Page 72 of The Blood we Crave

I have never faltered. Not a single time in my horrid life. I have stood for years unfazed by the beauty of women and men alike.

But this day, this moment.

My legs shake, and my knees are fucking weak.

The handle falls down her stomach, following the lines of her body until I have it centered between her thighs. Her shaky hands tug her skirt farther up her waist, exposing her bottom half to me.

“You want someone to make you come, pet? Is that what you wanted? Is that why you were challenging me? You need someone to show you how to make thispatheticlittle cunt come?”

Using the blade, I shove her panties to the side, leaving a red stain on them as I do. My throbbing hand is still pouring blood when I press the end of the handle between her slick folds.

The ache in my groin is almost unbearable. My cock enjoys the sight of her soaked and bloody a little too much. That untouched, glistening pussy beckons to me, praying to me like I’m her god, wanting no one but me to be the one she bleeds on.

“I can do better than that, Lyra. I can make her scream. I can make her cry.”

I circle her sensitive bundle of nerves, pressing just hard enough on it to give her a little bite of pain with her pleasure. My body folds over the top of hers, my spare hand landing just beside her head, holding me just above her so that I can look between us and watch the knife that is digging into my flesh slide through her juices.

Lyra’s head falls backward, her cunt pulsating against the slick black handle. But I want more of the sweet, pathetic moans filling this rotting building, to wake the dead with her screams for more.

“Thatcher.” She let out a furrowed whine before continuing. “You-you’re bleeding. So much.”

I bury my nose into the apex of her throat and shoulder as she pumps her hips in jerky thrusts, meeting the pressure of the blade. She grinds herself against it while my hand bleeds freely into her core.

My blood makes it easier to slip through her folds repeatedly.

As I drag the tip of my nose along the column of her throat, the smell of cherries blinds me. I can’t keep my tongue from flicking across the cut I’d made earlier. Her taste, sweet and metallic, pulls a guttural moan from deep inside me.

“For you. I’m bleeding for you.” My teeth tease her neck, nipping at the sensitive spots there. “I’m bleeding for this pitiful pussy that is crying for me. Do you hear her, pet?”

All she can manage is a shaky nod, her mind so blitzed with pleasure that I don’t think she even understood my question—barely heard my words as she loses herself in me.

I’ve never been this intimate with someone before. Never felt this liquid heat between a woman’s thighs that leaks from her in waves. I’ve never been the cause of anyone’s ecstasy, only ever the reason for their misery.

Everything about this should be incorrect. The improper form of how to treat a woman when she craves release. Yet, somehow I know that’s wrong.

Maybe because I know the human body. I know what it looks like bowed in pain, twisted in agony, how it reacts to the slightest of touches, where to slice to cause little to severe damage.

More than that, I know Lyra Abbott.

As much as I don’t want to, as much as I want her flushed from my mind, I know her.

And this is exactly how she wants to be touched. This little killer doesn’t want soft kisses and sweet nothings whispered into her ear.

No, she wants to be craved.

For someone to ache for her in the depths of their being, to be driven mad by the desire to breathe the same air as she does, have every single molecule of their being consumed with only her.

She does not want love.

She needs her obsession to be fed, an unhinged addiction that seeks no cure. Devotion that the gods would kill for. There is no soft, flowery poetry that could explain what it is she needs.

It requires dark, obsidian words written in blood at altars and prayed upon until your knees are bruised.

And right now, I’m eager to feed that obsession inside her, to show her just how overwhelming being fixated on someone like me is.

Her whimpers sing in my ear, the sound of a lewd song only she is capable of. Heavy pants crash from her lips as her fingers wind into my jacket, tugging me closer into her.

She is so close to tipping into that pool of ecstasy all of us chase. I can feel it in the way she trembles. I increase my pace, rubbing the handle with more direct pressure on her clit, making sure my hand is covering the entire blade.