Page 28 of Wolf.e (The Soldiers of Bedlam #1)

He gently brushes my hair from my damp forehead and closes his eyes momentarily, as if to calm himself.

“I have no fucking idea why I can’t stop thinking about you. No idea why I crave you the way I do,” he says evenly.

Gripping me tight around the waist with one arm, the other yanks the top of my dress down exposing my breasts, and I moan as my head falls back against the tree.

His hot mouth finds my nipple and he bites down, my pussy throbs with the pain.

Before I can even cry out, he’s pulling it back into his mouth, swirling his tongue over it and soothing the sting, setting my core on fire.

I fantasize, once again, about what it would be like to have his mouth on mine.

“Why would I choose not to end you right here? Why do I want to take you and mark you and keep you for my own?” Two large fingers slide through my embarrassingly soaking slit as he holds his knife in that same hand.

I feel the handle press against me in time with his fingers.

The fear coursing through me with the thought of what he might do ignites me.

A deep growl leaves his chest as he pushes his fingers further into me.

“It’s the same reason you’re fucking soaked…soaked all for me.” Wolfe murmurs as he brings his fingers up and spreads my arousal across my bottom lip then moves back down to make slow sweeps against my clit with his knuckles.

Wolfe sucks my bottom lip into his mouth. I taste myself on his lips and realize how messed up it is that I pray for this murderer’s kiss.

“The poetic justice is that we always crave what we’re not.” He bites down, and I whimper, suddenly understanding that while I crave his darkness, in some way he must crave my light. I push my hips into his hand, anything for more friction, for more of him, more of this.

The expert way he trades between strumming my clit and fucking into me with his fingers has my pussy clenching tightly to him, threatening to fall apart within seconds.

“I live to take what I shouldn’t want, what I shouldn’t deserve.

I never question why I want things.” His deep, velvet voice washes over me as my pussy clenches around his fingers, the sound of cicadas and my desperate moans fill the air, echoing off the trees like a soundtrack, the soundtrack of him playing my body like the most intimate instrument.

“If you choose death, you’ll never know… ”

I’m so close to coming all over his fingers.

“Wolfe…” I whimper.

“If you choose to be mine, you will learn how easy it is to accept who you are…” He pulls his fingers from me abruptly and notches the smooth handle of his cool knife against my pussy, sliding it up and down through my slippery arousal. My brain begs to protest.

Inside, I’m screaming.

Outside, I grip his cut tighter and pull him closer.

“The same way your heart doesn’t ask why it beats faster for me, I don’t ask myself why I want you. I only take, hummingbird.”

He clutches the leather sheath of the blade and slides the handle into me further. I cry out at the intrusion but still, I don’t tell him to stop. I can’t tell him to stop.

“I’m sorry I saw…” It rushes out of me. “I won’t tell anyone.” My eyes widen as he pushes the handle into me further.

“I don’t need you to be sorry,” Wolfe says as he slips the handle in another inch.

“I need you to be an accessory,” he growls as he pushes the smooth handle all the way in, and I gasp at the feeling of it fully seated inside of me.

He slips it back out and begins fucking me with it at an all-consuming pace.

His other hand leaves my waist as he brings his thumb to my clit and begins circling it with perfect pressure, giving me exactly what I need.

I quiver as ecstasy and adrenaline rush through me.

“I need this pussy to crave me. To beg for me to take it any way I choose.”

I hear him but I feel like my soul has left my body. His unhinged actions are sending me to places that have only ever haunted my darkest dreams.

“I need you to crave me the same way I crave you.”

He looks back at me and smirks, his pupils blown out wide and filled with a frenzied bloodlust.

“Make the right choice, Brinley, so I don’t have to flip this knife over and slit your beautiful throat with it.”

My legs begin to shake, and my protest dies before it reaches my lips as I give in to him. My orgasm is inevitable, and I’m lost to whatever this is, whatever I am, with him.

My heart thunders in my chest as the slightly curved handle pulses against a place deep inside me and I feel like I may explode or lose control of my bladder—or both.

I tip my head forward and meet his gaze, reaching my hand up to the side of his strong jaw, running a thumb over his cheekbone.

“I don’t want to die,” I moan softly.

“Then come, little hummingbird, and say my name while you do,” he commands.

My hand feels small against his face and the gentle touch I’m offering him in this moment feels wrong, but his eyes take in the look of desire I’m surely wearing and grow dark, like he might devour me at any moment.

“I don’t know your first name,” I say breathlessly. “Tell me,” I add as the tight coil of heat takes a deep hold within my belly, my thighs, my soul.

“Gabriel,” he answers softly against the shell of my ear.

“Gabriel…” I whisper his name for the first time, and the sound he makes is animalistic. It’s enough to hurl me over the edge, to fall into the dark, stormy depths of him as I unravel around the handle of his knife.

“Gabriel,” I cry out again, louder this time and his answer is a deep growl that rumbles through his chest.

“Again,” he commands, and I do what he says, calling his name as the euphoric release of an explosive orgasm rushes to my center from every cell in my body and I come harder than I ever have, soaking the handle, his hand and his forearm.

With no end in sight, I call his name again along with some form of please, more and don’t stop, all while hating that I want him, this man I don’t even know with the hollow gray eyes.

When I open my eyes finally to the sound of our breathing, the only thing I see is treetops, my shame, and the stars.

Who am I in this moment? Who is this woman who just came without abandon all over the blunt end of this murderer’s knife? And where is the torment I should feel?

Gabriel pulls his knife from me, and I look down, finding he’s gripped the sheathed blade so hard it cut his hand through it and his blood drips from his palm into the grassy earth.

He replaces the knife at his hip and skims his fingers into my pussy, pushing his blood into me, smearing it all over my swollen lips.

It feels like a marking, a type of claiming.

He slowly pulls them out, moving his hand up to my face to spread his blood and my cum all over my lips, like he’s painting his masterpiece.

“I live inside you now, little hummingbird,” he says as he leans in, staring down at me, his mercury eyes focus on my lips and all I can hear is his breathing.

A battle wages in his eyes as his hand slides to the back of my neck where he grips possessively before his control snaps and he violently fists my hair.

He pulls at my roots sharply, tilting my head back just before he captures my lips with his own, kissing me deeply.

I lose my breath, unprepared for the kiss I never thought would come.

I’m docile and molded to him instantly. Wolfe kisses me as if he’s desperate to taste me.

His lips press into mine, and his tongue plunders, hungrily.

I meet it with my own, just as eager as he is.

The taste of copper and my own arousal washes into my mouth, and he groans into my lips before releasing me, leaving me completely unraveled.

He feasted on me for mere seconds, but it was the most incredible kiss I’ve ever experienced, one that commanded my entire body.

I realize as I watch him try to compose himself now that there is a part of him, however small, that is fully capable of losing control.

“ Fuck— ” he says, turning his face from me. When he returns his eyes to mine, his pupils are contracted. They’re controlled again, devoid of any emotion. He grips my throat.

“You do what I say now, and you stay alive,” Wolfe says, his voice low.

He turns and begins to walk, expecting me to follow, and I ask myself what just happened. How he goes from so intense to cold and emotionless so easily. The rush of fear returns almost instantly. The haziness from my orgasm and the kiss evaporating by the second, making things clear once again.

I realize I truly have no idea what it means to be his and the thought of finding out terrifies me. As I follow Gabriel out of the woods, I know that the woman I was before we met might as well be as dead as the man he just murdered.