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One can only hope. I turn and bolt—
And crash into another body with the force of a battering ram.
I barely have timeto think. We both go flying to the ground. I throw my arm out to catch myself and my elbow collides with a protruding root as I land on my stomach with a yell of shock and pain. The body at my side is already springing up. I roll into a crouch and launch myself back up. A hand grabs my ankle, and I’m yanked back by my leg, falling forward onto my chest.
Luca throws himself on top of me before I can even move. The weight of his body lands on mine, crushing me between him and the muddy forest ground beneath us. Pine needles prick into my skin through my dress, and then I feel Luca wrapping my ponytail around his fist before pulling hard, forcing my head back.
The edge of his mask digs into my cheek as he says in my ear, “Got you.”
“No youdon’t!”
I buck under him, trying to throw him off, but he’s heavier than he seems. I don’t know why his strength is always a surpriseto me, but it is. Maybe if he didn’t look so pale and sickly all the time it wouldn’t be.
“I have you,” Luca says against my ear, his weight anchoring me to the ground. “Ihaveyou, Lynch. You’remine. Don’t you get it?”
There’s a fervour in his voice that makes me shiver with strange dread. Luca is in that sort of mood, that sort of mood where it feels like he’d love nothing more than to cut out the heart from my chest just so that he could fit it in a porcelain cabinet somewhere inside his own ribcage.
I feel him move above me, and then he flips me roughly around, settling his weight on my stomach, pinning me in place. His fingers close around my jaw, and the devil mask is a nightmarish vision in the blur of shadows and rain.
“That restless fucking mouth of yours, those poison eyes.Mine. That body, that skin, those scars. Those pretty tits and that perfect cunt,all mine.” His voice is so raw and harsh it barely sounds human, and for a second, I find myself wondering if he actually is the devil after all.
“You’ve lost it,” I sneer up at him. “Must be the angel costume. Knew it would drive you mad.”
“Youdrive me mad.” He thrusts his hips between my legs, forcing me to spread my thighs, and then rearing up his upper body, forcing me up against him, one arm snaking around my waist and pulling tight. “You’re fucking poison, Lynch, and I want to inject you straight into my veins.”
He tries to catch my mouth in a kiss, but I catch him by his shoulders, pushing him back. “Even if it meant I killed you?”
He laughs, dark and wild. “You are meant to kill me. Don’t you get it? There’s only one way this thing between us will ever end. Either you kill me or I kill you.”
“Or you end the contract,” I reply roughly, trying to push him away, wondering what it’ll take to calm him down, to snap him out of this mad fervour.
But Luca doesn’t let me. Instead of moving back, he rears forward, sending me backwards onto my back once more, the earth cold and wet beneath me. He looks down at me, eyes gleaming like silver splinters through the slits in the red mask.
“You’ve signed the devil’s book, Lynch. You’re not getting out of it.”
“End the contract, Luca.” My voice is softer this time. I reach up, sliding my hand up his neck. “End the contract and ask me out like a normal fucking person.”
Sliding my thumb under the edge of the mask, I pull it loose and let it fall from his head. Underneath it, Luca’s face is pale as a ghost’s, his features pulled into a grim solemnity that sends an ache in my chest and a shudder through my body.
Without his mask, he looks like what he really is: a young man, beautiful like a marble statue, as scared and hungry and full of want as any other human being in this world.
“People like us don’t ask each other out,” he tells me. “People like us don’ttextanddateand get fuckingmarried.”
“You crazy fucker.” I grab his face in my hand, pull him down to me. “Guess what—there’s no such thing as people like us. There’s just people. You’re not the devil, Luca, and I’m not your deadly nightshade. You’re just a man, and I’m just a woman. If you want me,earn me.”
He laughs, but it’s a hollow sound, bereft of amusement. He takes my face in his hand, imitating my gesture, and our faces are so close I can feel the heat of his breath on my mouth, even through the ice-cold sheet of rain.
“You’d never have me.”
It’s my turn to laugh. “Probably not. I might be vermin from Greenleigh, but I still deserve better than some pampered inbred mummy’s boy with a god compl—”
Luca doesn’t let me finish my sentence. His mouth is on mine, my insults stifled by his tongue. He kisses me wet and open-mouthed, so sloppy for a guy so obsessed with hygiene and tidiness. He kisses me messy and loud in the rain, sucking at my lips, and he rips my panties off with the impatience of a starved animal.
His mouth moves to my neck, where he sucks hard, almost hard enough to hurt, and then I feel the blunt pressure of his cock, and then he thrusts inside me, all at once, drawing a cry from me.
“Fuck, Luca—wait—” I pant in his ear.
“No.” His voice is a low growl, his tongue laps at the sore spot he’s been sucking on my neck. “I want to come inside you. I want to make you so fucking dirty with me. I want to make a mess out of you, poison, just like you’ve made a mess out of my life.”
