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12

Bridge to Rebirth

Kallum

I t may have been Chaucer who first penned the derived maxim on the devil making use of idle hands. After hundreds of years, the wordage has altered, but the meaning remains unchanged.

We’re still blaming devils for our bad deeds.

While Halen slept, I occupied my idle hands with pilfering the necessary items for tonight.

Time is always the enemy.

The patience I’ve been able to afford ran out the moment I reentered my hotel room and Halen’s sinful fragrance took a cheap shot to my gut.

The scent of her shampoo infuses the air like a toxin invading my bloodstream. Lily of the valley alluringly drifts under the doorway. Ylang-ylang wraps my senses in a chokehold. The violent assault grips me in a blind fury until I’m forced to shoulder the conjoining door open, snapping the chain bolt off the hinge.

My chest heaves as I loom over the threshold, the sinew cording my bones stretched tight and muscles on fire as I try to rein in the vicious craving.

The bathroom light spills into the dark room, bathing Halen’s curled figure underneath the sheets like a fallen angel.

With marked restraint, I throttle my craving and seat myself in the corner chair of the room. Hands braced on my thighs, I watch her sleep, listen to her breathy exhales. Her legs twitch beneath the covers and she flinches, releasing a soft moan. Her mind won’t let her rest, even when her body is vitally desperate for it.

“Kallum…”

My whole body tenses at my name on her lips.

The wicked temptation to peel those covers away and slide between her thighs tears a destructive path through my mind, making me question my fucking sanity.

It’s the lovely bad things that steal into our thoughts in the middle of the night and tempt us across the line between good and evil. Those torturously beautiful sins that provoke our deepest, most deviant desires. It feeds us in the dark, stoking a frail flame into an inferno we can no longer resist.

She is my flame.

And I am all but pleading for my muse to burn me alive.

As my senses run wild, I can taste her saccharine fear. Her muted scream rakes nails down my back. I can feel her pulse kick against my palm. My need for her is tangible. She’s carved into my goddamn flesh.

The longer I watch her sleep, the stronger the urge to make my desires manifest.

My fingers dig into my thighs as I hold myself back. The slightest abrasive rub of my jeans over my raging cock damn near sets me off.

So when her eyes flutter open to remove the devious temptation, relief slams my body.

She doesn’t react to my presence by flinging herself out of the bed or screaming. Even coming out of a fitful sleep, she’s soft and pliant when she first wakes.

Her hazel eyes track over me as she becomes fully conscious. “How did you unchain the door?”

The tension ebbs from my constricted chest on a forced exhale. “A slab of wood won’t keep me from you. What were you dreaming about?”

Sweeping the tangle of hair from her forehead, she eyes me with severe suspicion. Then she glances at the door to see the broken chain lock. “Sigils,” she says, her voice a throaty rasp from sleep.

I inhale her punishing scent, nostrils flaring at her admission. “Keep going.”

“A symbol started appearing on my body,” she says. “All over. I don’t know why or what it meant. Vague, like all dreams.”

She pushes herself up against the pillow on the headboard. Her nightshirt stretches tight over her breasts. A sliver of her pink panties peeks above the sheet. My heart thunders inside my chest at the sultry sight of her.

“Where did the sigil first appear?” I ask.

A hesitant arch of her fine eyebrow, then she daringly draws the sheet down. My breath stalls in my lungs as she guides my gaze with her fingers. Across her belly, over her hip. My lungs burn for oxygen as she parts her legs and her fingers settle on the enticing skin of her innermost upper thigh.

“Here,” she says.

Whatever control I had mustered snaps.

I’m out of the chair and stalking to the edge of the bed where, when I reach her, I have to fist my hands to keep from touching her. My breaths saw my lungs to escape.

An ember of fear sparks in her eyes, but it’s not strong enough to snuff out the dark swirl of emotions fighting for dominance. Lust. Anger. Yearning to submit to the danger.

Resistance only heightens the hunger. The constant battle to keep our desires in check is a weary one, and when that sweet surrender finally takes us, the rapture is divine.

“What did the sigil look like?” Restraint coils tense muscles around my bones.

Her phone lights up to briefly steal her attention. She reaches for the device and reads a message. “Devyn says they can’t locate the hermit suspect. She really could have went with a better moniker. But Alister’s team has gotten onboard with the search.”

I remove the phone from her hand, toss it on the bed. “You knew he wouldn’t be found. You also know how to find him.”

Her strained swallow drags invitingly along her throat as she pins me with a searching look. “I’m not playing these mind games with you, Kallum.” She throws the covers aside and scoots toward the other side of the bed.

I grab her ankles and tow her back toward me, then flip her onto her back. A savage craving fires through my veins as I collar a hand around her throat. Fingers braced to the back of her neck, I press my thumb to the soft curve under her chin and, in one fierce move, draw her up toward me, angling her face right below mine.

Balancing on her knees, Halen releases a shaky breath. Her body trembles as I keep her where I want her.

“What did the sigil look like?” I demand this time, my voice fire over brimstone.

She blinks, her gaze flitting over my hardened features as her pulse riots against my palm. Tentatively, she brings her hand to my wrist and slips my sleeve back to reveal an inked design.

“Like this,” she says, her voice strangled by nerves. “But there was a line through it. And I’ve seen your tattoos. I’m overly tired and stressed.” Her swallow teases my palm. “Even if I wanted to know the meaning, you can’t remember.”

I use my free hand to unfasten the buttons along the placket of my shirt, effectively silencing her excuses. As I stretch the shirt open, her eyes drop to the tattoos, and her fragile breath caresses my skin.

Her shocked silence intensifies my hunger, and I bare my teeth as I clasp her hand and press her fingers to the sigil carved into my left pectoral—the design she saw in her dream.

She has seen most of the tattoos marking my body. Her dreams could be a manifestation of her obsessive desire to name me the Harbinger killer and her overworked psyche. A rational analysis.

Yet, when our suppressed desires fight to surface, they seek to take shape within any outlet, like the destructive force of water as it creates a new channel toward the ocean.

“I carved this into my skin the night of Wellington’s murder,” I say. “I know the meaning and the purpose, because every fucking day it won’t let me forget.”

Her curious gaze burns through me as she surrenders. “What is the mark?”

“The sigil for my muse.”

Her mouth parts, her hesitancy clogging the air between us. She doesn’t probe further. Because if she asks, then she has to decide what to do with the answer.

Before I release her, I take something for myself.

Slipping my hand from hers, I roll her sleeve back. I keep her braced in my hold as I push the cuff up her trembling arm. This time, she doesn’t deny me.

My fingers graze the rough, beveled scar tissue, but the injury she sustained during the wreck isn’t what has my heart thrashing my rig cage.