Page 69 of Daggermouth

It was just biology. Simple fucking biology. She hadn’t been with anyone in days. Hadn’t felt Jameson’s hands on her like she was used to night after night, hadn’t tasted his mouth or felt him inside her. Her body was just responding to proximity.

That’s all this was.

Her fingers went to her collarbone, tracing the bruises he’d left there. They’d faded to yellow-green now, ugly but healing. She pressed into them, feeling the dull ache. Remembering his fingers squeezing, the way his eyes had gone dark with something that might have been desire.

She moved to the bed, falling back onto those obscene sheets as her body thrummed with need, with frustration that had nowhere to go. She could handle this. Deal with it clinically, efficiently. Get the craving out of her system so she could think clearly. So she could focus on what mattered—survival, escape, eventually finishing what she’d started and putting a bullet in Greyson Serel’s gorgeous fucking face.

Her hand slipped beneath the shirt, into the waistband of her underwear, finding herself already wet. The shame of it burned through her, but not enough to stop. She closed her eyes, summoning Jameson’sface. His scarred hands, his crooked smile, the way he always knew exactly how to touch her.

But the image kept shifting. Jameson’s green eyes becoming blue. His rough hands becoming those careful, precise fingers. The memory of Jameson’s weight became Greyson above her on the kitchen floor, his heart hammering against hers.

She pressed harder, fingers moving in familiar patterns, trying to force her mind back to safer territory. To Jameson’s apartment in the Boundary, to his bed that always smelled like sage and smoke. To the way he’d whisper her name against her throat when he was close.

A moan tore from her lungs as her treacherous mind supplied different images and she bit down on her fist to stifle the sound. Greyson’s mouth on hers, tasting like expensive whiskey and cruelty. Those hands that killed with no remorse learning her body with the same deadly focus. The way he might say her name—not with Jameson’s warmth, but with a lethal edge that fed into his control.

She thought of his hand around her throat. Not the violence of it, but the restraint. The way he could have crushed her windpipe but didn’t. The control that must have taken.

What would it be like if he lost that control? If she made him lose it?

Heneededheroutof his fucking apartment.

His bedroom door stood at the end of the hall, promising solitude. Sanctuary. He quickened his pace, desperate to put as many doors and walls between them as possible, as a sound froze him in place in front of her door.

She wasn’t—shewouldn’t.

He stood motionless, ears straining. He had imagined it, his mind playing tricks on him. But there it was again. A moan, louder this time, accompanied by the soft rustle of sheets.

Heat flooded his body, pooling low in his stomach. He was already half hard from their interaction, his self-control frayed to a thread. The image of her in that oversized shirt, his shirt, long, tattooed legs bare and tempting, flashed through his mind.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the sound. This was insanity. She was a fucking Daggermouth. He should be plotting her death, not imagining what she looked like tangled in his sheets.

Another moan drifted through the door, breathier than the last, and his control snapped.

Before he could second guess himself, Greyson had his hand on the doorknob. It turned easily—unlocked. One push and he could see her. See what was making her make those sounds. See if her face flushed with pleasure the way it did with rage.

He rested his forehead against the wood, his breath coming harsh and fast. This was a line he couldn’t uncross. A boundary he couldn’t return from. If he opened this door, if he saw her like that . . .

His hand tightened on the knob, knuckles going white. Every muscle in his body begged him to push forward, to find out if she fucked as brutally as she fought.

Greyson wrenched himself away from her door. He couldn’t and there was no world where she would even want him to. Where she would want him. He covered the remaining distance to his room in three strides and closed the door behind him, sliding the lock home with a shaking hand.

He pressed his back against it, head thumping against the wood as he tried to steady his breathing. This couldn’t happen. He couldn’t let himself feel this—this sick mix of lust and loathing for a woman who wanted him dead.

For a woman he wanted dead.

Greyson dragged a hand down his face, feeling the rasp of stubble against his palm. A second night hiding in his own home.

Chapter sixteen

With What Army?

Jamesonslippedthroughtheeastern checkpoint silently, nodding to the sentry whose fingers never left the trigger of her rifle. The camp had already changed in the twenty-four hours he’d been away from it. More gaunt faces, more haunted eyes, more makeshift graves marking the perimeter.

Four new mounds of dirt.

The rage that bubbled in his chest was an old companion by now, familiar as the hunger that gnawed at everyone’s belly. He swallowed it back. Rage without direction was just noise, and tonight he needed clarity.

“Ghost.” The sentry’s voice was a whisper, her eyes reflecting the distant barrel fires. “Your lieutenants are waiting for you.”