Page 21

Kali

M y muscles ached in a way they hadn’t done in a long time. They throbbed like I had a pulse, and my head pounded in much the same manner. The annoying whistling sound didn’t help matters much, either.

When I tried to move, I groaned as my entire body protested, and I stilled in the hopes that it would stop. Everything hurt. Why?

The whistling stopped when the pained noise released itself from my chest, unbidden. A rustling sounded, and then someone’s breath ruffled my hair around my forehead.

‘Welcome back, ghost girl.’

This time when I groaned it was for an entirely different pain. A pain in my ass. ‘Great,’ I croaked, coughing again from the dryness of my throat. ‘It’s you.’

He chuckled in his deep, bass voice, the sound travelling to parts of me I didn’t think existed anymore, lighting me up from the inside out and igniting something inside of me that I had thought long dormant. Did I… like it?

‘As always, ghost girl, it is a pleasure.’

‘You keep calling me ghost girl like you’re not a ghost yourself,’ I pointed out, digging for information about the annoyingly mysterious shadow man.

‘I am dead. I have not been a ghost for a long, long time, though.’

I blinked rapidly against the bright light as I forced my eyes open, needing to see him. He sounded less distorted than usual, and I had a feeling his shadows were momentarily taking a break from keeping his identity a secret.

‘Do you have a name?’ I asked, swallowing thickly in a feeble attempt to whet my dry mouth. I didn’t produce saliva anymore, and yet… it worked.

‘It takes a while to get used to it,’ he said, deflecting my question. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it, though. He had been stalking me for days. Possibly even weeks. I had more questions than answers, and he seemed to understand what was going on far more than I did.

‘Your name,’ I prompted, the blurry film covering my vision slowly receding enough to make out thick black hair, black eyes, a chiselled jawline, and a full-lipped smirk. The weirdest part, however, was that his shadows were still covering his face. I was seeing through them.

He studied me for an extended beat, leaning forward to run his gaze over my still prone form before he answered. ‘Mortimer.’

I snorted. I couldn’t help it. There was just no way.

‘ Mortimer?’ I asked, trying to hold back a bigger laugh at his affronted expression.

‘Yes,’ he frowned. ‘Is there something funny about my name, ghost girl?’

I inhaled a deep breath to compose myself, wrinkling my nose the scent of freshly dug earth and the metallic hint of blood that I almost choked on in the process. God, what a fucking nasty smell.

He mistook my disgust as directed at him, and he sneered down at me. ‘My name offends you, does it?’

‘No! No,’ I said, finding enough strength to sit up and face him. ‘Sorry, it’s not that. Your name is pretty fitting actually, since we’re dead and all.’

He hummed, unimpressed, but backed down from where he had begun to loom menacingly over me. I was woman enough to admit his intimidation tactics had almost worked, a thrill of danger skittering down my spine at the death that shone in his eyes. This man was not safe, and I couldn’t forget that. I didn’t know what he was capable of, but I knew instinctively that he could hurt me if he wanted to. I needed to tread lightly.

‘It just smells like death,’ I admitted, explaining the source of my revulsion.

‘The girl is being buried.’

I blinked blankly, processing that information.

‘How long was I out?’

‘Time has no meaning for us, ghost girl. You should know that by now,’ he admonished, and I bristled at his pompous demeanour.

‘It might not have meaning for you, but it means something to me,’ I snapped back, earning a raised eyebrow from Mortimer in response.

‘You must release your concepts of mortality, ghost girl. They are irrelevant to you now.’

‘I disagree.’

‘You can disagree as much you want, it doesn’t change the facts. You are not beholden to mortal concepts such as time, and you would do well to remember that.’

Generally, I knew he was correct, but he didn’t know that I had goals that needed to be accomplished before Blake died. I was beholden to the mortal concept of time, because I was dealing with a mortal. His refusal to listen just made me want to punch him in the throat, and I glowered at him as I rose from the ground.

I was momentarily distracted by the sensation of a stone digging into the sole of my foot, yet the physical bite of pain contrasted oddly with the weightlessness I still felt as gravity completely disregarded me. But I shook it off to focus back on the bigger problem at hand.

‘What do you want, Mortimer?’ I asked him, skipping the small talk and in favour of getting to the point. He had been circling me like a shark in the water for too long for me to believe he didn’t have some sort of vested interest in me. What concerned me was that I had no clue what that interest was, or why.

He hesitated, seemingly taken aback by my question. ‘What do I want?’

‘Yes…’ I drew the word out, uncertainly. ‘You clearly want something from me, since you’ve been stalking me. What do you want?’

‘I…’ he paused, and I took pleasure in the fact that I had made him speechless. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve already got it.’

‘Then why are you still here?’

My question set something off in him, something dark and dangerous. The change was sudden and swift, and he looming over me again in the blink of an eye. His expression was closed off, the only sign of his anger was the flash in his blackened eyes. The shadows swirling around him were even more active, like they were reacting to his negative mood and were ready and eager to lash out at his command. Or perhaps they would act on their own. I didn’t know how they worked, but they emanated a malicious intent that had me stumbling backwards away from them.

‘Scared, ghost girl?’ he taunted, a wicked smirk tilting up one side of his mouth.

‘Should I be?’ I asked, putting on an air of false bravado that I hoped would fool him. It didn’t.

‘Yes, ghost girl. You should be afraid.’

‘And why is that?’ I asked, proud that there was no shake in my voice to betray the fear I felt pulsing through me.

He drifted closer, close enough that he was only a breath away. His nose brushed against mine as he licked his lips, his tongue lashing against my lips by accident. His eyes flashed again, this time in excitement, and it took every ounce of willpower to stay where I was. I refused to let him to intimidate me into submission. I would never allow another man that much power over me again.

‘You are still weak, ghost girl. You cannot overpower me.’

His words sparked a challenge, one I was more than willing to meet head-on, even if I did not yet understand the rules. ‘Why would I try to overpower you, Mortimer?’ I whispered against his lips, the thrill of being so close settling deep in my core. If I had been alive, I would have been dripping.

Except, when I shifted my legs in the familiar action meant to ease the ache between them, my inner thighs were slick. I was dripping. Holy shit.

I knew I should have been shocked at my reaction to him, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. All I could focus on were his lips so close to mine, his breath cool and fresh against my face, and instead of body heat he emanated a frigid chill that was somehow even more alluring. I could imagine how it would feel against my skin, a bite of pain to counter the pleasure I could see in his gaze.

And I wanted it.

I didn’t think. I didn’t question myself, or my actions. I just acted.

My lips pressed firmly against his in a furious kiss that he met with just as much force. My hands rose to stroke my fingers through silky hair, which I then fisted to keep him firmly in place. The last thing I wanted was for him to break away. This was the first time I had felt anything so strongly since death, and I wasn’t ready to let it go just yet.

Neither was he, it seemed, because he matched my fervour with his own. His arms wrapped around me, pulling our bodies flush together so he could rub his heavy erection against my stomach. His leg wedged between mine, giving me the friction I needed to start chasing my pleasure as we ground against one another like two horny teenagers.

When his hands drifted lower to grasp my ass and control the motion and pressure of my thrusts, I growled into his mouth. The sound only spurred him on, and he was suddenly pushing me backwards, knocking my feet out from under me so he could lower me to the ground. His weight was both there and not as he pressed against me, the odd feeling foreign and difficult to wrap my head around, but I soon lost all thoughts beyond the pleasure as he ground his hips into mine, his cock thick and heavy against my core. There were clothes between us, but they didn’t seem to be in the way. If anything, they only added to the sensations that were driving me wild.

A moment later, they were gone, disappearing into the aether like they had never existed in the first place, and the thought briefly struck that perhaps they hadn’t. All I knew now, though, was the feel of Mortimer’s skin against mine as the shadows parted fully for the first time since we’d met.

And fuck, he was beautiful. Hard lines, lean muscles, pale skin. He looked like he was carved straight out of marble, and I was so fucking here for it.

‘More,’ I snarled in his face. ‘I need more.’

‘Greedy little ghost girl,’ he chuckled, but he was just as lost in this as I was. Whatever this was.

‘I need to be inside you,’ he growled, and I lifted my hips in response, eager for the same.

‘Yesss,’ I hissed, which turned into a moan when he dipped his head to take my nipple between his teeth. I gasped, both from pleasure and pain when he bit down, because he wasn’t being gentle. I didn’t think I could handle gentle from him, but I wasn’t about to let him get away with it. My hands, still tangled in his hair, stroked lower until I reached his back. There, I dug my nails in as deep as they would go and scraped them down until I reached his ass. He yelled out in response and bared his teeth at me before clamping them over my other nipple so hard I feared he might actually bite it off. I yelped, but something about the roughness of the moment made me want more. I needed more.

‘Fuck me,’ I demanded, digging my nails into the plentiful flesh of his ass to pull him closer. ‘ Now.’

He didn’t wait. He wasn’t gentle. He thrust inside me in one harsh shove, bottoming out immediately. I was slick enough that he slid right in, but my body needed time to adjust to his impressive size and girth that he didn’t give me. He pulled out and slammed back in with even more force, and I was incapable of doing anything but holding on for dear life as he pounded into me.

His shadows lashed out, flicking at me, whipping me, and squeezing me as they, too, joined the battle of primal lust. The pain and the pleasure mingled as we continued tearing at one another, fighting to be the one to cause the most damage while using each other to chase our release. I could feel it climbing, a heat that swelled and swirled in my stomach as I was pushed closer and closer to the edge. Mortimer was grunting and growling above me, meeting my moans and cries with a ferality that turned me on more than I thought possible. Seeing him unravel before me was a pleasure in and of itself.

‘Yes. Oh, fuck. Right there. Don’t fucking stop,’ I panted out, forcing my eyes to stay open so I could watch him come undone above me despite the curling of my toes. ‘I’m gonna come!’

‘Come,’ he demanded, his voice so low it was more of a vibration than a sound. ‘Come all over my cock, ghost girl. Milk me dry.’

One of his hands grasped my hair and yanked my head back, giving him access to my throat which he covered with his other hand and squeezed. I didn’t need to breathe, but the implied danger was what finally drove me over the edge. I screamed as I fluttered and clenched around him, sucking him in ever deeper and locking him inside me. The action set of his own climax as he roared above me, his hips pistoning hard and fast as he rode us both through our orgasms with a violence that shouldn’t have done it for me, but it really did.

He didn’t collapse on top of me, instead keeping himself propped up so he could glare down at me with the intense, black pits of his eyes. I didn’t push him off, either, meeting his glare with one of my own. It was another challenge. Who would move first?

It wouldn’t be me.

‘Was that what you wanted from me, then?’ I asked, my voice more dangerous and taunting than it had ever been before. It was such a startling difference that I almost caved and pushed him off, but I refused to bend. It didn’t take long for the pride to sink in. I wasn’t the same soft-spoken girl that I was when I was alive. I was something more, something dangerous. I could feel that knowledge settle as deep inside me as his cock still was, filling me with a confidence I was sure would get me in trouble. But I also knew that backing down wasn’t an option. Not with my shadow man. Not with anyone .

‘For now,’ he said with a cruel twist of his lips. His shadows converged around him and pulled him away, dragging him into the darkness in a way that should have terrified me but excited me instead. I could feel a new sense of purpose bubbling up inside me, filling the space he had just vacated.

I didn’t take his cruelty as an insult. Instead, I weaponised it into motivation. Motivation to become stronger, strong enough to take him on if I needed to. I didn’t know what the future held for us, but it was undoubtedly going to be explosive. I just needed to hold onto my convictions long enough to enact my vengeance before it came to that.