Page 123 of The Blood we Crave

And I can’t do that to her.

I can’t do that to myself.

But God, I want to. I need to. Need nothing more.

My hand holds her tight against me as I shift our position, laying her on the floor so that my body rests overtop of her. My wide frame forces her thighs open, and I use my hand to guide my cock back between the slippery warmth of her pussy.

“Don’t be a greedy whore, Scarlett.” I rock my hips, rubbing the head of my cock against her swollen clit. “Be a good girl. Be so very good for me and come. Can you manage that, pet?”

Calling her by her first name feels like my right. The only person in the world aware of it and allowed to use it when I choose. It’s ours and only ours.

She lifts off the ground to move with me, chasing that blinding orgasm that sits just beyond reach. My jaw is tight, knowing if I move just an inch south, I can feel all of her, raw and unprotected.

I squeeze her soft waist, harder than necessary, desperate to hold on to my will. For once, do something good. Force myself not to ruin her or myself.

“Fuck,” I hiss. She feels too good, is too tempting.

“Thatch, I’m gonna come,” she gasps, hooking her hands around my waist and urging me closer. “Please, please, please…”

I keep the same pace, stroking her clit repeatedly. But every single time I pull back, I feel her hips lift higher, making it harder to avoid that tight hole I’m on the edge of destroying.

“Lyra, don’t,” I warn, my teeth grinding together as my body, awake and alive for the first time, begs me to give in. “We can’t.”

She presses her hands into my lower back, grabbing at my waist and pulling me forward. It’s a pathetic fight I give her, battling my own instincts. My own urges.

“Please, Thatcher. I’m so close,” she pleads, the moan in her throat enough to drop kings to their knees.

My balls tighten, my orgasm close as we continue to move against one another. I make the mistake of looking down at the place where our bodies meet, and a deep rumble rattles my chest.

Once again, when I retract my hips just before I send them forward to rut against her, her body arches up. This time, I feel the tip of my cock catch her opening.

The veins in my neck throb. My hold on her waist is brutal.

“Lyra, baby, don’t make me—”

But it’s too late.

Lyra comes with a scream, a tortured sound of riveting pleasure and anguish. The entire length of my shaft lies inside of her, delving into her walls the moment she falls over the edge and into a blissful climax, every inch enveloped by her wet heat.

“Goddamnit,” I moan, burying my head into her shoulder, my cock pulsing as her walls clamp down around me in the aftershock of her orgasm. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

I inhale her, the dip between her neck and shoulder. She smells like cherries and the nighttime air. Refreshing, soothing, and everything I love about the darkness.

We are a blend of black and white, gray matter connected by the catastrophic pull neither of us bothers to deny in this closet. I had made my way inside of her head long ago, and now I’m deep in her body.

There is no getting me out now, and she had done that all to herself.

“Tell me it’s a mistake later,” she mutters, grabbing my neck. “For now, feel me bleed on your cock. I was made to bleed for you.”

I lift, peering down at her face, our bodies connected in a way they’ve never been before. With each other or anyone else.

Lyra brings her blood-soaked hand to my face, smearing it across my lips, her eyes wide and full of shimmering emotion. I swipe my tongue across her thumb before merging our mouths back together.

An intoxicating bloodstained kiss. A happily ever after’s worst nightmare. The grim reality of our bond. That we have always been silent nights and crimson origins.

Her obsessed, unhinged infatuation with me has taken over every logical portion of her brain. And I give in. I feed her fixation. Because there is nothing I’d rather see more than Lyra desperate for me, aching for only me.

My hips pull back all the way, and I can see the panic in her eyes, thinking I’m going to stop this, end it right here. But I am quick to halt her worry.