensation is suddenly dialed up ten notches. My nipples harden as they brush against the counter. My gremlin reaches a hand around to palm a breast, and waves of pleasure radiate from my breasts and down through my core.

He can only keep his teeth in me for so long, but it’s more than enough.

Blood drips down my arm, but I feel like I’ve been injected with the best drug ever.

The world around us moves in slow motion, but my gremlin and I are in a bubble of existence all of our own.

All I can think about and focus on is him and his cock.

That is definitely on fast forward, or at least, it feels that way.

His hands slide back to my hips, clamping down on them hard to hold them in place as he continues to plunge into me, my legs shaking, my body so close to an orgasm that doesn’t seem possible.

I have never been so grateful for a counter before.

My gremlin says nothing. All I can hear are grunts and moans.

It is as if his brain is only for breeding at the moment.

I will not complain, though.

Whatever his bite does to me has me feeling every delicious inch of him as he rocks back and forth into me.

We’ve had our share of hard and fast encounters, but nothing comes close to this. The sound of his flesh slapping against mine fills my ears and soon becomes the only thing I can focus on.

I will be so sore later on, but right now, I can’t stop. I’m compelled to meet his every thrust.

He slams into me one final time, and I feel my pussy clamp down around his cock. Stars cross my vision, and I feel close to collapse, but he doesn’t let me fall.

My gremlin hisses as our thighs and legs grow soaked. His body shudders as his fluids pool on the floor at our feet until we’re both drenched in it. It feels like we’re there forever, my gremlin pumping me fuller than full.

I’m sure my IUD is fighting for its life.

When at last it seems he’s done, he doesn’t move away or release me, instead he picks me up by my thighs, holding me against his chest, still impaled on his hard cock, and takes me to a corner of the shop .

He sits on the cold floor with me on his lap and sighs.

“Grim, my bed is downstairs. We can go lie down. We don’t have to?—”

He growls and holds me tighter against his chest. Some species have knots to improve chances of pregnancy—maybe this is gremlin instinct? It is not comfortable at all, but I try my best to curl up in his much bigger lap. He wraps his arms around me possessively and kisses the spot where he bit me.

“Rest, Phil,” his voice says in my ear, and for a moment, it’s Grim peeking through. I reach back and kiss the only thing I can reach—his chin—and then close my eyes. Surprisingly, it’s not that hard to fall asleep.