“I’m not here to kill you.”
His voice was strained as he ran a hand through his hair again, his body language too stiff, too controlled. He seemed genuine though, despite the hunger possessing his eyes. Actually, the way he responded, sounded almost like her suspicion was wounding.
“Then why are you here? Why would you leave me like you did just to come back? I don’t understand. Is this another one of your games? Are you just torturing me?” Her confusion and anger came out in her tone, shaking and rising in volume with each word.
“Please… Lower your voice.” Lyall warned, his eyes darting around as he listened to the men outside, and Cameron downstairs, to make sure they hadn’t heard.
Rowan took in a deep breath to level her shaking words. She spoke again, volume lowered but still pained. “I sacrificed everything to help you. And you just left, like it was nothing.”
“I thought it would be easier if I gave you a reason to hate me,” he countered in a quiet voice, his being far less confronting. It was almost timid, as if he was nervous that speaking would make her blow up.
It did.
“So why are you back? You got what you wanted from me. You’re free. Why couldn’t you stay gone with your stupid virus and let me hate you?”
She stepped away from the wall, towards him, forgetting all together why she was even scared of him in the first place. She didn’t see the hunger in his eyes, didn’t remember him tearing open William and drinking down his blood like water. All she knew was she’d let him hurt her, and now she wanted him to hurt also.
She advanced on him, a terrifying one hundred and ten pounds of feeble human being, but there was a ferocity behind her that made her feel powerful despite her disadvantage. The angry tears in her eyes blurred her vision just enough to make him look like the monster she needed him to be, a demon that used her up and left her alone, left her behind. She hit him as hard as she could, on his chest, and then his stomach and collar, knowing it was doing nothing but needing desperately to feel something after going so numb.
When Rowan finally did feel something, it was all at once. Her explosive anger dissolved into stifled sobs as her chest swelled in pain, tears escaping from her angry eyes and running down her face, muttering incoherently about how much she hated him. Hated him for all the times he scared her breathless, messed with her head, fed her lies. Hated him for making her care.
She hit him until her punches became weak shoves, sending her wobbling on her feet rather than moving him. She hit him until she couldn’t see through the tears in her eyes anymore, and she swung at the air as much as she was at him. She hit him until he stopped her, grabbing her thin wrist and fending off her struggling until she couldn’t fight anymore, collapsing into his hold on her, her fisted fingers now curled around his shirt instead.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to think anymore. I don’t know what was real. You weren’t supposed to come back. Coming back means… It means…”
It was the feeling of his heart that made Rowan realize how close they were. They’d never been so close for her to have noticed. Not like this at least. Without anyone spying from behind a glass wall. Just the two of them, in the dark, her own heart pounding wildly in her chest, mimicking the rhythm of his as it raced in his ribcage, under her palm. It was his fingers, electric digits loosening from her wrist and trailing slow up the skin of her arm, that made her realize they’d never touched like this. Not without it being part of a show. A mask.
Except for once, his hand tangled with hers on the floor, making her realize for the first time how tangible he was. How real he was. How real this was. The touch that made her think maybe he was more than just the hunger in his eyes.
His touch, trailing static up her neck, thumbs swiping at the tears on her face, pulling her head back from his chest. Rowan let out the breath she had been holding, her shoulders sinking in relieved tension, not realizing how badly she’d been aching for this. Letting her eyes open again to finally look up at him, she admitted defeat to the words she tried so hard to keep out of her head all night.
If he came back, maybe it meant he came back for her.
Through the gleam of her wet lashes, she met his possessed, black-hole pupils, sucking her exhale from her lungs, instant panic washing over her like ice cold water. She was wrong. He hadn’t come back for her. He’d come back for a last meal. The look in his eyes said so.
She stiffened, and so did he, pushing closer so she found the wall again, the fingers cradled around her jaw reaching up into her hair and pulling her head back further, stretching her neck long. Rowan gasped, finding strength again to grip at his wrists, her voice shaking as she managed out a whispered beg.
“Lyall, pleas—”
But he interrupted with his lips, taking hers with hungry intention, and the grip in her hair that Rowan had been resisting ending up being the only thing keeping her on her feet.
Catching herself on his shirt after her knees buckled, Rowan attempted a noise of protest, but it dissolved in her throat and came out as something much closer to pleasure, sagging her eyes shut in surrender.
Rowan wasn’t sure when things begun building to this moment. When her fear turned into desire. When the uncomfortable crawl under her skin had shifted to a burn. How long had she ached with this need? Was it when he first whispered in her ear and brought a chill instead of a tremor of fear? Was it in the dark, a glass wall between them, when all she wanted to do was reach out and for once touch his warm flesh and not the cold barrier between them?
Whenever it started, Rowan didn’t have the sense to stop it now. Lyall pushed to part her lips, a desperate exhale to her mouth that breathed life back into her shocked body, intoxicating her with the taste of his tongue; metallic and pain and a certain indescribable wildness, leaving her hungry for more. So she reached, leaned closer, begged for some grounding for her suddenly spinning head, and instead of steadying her, he took her legs away completely, leading them up around his hips to pin her between himself and the wall, deepening his kiss when she gasped at the new closeness of their bodies.
This was foolish. Dangerous. Selfish. She knew it, and was only reminded when he parted from her lips to catch a breath, and it was clear in his roving eyes, still wide and black with the same starvation he arrived with as they jumped over the details of her face. Her instinct told her to push him away, but her fingers gripped at the fabric of the sweater that wasn’t his.
“You’re too hungry...” she said, unable to manage more than a weak, whispered protest.
He gave a breathy laugh, countering her words by pushing closer, punishing her for letting some sense filter through her foggy brain. “I’m hungry, but not for your blood.” She felt the words against her lips before he took them again.
She didn’t question it anymore. Because his fingers — the ones he strangled her with, painted blood across her face, tangled in hers — they traced fire along her bare skin now. At her thighs, along her hips, up under her shirt. His lips — stained red more often than not — whispered along the length of her throat, teasing the tender flesh with the same teeth she’d watched tear open a man, causing a hot assault of goosebumps down her arms. Those wide, black pupils, that had only ever looked at her like something he would eventually devour, begged her permission to do just that.
Is this what the virus was like? Ravenous, insatiable, primal. Rowan imagined in that moment she had an idea of what it was like to be him. To be starved of something she hadn’t realized she needed. To lose herself to the dangerous and demanding thing twisting hot and hungry inside of her. To give in.
Rowan’s fingers fumbled with the fever in her belly, with the need to be closer, pushing those too-loose jeans from his hips as he dared to unwrap her too. He shoved her freshly stripped spine flush to the frigid wall in another kiss, steady hands snaking across newly exposed skin, stealing her breath, setting a fire in her as he pressed their bodies tight together, closer, closer, until he smothered he
r cry with searing lips.
Chapter Twenty-Four
They found their senses again. Eventually. Cleared their weighted, cotton-filled heads with hungry, panting breaths after collapsing together on Rowan’s mattress, tangled limbs and tired, heavy eyes. It was another million seconds before they spoke, though, Rowan preferring to listen to the steady, echoing pound of her heart in her ears as it came down from its peak.
When she finally broke the silence, with a moan in her throat that sounded more like a purr of pleasure, Lyall let his lips curl up into an exhausted, but noticeably wicked grin.
“Who exactly did you say was too hungry?” he asked, peeking at her from the corner of his eye with a pointed look, his pupils still dilated in the low light but significantly less possessed.
She gave a sheepish laugh in response, rolling over to her side to bury her flushed face into her sheets as she responded. “If that’s all you came back for, why didn’t you just say so?”
Rowan bit at her lip when he responded with a playfully dangerous noise in his throat, rolling over also to bring his nose to her hair. “That wasn’t part of the plan.” He paused for a moment, humming lips at her hairline when she shift closer, then added on a slightly more somber note, “None of this was really part of the plan. Coming back.”
The angry ache in her heart drowned out by her desire came raging back. She tried to not let it take over though, and the sound of his smooth breathing helped a little. She waited a moment before responding, “Why… why did you come back?” She would have been alright, left behind to hate him.
Now though, the thought of him leaving again pressed down on her chest, heavy and suffocating.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, Lyall stretched the silence until Rowan shifted to gaze up at him, catching a flash of shame across his face as he finally answered. “I didn’t know where else to go. I was so hungry.”
Rowan frowned hard, replying with a tone sharper than she intended. “Did you only come back for my blo—”
Immediately he protested, shaking his head and bringing hands up to circle her jaw, leading her eyes up to his. “No, that wasn’t it.” Still, the answer seemed weak, like there was something more he wasn’t saying, leaving Rowan with her throat tight.
“Why didn’t you just kil—” She stopped, that word sticking in her throat and forcing her to think of one less terrible to say. “Why didn’t you just feed on someone?”
He’d sighed at her question, shifting closer so his forehead met hers, and she felt it contort in struggle, trying to find the words. Instead, he kissed her first, smooth and sultry, nearly making her forget what they were talking about all together. It was only when he offered a response to her lips that she remembered they’d been having a conversation.
“I didn’t want to. I knew I didn’t want blood.”
Rowan sighed to his lips, trying to understand, the heat he left in her skull making it more difficult. “You’re starving, Lyall. You need to eat.”
He kissed her again to silence her, before giving a firm growl against her lips, like a warning not to argue again. “I am starving. But it feels good to refuse the hunger.”
She didn’t speak again, instead shaking her head to beg for elaboration. He sighed, raising himself up to sit and run a hand through his hair. Rowan shifted to follow, leaning her shoulder to his but staying quiet as he took a moment to sort through his thoughts.
“Being locked up in that room was the first time in my life I’ve been forced to control the hunger. I thought I was choosing to kill people, because it was always so satisfying, because I always wanted to. I just, accepted that as my truth. But in that room, for once I wanted something else more than I wanted to feed the hunger. I just wanted out, and you gave me an opportunity to get out. I just had to do the one thing I’d never had to do before. Control my hunger.”
He’d gotten somber with his explanation, the air thickening between them, so Rowan tried to tease to lighten the topic. She brushed her shoulder against his, her lips to his skin in a tender gesture before joking, “It didn’t seem very difficult. You played with me the moment I walked into that room the first time. I felt like a mouse being batted around by a cat.”
Lyall laughed a little, denial on his tone even as his lips curled up. Perhaps deciding it had been too long since he’d instilled a little terror in her bones, he leaned closer to sigh to her ear, “I was still so hungry that day, I had every intention of making you my last meal if I wanted it badly enough.”
His lips stretched into a wicked grin when Rowan exhaled, fighting her hand away when she went to shove him, catching her around the nape of her neck and teasing his lips away from her ear and along her jaw until her sharpened edges softened. If she thought he was persuasive when there was glass between them, now she was like putty in his fingers.
He continued when Rowan settled again thanks to his wordless cohersion. “I refused myself the satisfaction of killing for once, though. And it made me feel… More powerful than ever. Every time you visited, I pushed myself a little further, at your expense. I didn’t lie when I said I used you, for my own personal experiment, and I’m sorry. But I also learned so much about myself. How it felt to be that hungry, to really experience it for the first time, and control it. The more I was able to control it, the less consuming the hunger felt. I mean, I had a guard right there in my hands, completely ready to give in, but I managed to stop. And it felt amazing to stop. It felt like I was completely in control finally, not the virus.
“But then after escaping today, the hunger hit me so hard. It was all I could think about. I could take anyone, anywhere, anytime, and no one could stop me, and I was starving. I didn’t want to give in again so soon, but it felt like it was taking over.”
Rowan hummed with understanding, banishing his need to continue, and offer a reluctant surrender. “You have to eat sometime, Lyall, or else it will take over eventually. I can give yo—”
“No!” This time, his tone was a little more than just teasing after his outburst, immediately cutting Rowan’s words short in her throat. His sharp eyes lowered right away though, softening in regret as he added. “I’m sorry. I just… I don’t want to. Not yet. I didn’t come back for your blood, Rowan. I just knew I needed something… A distraction. It was always so easy to control the hunger around you.”
She let the silence sit for a moment to allow the tension to simmer off the air, before giving another little noise in her throat, trying to bring some playfulness back into the moment.
“I distract you?” she asked, while shifting a little closer so she could return his earlier teasing, bringing her lips to the tender skin under his ear, grinning when he leaned his head ever so slightly to encourage her to continue. She paused instead, to add another consideration. “I’m not entirely sure what it was about me you found so distracting.”
The pleasant noise she could sense building in his throat turned into another warning growl. “I can think of a few things,” he said, letting her taunt for a moment longer before being unable to keep himself from retaliating.
She fought, but Lyall had her pinned under him without much effort, Rowan covering her mouth to stifle a uncharacteristically feminine fit of giggles. Once on her back, he replaced her hand with his lips, tasting, tugging, teasing her laughter down, until it dissolved into begging, mercy noises against his teeth.
Finally giving her some air by roaming his torture down to her neck instead, Rowan offered some taunting of her own through her breathless lungs. “How’s the appetite now?” If it wasn’t for her pounding heart and hot, foggy head, she’d maybe be slightly more concerned about his grinning lips against her throat.
“I’m not sure,” he whispered wickedly, and when she stifled a giggle he held her down more firmly and buried his face deeper into her neck and inhaling, forcing her to bite her tongue to keep the laughter at bay. Tickling her ear with another breath, he added, “I might need a little more distracting, you smell terribly
tempting right now.”
“That’s just what you say to all your snacks.” Rowan joked, squirming under his roaming hands, forcing him to pin hers down above her head to settle her wrestling. Continuing his torture, Lyall returned his lips to her skin, down from her neck to her collarbone, only making the rise and fall of her chest even more difficult to settle.
When he inhaled her scent again, it was after Rowan had been wooed away from her wild giggles and dragged down into hot desire again. He hummed with the draw of her scent, but instead of a teasing comment, he groaned against her skin this time.
“Seriously, why do you smell like that?”
The words did not completely filter through the fog in her head at first, lost in the wonderful fire of his lips on her flesh. It was his fingers tangled with hers, gripping tighter, nearing the point of uncomfortable, that finally had her giving a curious noise. “Smell like what?”
He released her hands and instead wrapped an arm around her waist firmly as she questioned him, arching her up off the bed to hold her against him, her heavy, dizzy head falling back and exposing her neck further. Rowan heard him give a pleasurable groan, like he was extremely satisfied with the sight he’d just presented himself, but the sound of it soured as a note of frustration slipped in when he inhaled again.
When he answered her, his voice dropped noticeably from tauntingly husky to breathy and strained. “Like… Like you’d taste as good as the sex felt.”
Something about his tone and his hand gripping the fabric of her shirt at her spine sobered Rowan up a little, and she tried to work through her lingering afterglow to figure out what would be driving him so crazy. A plausible answer hit her immediately, as she reminded herself of all the other things he could smell on her, like the adrenaline during the escape, the antiviral when it dirtied her veins, pinpointing her blood type itself by the particular fragrance. It remained very possible that if he could smell all those things, he could probably also smell hormones, like the ones produced during certain pleasurable activities.
Pulse Page 21