My hold on her wrists loosens, and she seizes the chance. She brings her balled fists down on my chest. Her hands slip against the rain and mud slicking my skin before I capture her arms and restrain her again, dropping my full weight on top of her.

Halen struggles for a second longer, then gives up the fight as those fierce orbs of silver alight on me. “The guilt I’m suffering isn’t for Wellington. It’s because of you, for what I’ve done to you. What I’ve made you. And now I’m complicit—you make me complicit in putting Devyn in danger, in every life that you’ve taken since that night together. Do you understand you could be put to death? You killed an FBI agent. God, I loathe you for making me care…for having someone to lose all over again. Fuck you to hell and back for that.”

The fire rages into an inferno behind her gaze, and goddamn, I’m entranced with my fiery siren of fury. “Fuck.”

“Did you hear what I fucking said?” She’s a vortex of wild emotions churning out of control as her gaze aims to pulverize me. “You’re already locked in a mental institution⁠—”

“Because you put me there⁠—”

“And you manipulated a dying woman⁠—”

“That I didn’t know was ill.” I secure my hold on her tighter. “But I would do it again. In a fucking heartbeat. To have you just like this beneath me, I would do it again and worse. I’m that sick and evil and twisted. Whatever label you want to slap on me, I will be that goddamn devil. You will always come first.”

The boom of thunder provokes fresh tears, and I trail my thumb down her lips, letting the pad taste her delectable melancholy. “You will never lose me,” I vow to her. My elbows dig into the mud as I palm her face, gently coaxing her eyes on me. “Look at me, Halen. There is nothing in this universe that can tear me away from you, not even death.”

A racked sob escapes her chest. “You can’t know that.”

My tongue glides over my bottom lip, tasting her riled emotions that threaten to consume her. That’s my job. I was made to consume her sweet heartache.

“Let me take the pain,” I whisper. “Let me take it for you.”

The softest sound escapes her, a sigh so gentle and sweet it aches. “We can’t do this. It’s madness.” She licks her lips to further torture me, then she lowers her arms to strike me with her fisted hands.

This time, I’m prepared, and I catch her forearms and link her bound wrists around my neck. “I promised you we’d talk until our breath gave out, but I’m entirely too famished, and this devil is going to feast.”

My mouth crashes against hers, and I hold her bound to me, kissing her deeply as I drain more of her fight.

As the storm darkens the sky, I unlink her arms from my neck and draw to my knees above her. I shed my soaked shirt, letting it drop to the ground as I stare down on her filthy, half-naked body. Before she can try to squirm away, I grip the waistband of her jeans and yank her pants down her thighs, tearing them to her ankles.

Her sharp cry travels straight to my groin. “God, you’re fucking crazy⁠—”

“You haven’t seen the bounds of my crazy, sweetness.” I bring her restrained ankles over my head and latch on to her hips. “We’re just getting started.”

Hoisting her hips off the ground, I lick a hard seam up her pussy, a damn deviant as I relish the divine taste of her. A low groan rumbles out as I breathe over her, a crooked smile stealing across my face at how wet she is.

“Tell me to taste you,” I demand.

“Not like this. Go to hell⁠—”

“Then you can curse me while you come in my mouth.” I suck her clit into the hollow of my mouth and flick my tongue over the sensitive flesh before I surround my mouth over her, and her back arches off the ground.

My fingers dig into her skin with bruising force as I hold on to her writhing hips. As the steady drizzle of rain patters our bodies, I indulge on her, my tongue a fiend invading her as I lap at her sweet arousal like a starved beast.

Untamed lust fires through my veins as I feel her already so close to shattering against me. “Do you still despise me?”

Struggling to capture a full breath, she says, “Yes.”

I smile against her. “I’m going to fill you so deeply, there’s no room to hate me.”

With an impatient groan, I shuck her boots off one at a time, then I have her jeans wrenched off her ankles and tossed to the mud. I spread her thighs wide, my fingers leaving bruising imprints as I hold her pinned to the earth.

I plant my hand in the center of her pelvis as her thighs clamp against my head, as if that will stop me from devouring my dirty girl. Then I eat her sweet pussy.

Twisting her arms, she successfully fights her wrists free of her shirt. Her dainty hands find my hair and she digs her fingers into the roots, her nails scraping at my scalp as she tries to escape. I let her tear her blunt little nails into me, savoring the delivery of her pain.

My hand fastened to the underside of her leg, I turn my attention to the sigil on the inside of her thigh. I sink my teeth into the mark, and the coppery taste of blood spills over my tongue. A feral growl works free as my inner beast demands to devour her until she’s thrashing against my hold.

“Do you still want to hurt me?” My tone is gruff as I restrain myself from taking her closer to that shattering edge.

She’s shaking, furious tears mixing with the rain as the droplets slide down her temples. “I want to claw your skin off.”

With one last selfish taste of her sweetness, I push to my knees. A wicked smile carves my face as I grab her ass and haul her forward. “Claw my fucking skin off, baby.”

The fiery venom in her eyes says she’s either about to fuck me or kill me. I’m obliged to let her do both, as long as she doesn’t deny me her touch.

The carving knife lay discarded in the mud, and I grab the weapon in one hand before I secure her wrist in my other. I press the hilt into her palm and close my hand around hers, our heated eyes locked.

The gray sky hangs over us like a threat, falling a shade darker than our desire as we kneel in the mud, bound by the charged current strung between us.

Stripped naked and trembling, Halen braces her free hand against the hard wall of my chest. “Kallum. You have to stop⁠—”

I latch on to the back of her neck and draw her face up to mine, my mouth descending on hers before she can crucify me with the lethal words poised on her lips.

The flat of the blade crushed between our bodies, she keeps her palm welded to my chest to hold me at bay. Her fingers skim the crescent, and I can feel the violent storm within her fragile walls.

“You know how to make this stop.” My nostrils flare as I grip her wrist tighter and move the tip of the knife over my sternum. The sharp point draws blood. “Aim for the heart. If you miss, I won’t ever stop coming for you.”

A tear streaks her abraded cheek, and I want to lap the salty wetness with my tongue, to taste her confronting that terrifying fear. It’s easier to run from the monster in front of us than face the one within.

Her fingers inch higher to cover the sigil, her desire charged so deeply into me I feel it with every aching breath. “That’s not what I want,” she whispers.

“What do you want?” I’ve asked this of her countless times, desperate for her answer. “What the hell do you desire, sweetness?” I cup my hand over hers, anchoring her to me. “God, please fucking tell me.”

The tears fall freely now, and when her silvery eyes flick up to capture mine, she might as well drive that knife through my damn heart.

“For you to have found me before my life fell apart,” she says around an uneven breath. She’s shivering, from the chilly air, her cresting emotions. “Before the death and the tragedy and the pain, and the endless void that I can’t find a way out of. Before I became…this. Why didn’t you find me before?”