Page 123 of Kill for a Kiss

When we’ve caught enough fish for the day, we cook it over a firepit by the shore. We stare while they roast as the sun sets. Then silently, Elle climbs onto my lap.

I’ve learned a lot about Elle now that we’ve been alone without a care in the world. She’s an insatiable thing. Good, because I can’t get enough of her either.

I’ve had my hands on her in every corner of the shack. The small stove area. The tattered porch. The edge of the bed with her thighs draped over my shoulders. She never asks me to stop. Only to stop slowing down. Only to hold her longer afterward. And I do. I’d do anything she asks me to.

Now, watching her sitting on me under sundown, I carry her and lay her down on the blanket over the sand. She stirs, murmuring my name. My heart stutters the same way it did the first time she said it at the safe house.

I gather her against me. Her body’s soft and warm and leaning toward mine. We moan together when I push into her. Her warmth welcomes me, wrapping around me perfectly.

“Elle…” I whisper her name when she pulls me in for a kiss.

Her hips roll, controlling our motion. She breathlessly whimpers as she takes what she needs from me. And god, I’ll give and give, until she tells me what else I need to do to make her feel good.

But we can’t indulge when the fish is grilling over the firepit. I’vehad to make sure she replenishes all of the energy she spends from all this pleasure I never want to end. Pleasure I never want to stop giving her.

My fingers find her sensitive bud. I stroke it to the rhythm of her hips. “Come for me, Elle,” I whisper against her lips.

She follows obediently soon enough, squeezing me so hard that I go over the edge with her. Spilling my seed inside her feels like coming home. Her soft kisses on my jaw feels like heat from a hearth.

When I look into her eyes, I groan, twitching inside her. She gasps, her nails scraping down through my hair. Then she smiles up at me, giggling gently, sounding so glad that it’s music to my ears. The most perfect song. The warmth I come home to. That’s Elle, who has every piece of me. My entire heart and soul. Things I thought I’d never have again. Somehow, she brought me back to life. So I owe her that, at the very least.

***

I’ve lost count, but I know it’s been days. Days of fire and skin and quiet touches. Her lips were on mine while the mist rose from the spring. Her nails in my shoulder blades while the boat rocked under us. Her hands pulled me closer even when we were nearly burning dinner by the shore.

But at this very moment, the cot creaks under us as I ease her down into it, the sheets tangled, the mattress warm from hours of our bodies pressing into it. She’s boneless now, soft with sleep, skin flushed, lips kiss-bruised. Her arm flops against my chest until I manage to slip free without waking her.

She murmurs something, maybe my name, maybe a moan. I kiss her temple anyway. I’ve wrecked more corners of this shack with her. The flimsy table, the rattling window, the old beams where Ipressed her hands up high while taking her from behind.

I tuck her in, pulling the blanket up over her bare, scarred legs. She sleepily sighs with a subtle smile, turning her face into the pillow.

I linger longer than I need to. Just to watch her.

But as the sun disappears, I slip out into the night air, sliding my coat on.

The woods are cold and quiet. Even the waves are still. My footsteps crunch over dried leaves from the hills of thick trees above us.

I walk around the back of the shack and pull Stan’s phone from my coat pocket.

The metal creaks as I flip it open. A few new messages have popped up as expected.

Found Damon. Gonna bring him back to the haunted house.

See you soon at the gala.

Try to look presentable, loser.

I exhale through my nose. Of course he’s managed to drag Damon back. And he’s walking into that monster’s den like it’s a goddamn homecoming. That house. The Halloweencharitygala. Clo.

The fire lights low in my chest. I’m trying to contain it. But I know it’s only a matter of time before I have to face her. I need to finish what she started when she turned me into this. When she made me into the dokkaebi and didn’t expect the monster to come back for her in the dark.

I flip to the next messages that fly up quickly, like Stan knows I’d be checking the phone this late in the day.

Damon says hi. Not really though. More like a growl?

Oh, it’s at me.

I may or may not have slept with his new wife way back when.