“Aurelia!” I warn again, desperate.
Aurelia starts to fall limp, the button slipping from her lifeless hand, and the sound of it hitting the floor echoes through me like a warning shot.
Everything inside me stops.
Something shifts.
Then cracks into place.
I suddenly let go of the chain like it’s burning my skin, and her instant gasp rips through the air, her body shuddering back to life.
It’s a sound I never knew I needed to fucking hear before. A breath of life. And it hits me harder than anything else ever has.
Without warning, I cum—forcefully.
It blasts out of my cock, thick and hot, filling her to the deepest point, and the power of it rocks through my entire body like I’ve been hit by a fucking truck. My muscles seize, every nerve lit up and my vision goes white for a split second.
Almost collapsing as my knees buckle, barely keeping upright, I lie on her, my chest heaving against her slick back.
Her skin’s damp with cold sweat, trembling under me, both of us gasping. The air around us feels electric and charged with everything we just did, everything we almost didn’t come back from.
I press my forehead to the base of her neck, trying to breathe, trying to calm the turmoil still surging inside me.
Then, when I finally can, I bring my lips to her ear.
“Don’t ever… fucking… do… that… again,” I growl between breaths, my voice low, shredded with something between rage and desire.
She turns her head, her panting lips brushing against mine, and her glassy eyes lock onto me like she sees right through everything I am.
“I will…” she whispers, her voice soft but steady while her trembling hand finds my face, fingers tracing my painted jaw. “Because now I know… you’ll always let go of the chain. For me.”
Her words hit like a fucking blade between the ribs. I lower my gaze, jaw tight, but the truth is already carved into me. She’s right.
I’ve never stopped. Not once. Years of giving in to every violent urge, to every twisted need that’s ever driven me over the edge. I’ve taken breath from lungs like it was a gift I could fucking steal and keep forever.
But not hers. Something about my little corpse made me choose breath over silence. Flesh over decay. Warmth over cold. Life over death.
And that terrifies me. Yeah, me.
Because I’m a fucking monster who fucks what’s already dead. A soul eater. A thing that only knows how to take. But with her, this fragile, but defiant girl who keeps handing me the weapon and daring me to swing, I didn’t.
She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met. She’sfucking mine in every sense of the word. Our souls are shackled together by unseen chains.
But what the fuck am I now, if I’m not what I’ve always been?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Aurelia
It’s the morning, and my sleepy eyes open gradually. It’s still dark, with only the light beneath Wrath’s door seeping through and faint cracks in his boarded-up windows hinting that it’s daytime.
I feel him pressed behind me, his strong, warm body solid against my back. He breathes heavily into my hair, his arm wrapped around me in a possessive hold.
My mind races back to the past couple of nights while staying here and everything that’s happened since our first… encounter. How he almost ended me, but the moment he released that chain, the relief that washed over me was unmatched. Not because I survived, but because he stopped. He stopped because it was meant to be. That moment solidified everything for me.
We kept fucking even after we got back here. All night, actually. Then last night, we can’t stop—like two fucking animals in heat.
Yeah, there’s moments I can see it in his crimson eyes, that edge, that urge seeping through. But he hasn’t actually got close to killing me since. Not that harshly, anyway.