Page 243 of Coal Hearts

All that fucking pressure.

All that bullshit at being better...it all collapsed inward.

My pace increased as I rode the woman who’d freed me.

My body sank into hers. Over and over. Driving in and out, relentless with primal pounding. The faster I fucked her, the more my mind became a smoking wasteland. A battleground where I’d slaughtered my past and stood victorious on the pile of my defeated bones.

I no longer needed such fragile, frivolous things.

I didn’t need them because...I was no longer human.

My lips pulled back as I sank on my heels and thrust up. Ily bounced in my hold as I jack-knifed into her again and again.

My eyes fell on the cuts I’d given her. No longer bleeding, her skin glowing angry and red. Each laceration looked like red liquorice—lashes of addictive bitter sugar just for me.

Falling on her neck, I tongued the small wound and groaned as her entire body shuddered against mine.

She didn’t speak. Didn’t react.

But I felt her.

Inside me.

Around me.

Her soul and her body, stealing all of me just like I’d stolen all of her.

“Fucking hell,” I groaned as every muscle clenched, climbing up that delirious mountain where bliss could turn a man mad.

My mouth hovered over Ily’s. Our lips parted, breaths mingling.

All it would take was a tip of my chin and I’d claim yet another piece.

A kiss.

A wet, deep, vicious kiss.

But...something stopped me.

Our eyes locked, scattering the urge and giving me a far more urgent one.

I begged to see her cry.

I wanted to drink down her sadness just like I’d drunk down her essence.

I needed her to cry.

To complete my transformation and ensure I never forgot just how untouchable I was. How utterly invincible I was now that I was me. The true me. The monster I could never quite tame.

Even as I thrust into her hard and fast, and her eyes glowed with unwanted pleasure, she withheld her grief. For the first time since we’d met, she had control over her sorrow, and it fucked me off that she denied me.

The longer I stared at her, the quicker our bodies collided.

Her teeth clamped into her bottom lip, and my forehead crashed on hers as I threw every shred of my hell-damned soul into this.

This moment of absolute awakening.

I’d never been so profoundly, so painfully aroused.