Rain fell harder, thunder rumbling in the distance, the storm regathering above us, almost as if it sensed me burning up, knowing that if it didn’t extinguish my rage I would self-combust and annihilate everything within my path.

Him.

God, how could I hate someone so much and be so drawn to them at the same time? How could I vibrate with longing and loathing?

It was sick.

It was twisted.

I despise it!

It would be the greatest pleasure to throw him off the cliff after my keys. Yet if he touched me the way he had before, I would melt. I would fight. I would beg. I would come.

Argh!

Oblivious to my inner breakdown, he raised his face to the rainy sky and sighed. “We need to get back to Fables, but I’m done being wet.” Pointing at my Jeep—my trusty, wonderful Jeep that he should never have known existed—he commanded, “Get inside. We’ll wait it out.”

And yeah...that was all I could handle.

Bound hands or not, he would pay for stealing my final chance at freedom.

“You bastard!” Throwing myself at him, I wedged my shoulder into his chest and bulldozed him to the muddy ground.

He crashed into the dirt, flat on his back, gasping as his lungs struggled to drink air.

I stood over him with rope-wrapped wrists.

The temptation to run while he was incapacitated came and went.

There would be no more running. He’d made sure of that. From now on, I had to stay. I was his, whether I liked it or not. But I wouldn’t make it easy for him. I wouldn’t let him keep barriers and shields between us.

He felt what I did when his cock was buried inside me.

I know he did.

He’d felt that punch to the heart, that utter destruction of everything inside, and until he admitted it, we were both as good as dead.

Raising my foot, I stomped directly over his demonic heart. Pressing my toes onto his rib cage, I added all my weight so he felt a fraction of the worry and wrongness that I did. I wanted to crush his heart. To stop its tattered beating until he was reborn a gentler, kinder version of himself.

I stomped harder.

Anger roared through me as the image of him tossing my keys into the darkness replayed over and over again.

“God!” I twisted my foot harder into his skin, needing to hurt him. Needing him to feel as wretched and as horrified as me.

In reflex, his hands latched around my ankle. His biceps bunched with the instinct to jerk and throw me off him. But...the second he touched me, the droplets ceased falling, the forest stopped splashing, and it was just us.

Us in terrifying silence.

Silence full of intimacy, sympathy, and worst of all...need.

His hands on me.

His fingers tightening around the paper-thin skin of my ankle.

I swayed as the chemicals in my blood made me useless and utterly incapable of being rational.

His hips rocked up, seeking. My belly clenched, answering.

Madness.

This is madness!

We were once again infected with madness.

The silence ended as quickly as it’d deafened us, returning to crashing rain and growling thunder. We shivered at the same time, leaving us at the mercy of lust.

His fingers glided up my calf, electricity sizzled from his skin to mine—lightning bolts between us instead of from the sky. My knees threatened to buckle beneath the desire to fight and fornicate.

His eyes turned heavy and hooded; his head shifting in the mud as his fingers crept higher.

A moan crawled up my throat as he traced around my knee.

His bare cock thickened, smeared in mud and rain, looking as if we’d both been animals of the woods for far longer than just a night.

Our gazes locked.

My breath caught.

And I was wrong when I’d thought there was more between us. More was such a lackluster word. More was a pittance to the truth.

What twined around us...what turned our heartbeats into battle songs and bodies into mindless desperation was pure necromancy. Magic that had the power to restore the dead, convene with past lives, and somehow stitch forgotten souls back together again.

His stomach flexed as he slowly sat up, guiding my foot down his chest until my dirty toes pressed against his cock instead of his heart.

His teeth bit into his lower lip as he rocked his hips against my sole, rubbing his hardness against me, uncaring of the filth, turned on by my hate, knowing as well as I did that our connection made no sense.

We couldn’t explain why we embraced violence instead of understanding. Why sex was easier than words. Why a single stare shared agonizing secrets that our lips would never utter.

Sitting in the mud, his long legs spread in front of him, he followed the contours of my calf with his fingers, slipping up and up, tracing from my knee to the back of my thigh.

I shivered.

I showed a weakness.

With a soft groan, he slid higher, grabbing my ass before planting both hands on either side of my hips. His fingers bruised me. His tongue licked where his teeth had indented his bottom lip, and whatever messed-up power between us destroyed everything.

He paused for a second.

A single second when his black eyes turned liquid with passion and pain. A second when he had the power to make my entire womb clench for him.

And then, he yanked me forward.

He jerked me so hard, I fell against him.

My bound hands landed on the top of his head for balance. I struggled in his imprisonment. I fought him, but he just held me firm. He nuzzled into my belly, all while I pulled his hair. He nipped my skin as I reared back.

He grunted as his mouth found my core, and I screamed for the third time.

He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t shy.

His tongue licked me, then fucked me. Spearing so deep, he hit my clit with his teeth, and his nose buried into my flesh.

I couldn’t stand.

He held me up as I broke.

His arms shook as he held me right where he wanted, plundering my pussy, his head bobbing between my legs, his fingernails digging cruelly into my hips.

He ate me as if he’d been there before. As if he knew our height would match, my pussy would welcome, and that I would come for him even harder than before.

His tongue drove me toward an edge that appeared without warning.

It was sharp and jagged, dangerous and full of warning.

If I fell off it—if I let him push me over the edge—what would happen at the bottom? Would I ever be able to walk again? Would I ever trust myself or believe in my inner compass of right and wrong?

“Christ, you taste good.” His tongue dived deeper, possessing every dark part of me. His teeth nipped, and his noises of need and desire shoved me higher, higher. “You taste like earth and me and every other dirty, delicious thing.”

The fact that we were filthy.

That he’d come inside me and now licked me clean.

It was disgusting. It was mind-blowing. It obliterated every boundary that ought to be maintained.

“Come.” His tongue swiped over my clit. “You owe me another.”

The first spindle of an orgasm sparked.

His tongue swept back to my entrance and fucked me faster, his hips thrusting up from the mud.

Another spool, another ripple, the final crest of something excruciating.

No

No.

The crash of a horrendous wave, the rapid unfurling of bliss.

NO!

“Stop!” I fell backward.

I threw myself at gravity’s mercy and tumbled out of his control.

He grunted as my body tore from his hands and his tongue slipped from my core. I closed my eyes, bracing myself for the fall, quaking with the desperate need to come.

Mud splattered me, my teeth clacked together, and I winced as I landed ungracefully on my ass with my hands bound in front of me.