Page 28 of Toxic
It’s a litany of comfort urging me to follow it back to reality. The pieces start to come together slowly but then all at once. Like waking from a terriblenightmare.
“There you go. You got it. Come backtome.”
I open my tightly clenched eyes and find Gracin staring right back at me. Relief—or something close to it—flashes through his green eyes before it’s replaced by another expression I know alltoowell.
I shove away from his embrace, but I should know better. He’s got his claws in me. I don’t think he’s ever gonna letmego.
“Take your hands off me,” I growl and have to look around because I’ve never heard my own voice sound so wild anddesperate.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” He takes my jaw in his hand and forces me to look at him. “You’re donerunning.”
“Fuck you,” I yell in his face, spit flying, but I don’t even care. I’m so past caring I feel pleasantly numb. “Fuck you. You ruinedmylife.”
He shoves closer until we’re chest to chest. He’s so close that I can only see his eyes as they bear down on me. “Ruined your life? No, far as I can see, I gave you exactly what youwanted.”
“I didn’twantthis.”
I didn’t realize I was shaking my head until he takes my face in his hands to hold mestill.
“I know what you want,” he says and thenattacks.
His mouth is on mine before I have a chance to bar it against him. My emotions are untamable, unfathomable, and he tempts them into a fever with a black hole of pleasurable nothingness that I’m desperate to letconsumeme.
And I so want to beconsumed.
I want to drown in the taste of him until it blots out the world with a tidal wave of need. He is cataclysmic, and I ache to beg for my owndestruction.
“Not here,” he says, and I’m jerked back toreality.
A chill courses over me, and I realize we’re still in the same room with Vic’s dead body. His blood is pooling on the glossy wood I’d scrubbed a thousand times. It’s on my hands and on my scrubs, which I hadn’t had time to change out ofafterwork.
He doesn’t give me a chance to think about it, though. He just tugs me around the corner to the hall and pulls me close to him. I go with him because I want to get away from the carnage in the other room. I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry or scream. Gracin seems unfazed—his only focusisme.
“I’ve been thinking about this since you came all over me. I could smell you for days after. Been driving me crazy,” he says in my ear. I can feel him, thick and long, pressing urgently against my stomach as he rips off my shirt with barely contained violence.His eyes go to my bruises and darken. When his hands splay over them, they’re gentle. “I’m glad the bastard’s dead for what he didtoyou.”
“No,” I tell him, pushing at his hands. “We can’t. Not here. Notlikethis.”
He presses me down to the floor, and I’m so out of it, I’m unable to protest other than to hiss out a breath as my back comes in contact with thecoolwood.
“Yes,” he says against my lips. “Just like this. I want you to remember what it feels like when I’m not there by your side. I want you to remember how strong you were when you stood up to him. How you won’t ever let anyone treat you like shit again, notevenme.”
“Then let me go. You wanted to escape, so what are you stilldoinghere?”
He doesn’t answer. His mouth is too busy at my throat, his lips and teeth and tongue working their way up to my ear. A breath whispers around the sensitive skin, and despite myself, my hips surge up against him. The fact that what we’re doing is so horrible, so terribly wrong and immoral only makes my blood heat faster, my bodywantingmore.
Is this the result of years of abuse—this dark, dirty yearning—or is itjusthim?
He doesn’t give me a second to find my equilibrium. There are no officers here, no cuffs or bars. There is nothing stopping him for taking exactly what he wants. And hewantsme.
His fingers twine in my hair and tug my head back for a better angle. “I’m going to taste you everywhere,” he says darkly, and God help me, I wanthimto.
My hands go to his shoulders. “We can’t do this here,” I repeat, but my hips buck when his other hand trails over my breasts and to the waistband of my scrubs. Suddenly, all my clothes feel incredibly insubstantial against his questing fingers. I arch, grinding my head into the wood, searching for someclarity.
The pain centers my focus, and I reach down to push his hand away. “Gracin,please.”
His hand slips underneath my waistband and delves into my panties. “Please, what?” he asks, his touch so gentle I can barely feel it mixed with all the other sensations I’m trying to process. “Please, don’t stop? Please, keep going. You’re gonna have to be morespecific.”
He finds me wet and wanting, and we groan in unison. I want to die. I want to scream. I want him toneverstop.