Page 25

Chapter

Twenty-Five

Syros

E rin fits neatly in my arms, nestled against the crook of my shoulder with her head on my chest. She bobs slightly with the rise and fall of my chest.

Her yawn is adorable.

I’m not sure how things shifted between us, or when it began, but I am powerless against her charm. Against her sweetness and her strength. She may be small, but Erin is mighty, and the thought of losing her now, to any of the myriad of dangers around us, fills my heart with an unbreakable chill.

“Syros.” She stops, biting off the end of my name and shifting back to look at me. “I want to talk to you about something.”

She is naked, the way she should always be.

If I had my way, she’d stay naked, my seed dripping down her thighs constantly, smelling of me.

Only now, her lips are pressed together in a thin line, her eyes narrowed, and a small pit of apprehension opens up underneath me.

I sweep her hair away from her face with my claw. “What’s the matter?”

“I have to tell you—” She is hesitating, her cheeks flushed but the rest of her face pale. She’s hiding something. “When you were outside, I fiddled with the radio again.”

“You found more music?” I ask, confusion clear in my tone.

Do I want to know this? Whatever it is, she feels the need to speak about it. How important could it really be?

“No.” She pauses again, chewing the corner of her mouth. “I’m not sure how it happened, but I actually found a connection. Between this world and mine. I spoke to the man who was with me on the solstice, Tyler, through the radio. I was able to talk to him.”

Rage floods my system and lights every nerve on fire.

I clench her to me, my grip going tight enough to squeeze the air out of her, and it’s impossible to let loose. Not when I feel as though I might explode at any second.

“Who is Tyler?” I somehow manage to get the words out.

No other man will have her.

Her cunt has already conformed to me and my knot. The thought of any other man taking her in the same way, coming inside of her—

Erin is shaking. If I don’t calm down, I’ll terrify her, and erase any sort of progress we have made between us. But the thought of her with anyone else, another lover knowing her body and tasting her the way I’ve tasted her, is unimaginable.

“Tyler is a college student who agreed to help me locate the Grim,” Erin explains. Her body may tremble, but her voice remains calm and composed. “He was the only person in town willing to talk to me about the lore and the disappearances that occur with the solstices. He was with me in the car the night you came through. He’s been looking for me.”

If I ever see this Tyler, I’ll tear him apart limb from limb while he’s still alive. I will swallow over his screams and digest them.

I’ll make sure he never touches Erin again. I am the only one who can touch her this way.

She’s mine. She belongs to me. Nothing and no one else will ever experience the softness of her body except for me.

“Tyler is the closest thing I’ve ever had to an assistant,” Erin is saying, oblivious to my mental imagery of death and torture. “It’s a miracle we found the same signal and managed to speak to each other. He’s the one you heard me talking to the other night.”

“And you want to return to this Tyler?” Every word feels like acid, burning up my throat, acrid as they roll off my tongue. “To let him fuck you?”

I jerk in surprise when Erin bursts out laughing. “Fuck him?” she repeats. “Absolutely not! He’s a college student and so not my type. He’s basically a child.”

My anger banks as quickly as it formed. She doesn’t want to leave me for another man. Or so I think, until she says—

“We were trying to figure out a way to get me home.”

Her voice drops, and along with the statement, a yawning emptiness in my head blots out everything else.

Home.

She is home.

There is no going back from what we’ve done, or how far we’ve come together.

“I know it sounds crazy, but if we managed to communicate with each other, then I believe there’s a way to form a bridge between our worlds using the same signal.” Her words come out in a rush. “I think I can build a machine to amplify the signal with some of the items you have on your shelves. I just—with the Ech and everything—I never had a chance to actually look.”

“You want to leave me.”

Speaking it out loud sends a spike of pain through my chest. The anger has shifted to hurt at the thought of her leaving. It’s the last thing I want, despite the shortness of our time together.

I dread it. Going back to the loneliness, the isolation and the unquenchable hunger.

None of those things exist when I’m with Erin.

“It’s not that simple, Syros,” she whispers. “What we have is amazing, truly, but… I don’t belong here. It’s too dangerous; I can’t survive here.”

“I can protect you,” I growl out. How can she not see that? I will go to any lengths, do whatever it takes, to keep her safe in my world. “With your ability to see the Ech and my strength, no one will ever hurt you again. You will be safe.”

A pained smile curls the corners of her mouth, but it quickly disappears. “It’s not just that, Syros. I-I belong on Earth. I have a life and a job and… I want to go home.”

My chest constricts, like all the air has been ripped from my lungs, and every heartbeat after is a painful throb behind my ribs.

She wants to go home.

She wants to leave me.

The reality is hard to swallow, but despite the pain, I understand. She is right, this world isn’t safe for her. It’s dark and menacing and dangerous, and she is delicate. I would do anything to keep her safe, give my life to protect her, but would it ever be enough? She already almost died once. Who is to say it won’t happen again?

I take a deep breath to clear my thoughts, straining to keep my hold on her gentle. I say nothing as I gather her to my chest, absorbing the feel of her body on mine.

I could always keep her here anyway, regardless of her desires. I could destroy her precious radio so she can never contact her world again. I could tie her up and force her to stay, but… is that really what I want?

What kind of life will she be able to have when she is trapped inside the cabin? I’ve already seen the wildness in her; She deserves much more than a life of imprisonment. Not to mention, she would hate me. She would loathe me for keeping her trapped, despite how close we’ve grown since I brought her through the portal.

Part of me doesn’t care. She can hate me all she wants, but I’ll have the one thing I need more than anything else: her.

Erin is the only thing I need to be happy, to survive in this bleak wasteland of a world.

However, the other part of me, the part that has my chest throbbing with an unfamiliar ache, doesn’t want her to hate me. It wants to provide for her, whatever she needs.

And if what she needs is not me…

I’m silent for a long stretch of time.

“Will going home make you happy?” I finally ask, the words burning up my throat. “Will being far away from me, never seeing me again, satisfy you?”

Her mouth falls open, but no words escape. They don’t have to. Her answer shines clearly in her eyes, and simultaneously shreds through me like a pair of claws.

She doesn’t want me the way I want her; She doesn’t want me enough to stay.

And I want her too much to keep her against her will.

“If you want to leave, then I will help you,” I agree, forcing the words out despite the lump in my throat. “Whatever you need, if it is within my power, I will find a way to get it for you.”

Erin pushes up onto her elbows to stare down at me, a smile brightening her features. “Really?”

“Yes, little human.” I nod. “Name it, and it is yours.”

I force my sadness to the side when she kisses my snout.

Whatever it takes to protect her, I will do it, even if it kills me.

I’ll do anything for her.

Erin falls asleep in my arms, and my heart thuds out a hollow beat.

Talking faded and we simply held each other in front of the fire until her breathing evened out and her eyelids fluttered shut.

Keeping her cuddled close, I shift us both to the bed of pelts, drawing the warmth around her to ensure she’s comfortable. She looks even more fragile wrapped in the thick furs, her pale skin nearly shining in the dim light. With one of my claws, I tuck a strand of silver hair behind her ear.

She wants to go home. The reminder stabs me in the chest as I watch her, wondering how many more moments we will have like this before she is gone forever.

Many things have changed from days ago. For the first time in my life, I’m afraid—afraid of losing her, afraid of going back to my old existence—and the realization rocks me to my core.

I don’t want her to leave, and I would do anything to get her to stay.

Even though this world is not hers, and every part of it is designed to tear her fragile human flesh to pieces, I want her.

To be with me.

To want to be with me.

I curl my body around hers, tugging her ass until she is fit snugly against my front, and listen to the sound of her slight snores. For such a tiny person, she makes a whole lot of noise, and this is something I want to get used to. Something I feel I will miss the moment she leaves, despite the chaos she brought to my existence.

We are from two different worlds and cannot exist together.

It’s impossible.

Right?

It feels less like the truth and more like a convenient excuse as to why helping her escape is the right thing to do when it goes against my every natural instinct. Yet I care about her too much to risk her life and make her stay with me. No matter what I want.

I draw in a breath colored with her scent, gollilock and flowers and mint, the combination unique to her.

When had I changed?

At some point I went from being the blood-thirtsy, ravenous beast I’d been for so long to something more. Aside from the familiar hovel around me, I barely recognize my life. Life as I know it is different, and I am different.

And it’s all because of Erin.

A growl rumbles in my chest as I—once again—run through the events that led me here.

How much easier would it have been to simply eat her when I first found her in the woods and be done with it? Yet all this feels like it happened for a reason. Like it was supposed to happen. Like something bigger than us, some cosmic force, made sure our paths crossed that night, manipulated the circumstances to bring us together, all so that I could meet Erin.

Our threads of fate are woven together, but it doesn’t matter.

I have to let her go.

As much as I want to keep her here with me, to protect her, to use her, letting her go is the right thing to do. For her. It’s the only way I can completely ensure her safety, to keep her happy.

Keeping her as a pet was always a silly dream. And keeping her as more than a pet? As a… partner?

It’s impossible.

There is no universe that exists where the two of us can pursue whatever this is bubbling between us, to see where it leads. She certainly cannot bear me offspring. Our blood is likely incompatible, and if a miracle did occur, a Grim child would shred her from the inside before birth. It would never work.

So, I’ll help her enhance the radio, build whatever she needs to try and open a portal. Whatever she believes she needs in order to get home, even if I hold my breath and hope for her failure the entire time. If she cannot open a portal, she will have to stay with me, but I have to help her try.

If she does manage to make a connection, to open a portal between our worlds, I will abandon this hovel and move far away. I will find another place to set up a life for myself and, that way, when the portal opens again, it will be nowhere near her. Then, hopefully, I’ll be able to forget about Erin and the life that might have been between us.

I grimace in the darkness.

I am nothing but a fool, a sentimental fool, and I halfway wonder if I’ve always been this way or if it is a change thanks solely to her. She’s managed to get under my skin and alter me from the inside, without having to lift a finger.

Life will never be the same when she leaves and I’ll make it work, somehow.

Erin shifts in her sleep, snoring, making a soft sound I can’t stand because of how it makes me feel. This is ridiculous.

The thought of losing her is a crushing weight slowly splintering me into pieces.

My palm rests on her hip and I move it in small circles, massaging her until she lets out a small sigh. I need to feel her again. I need to feel something and make it last me for the rest of my immeasurably long existence.

Already, it feels like torment to imagine a world without her in it.

With most of her pants still in shreds, I hook my claw into the elastic of what’s left at the top and give it a tug. It pulls away easily. The velvety glide of her skin against my callouses makes my cock painfully hard and sends a growl of longing through me.

She continues to snore softly as my hand dances over her skin, and my desire to taste her swells. I dip my head, poking my tongue out to paint long licks down her neck and over her chest. I go slow, keeping my movements soft, so as not to wake her. I want to revel in this moment, drinking her in, tasting her, touching her while she sleeps.

Gently, I nudge her thighs apart, exposing her already dripping center. The scent of her arousal blooms around us, and my mouth waters, saliva dripping from my tongue and peppering her chest. I wonder if I could taste her without waking her, to sink my tongue into her channel and feel her flex around me.

My cock throbs painfully as I crawl down her form, settling between her legs. I stare up at her sleeping face over the gentle curves of her body, waiting until I hear her soft snores to continue. When I’m sure I haven’t woken her, I drag my tongue through her wet folds, lapping up the sweet taste of her arousal. My cock throbs, weeping precum onto the stone floor. My teeth brush against her skin as I work my tongue over her.

I move slowly, torturing myself in the process, as I taste every inch of her. I poke and prod at her channel, slipping my wet muscle inside her to brush against her walls, and a whine slips past her lips. I groan at the noise, desire ripping through me. My instincts urge me to take her, to claim her, to bury my cock inside her, and I will. But not yet. Not until I’ve savored the taste of her, committed it to memory, and felt her orgasm around my tongue while she slumbers.

It doesn’t take long. After a few short minutes of massaging her with my tongue, she comes undone. Her muscles flex around me, choking my tongue while I continue to explore her depths, and a soft, prolonged moan dances up her throat.

After her climax subsides, I crawl back up her body and settle with my hips between hers, my cock painfully erect and eager to feel her wrapped around me. My cock is much larger than my tongue, so I doubt she’ll be able to sleep through me fucking her even if I go slow, but I’m intent to try.

How will she react when she wakes up to find me inside of her? Will she be afraid? Will she urge me to go faster?

I notch the head of my cock at her opening and gently apply pressure until it slips inside. She stretches around me, her pussy perfectly conforming to my shape, and I slowly bury myself deeper. Inch by agonizing inch.

I dip my head to brush my snout against the side of her neck, breathing in her essence as I slowly pull out and thrust forward again. A delicate whine passes her lips when I bury myself, deeper this time, inside of her, and her eyes flutter open.

“Syros…” Her voice is gentle, reverent like a prayer to a higher being.

“Shhh…” I hiss softly, pulling out and pressing into her again. Her walls flutter around my cock, her pussy milking me, begging for more. “I just want to feel you again. One more time, little human. I want to remember the feel of you long after you’re gone. Will you let me?”

She nods sleepily, and her eyes drift closed again. It takes every shred of my self control to maintain my excruciatingly slow, deliberate pace, but I manage. I take my time, licking and nipping carefully at her skin while I fill her with my cock.

This isn’t like the previous times my cock has been inside her, when I lost myself to my primal instincts and could only think about filling her with my seed. This is slower, more intimate, more meaningful. While I can’t put a name to it, I can feel it down to my marrow. The way she reacts, running her fingers gently over my skin, sighing with every touch tells me she feels the same way.

If she were my mate, this is how things would be all the time. Taking my time, savoring her, relishing in her touch.

However, seeing as she’s not—and can never be—my mate, it’s a bittersweet way to say goodbye.