I swirl my fingers over the soaked material, a guttural curse wrenched free as I confirm how aroused her fear makes her. I have her in my arms and pressed to the stone wall, my need to taste her unleashed. Her moans turn breathy under my fierce demand as I trap her wrists against the stone, my body pinned to hers as I greedily devour her sounds.

She turns her head to drag in a breath. “Kallum⁠—”

“I should have never stopped kissing you,” I say, the confession dredged from the vile depths of me. “I should have taken you to bed and made love to you until you could no longer comprehend the meaning of shame.” I draw in air past my constricted lungs. “I should have never left you that night.”

Eyes wide and cast upward, her gaze solders to mine. Freeing a wrist, she places her hand on my chest. With her index finger, she gingerly traces the crescent she carved into my flesh to inflame it further. “I don’t know why I ran away,” she admits.

Moving her hand to my face, she kisses me slowly, tenderly, answering my suspicion. While Halen has recovered most of her memory, there’s still a vital piece missing.

A selfish part of me wants to accept the gift of her selective memory, but that’s not how this works. As time passes, she’s going to suffer her guilt more acutely.

When she attempts to pull away, I kiss her harder, brutally stealing her breath to make it my own, as if I can siphon her grief. Everything between us has been topical, a calm but fragile surface with delicate banter and traces of passion to mask the dark and torrid vortex beneath.

Only when she’s breathless and gasping against my mouth do I break off. “So I’m going to keep kissing you,” I swear to her. “I’m going to keep touching you, and making love to you, and fucking you, until I exorcize the shame you’re suffering from every cell of your body, even if I have to exhaust you in the process.”

I’d eat every bit of it for her if only she’d let me.

She latches on to my shirt, clenching the material in her slender hands. “None of it was your fault.” Her swallow is painful. “I wasn’t able to solve their case, and that pain… I don’t know. If I could’ve found the person responsible, then I wouldn’t have been so obsessed with the Harbinger. I needed someone to punish.” She shakes her head, hiding her eyes. “I’m the one who lost touch with reality long before that night.”

Her parents. The tragic accident that left her with no family, and no one to punish for that crime. The very first tipped domino.

“But I can’t go back there,” she says, and I’m unsure if she’s referring to the physical place or the hell inside her mind. “Just…touch me. Keep touching me until I shatter. God, make me feel anything else.”

A primal growl tears free, and I have her insufferable skirt hiked up her thighs before I push a hand beneath the hem to feel her, wet and ready for me, the thin fabric of her panties dangerously close to being shred right along with my restraint.

“I’ll give you anything you ask of me. Just don’t disappear.” I breathe the words across her lips before I recapture her mouth.

While sparks of light rain down like falling celestials from the darkest court of heaven, I feast on my own fallen angel, devouring her sin with each greedy, lust-filled kiss.

Fuck, I’ll be the one to commit every deadly sin to keep her mine.

Our tongues tangle and lash with each heated exchange of breath. Our touches become desperate, fighting to be closer. She has my overcoat pushed off my shoulders and the buttons of my Oxford pried open so she can flatten her palm over the crescent, ratcheting my heart rate to the climbing beat of a drum.

And fuck, she’s soaking her panties as I rub her, coaxing me to intrusively push at the barrier, the soft give of her pussy driving me right out of my damn mind. I tug the elastic away from her body and slip my hand under the fabric, my fingers seeking the perfect center of her.

She gasps over my mouth as I pinch her clit between the slat of my fingers. Her blunt nails track across my skin before she pushes against my chest for leverage as she provocatively works her hips to shred my sanity. She rides my hand so fucking sexy, grinding her clit against the heel of my palm as I plunge two fingers inside her cunt.

Jaw clenched, I brace one hand on the wall above her head and fuck her pussy with my fingers, my cock straining against the closure of my pants at the seductive feel of her arousal. Her scent torturously invades my system as her inner walls tighten around my fingers, warning how close she is to breaking, and I can’t take my eyes off the erotic way she’s rolling her hips.

“Fuck, so fucking sexy,” I grit out between gnashed teeth. “Do you want to come on my fingers or my cock?” I demand, my voice gravel.

Her heated gaze snares mine. “I want your cock.”

“Christ…” Untamed need unfurls in my veins, and I swear she’s already incinerated the last of my control until she tugs at the clasp of my slacks, and I come undone.

With pained effort, I take a deliberate step back, chin tipped up as I tear the belt buckle open and lower the zipper, issuing a silent command. Beautifully disheveled, Halen pushes off the wall, her hand finding my pants before she takes me out. Her soft palm fisting my cock is such sweet torture, I bite off a growl.

As I capture her mouth, tasting her exquisite mix of sin and virtue, the buzz of her phone sounds out in an infuriating disruption.

Breaking away, she breathes a curse as she kneels and digs out the device from her bag. I glimpse the Briar Institute on the screen, and a hit of fury spikes my bloodstream.

Fucking bastard.

Rationally speaking, we can never identify the precise moment insanity overtakes our mind, as we’re already gripped by madness. But by then, we are also too possessed by our desire to suffer any remorse for what we’ve had to do to obtain it.

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5

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SHADOWS

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KALLUM

As Halen’s phone vibrates with an annoying buzz, she stares at the screen, her thumb hovering between Decline and Accept.

Composure all but stripped, I confiscate the device and send the call to voicemail.

“Dr. Torres has been trying to contact me,” she says. “I should find out what he wants.”

And I should have had Torres stab his jugular instead of his hand.

I drop the phone on her bag, tempted to crush it beneath my boot. Instead, I let my hands fall to the wall on either side of her, brazenly settling my cock against her belly. “Maybe the good doctor wants to retain your services. You do seem to have a thing for psychos.”

Her glare is disapproving, but beneath that obvious reaction, a hint of doubt crests.

With a forced breath, Halen places her palms to my chest and steps around me, digging the loss of her deeper as she cautiously eases toward the railing but stops a safe distance away. “We’re too exposed up here. There’s not enough shadow to hide us.”

Despite her avoidance, I sense her torn emotions. My dark muse is in there, yet as always, she just needs to be pushed past the edge.

“I don’t need the shadows to make you come.” I press up against her and wrap my arm around her waist, forcing her toward the railing.

“Kallum—”

Her fear spikes my adrenals, dosing me with a pure fucking hit to render me drugged. I grab her hands and anchor her palms to the cool iron, trapping her between my body and the bars.

“Keep your eyes right there,” I command her, “on the constellation Perseus.”