Page 79 of Griffin Undone
She didn’t even seem to be aware of what had happened, writhing beneath me in desperation. “Arik, take me.” Greedy hands circled my shoulders to pull me closer. “I need it. I need you.”
And though I loathed admitting it, I had no choice.I need you too.
I bore her back into the softness of the mattress with my heavy weight. Slim legs wrapped tight around my hips. Slender fingers looped around my neck and pulled my lips to hers. She opened her mouth and took me in; her kiss sent hot lava running through my veins.
Easing my weight onto one arm, I hooked the other under her knee and lifted. The head of my cock pushed inside, and I kept going, taking her, watching as her head went back and her spine bowed and her face displayed every nuance of emotion. The thrusting that took over my body shot fire through us both. She was hot and wet around me, clamping down to hold me inside, testing the lengths of my too-ragged control, and still I maintained the rhythm until all at once, with a second surge of heated power, Kat forced our bodies so tightly together that they melded into one and, with a hard clamp of her sheath around me, sent us both soaring straight over the edge into oblivion.
“Arik!”
The blinding force of my body’s convulsions took over. They were a terrible pleasure, blowing me apart, scattering the pieces until only Kat held me together. My shout echoed hers, keening through the air as we both struggled between the ecstasy and the agony.
Time coalesced into a single moment, and in that moment Kat felt right. This felt right.
And terrifying. Just…terrifying. Because no matter what our bodies felt, I couldn’t give her my soul. If I even had a soul to give.
It was that terror that filled my tongue when the moment had passed, when I pulled out to settle next to her, to stare into eyes looking at me with something far too disturbing to identify. I opened my mouth, not sure what I planned to say, and heard myself utter the wheezing, completely senseless words, “Well, looks like we’ve made some progress.”
ChapterThirty-Four
Kat
Atraining session. That’s what Arik had told me, but the longer I waited in this cold, dark, empty lot behind what used to be a big-box store, the more I began to wonder exactly what kind of training session he had in mind. The faint sound of traffic somewhere in the distance accompanied the rough chop of my breath, the staccato rhythm a hard accompaniment to the beat of my heart. A couple of streets over, a siren wailed a complaint. Shadows shifted and shivered in the distant reaches of the broken-up asphalt surrounding me, and I swore hungry eyes tracked me as I paced back and forth across the abandoned loading dock.
Something wasn’t right. I knew it, felt the wrongness on the frigid air, but what it was, I couldn’t be sure.
It didn’t help that my body felt as alien as the night did. I’d tapped into something while making love to Arik that I’d never felt before, a swell of calm power that flowed under the direction of my mind instead of the jerking stop-and-start I’d been experiencing for weeks. Now that buzz was ever-present, humming under my skin, a presence both foreign and familiar. Add to that the shadowing filling my muscles with Arik’s strength, begging to be used, and I was as jumpy as a cat in a roomful of dogs.
I didn’t even want to think about how we’d strengthened the shadowing. If I did, I’d never be able to concentrate on what Arik wanted from me tonight.
With a full-body shiver, I turned to retrace my steps and froze at the sight of glowing amber eyes racing across the hundred yards of empty lot toward me. Even before my weaker eyes could discern the details of his body, Arik’s gaze caught and held mine, the beauty of that gold light in the darkness at once awe-inspiring and chilling. This was the male that had shared my body. The male I loved.
The male who freely admitted he was using me.Looks like we’ve made some progress.Those words had come immediately after the most intimate moment I’d ever spent with another human being. Don’t get me wrong, I understood that Arik didn’t love me, that everything he was putting me through was all for a good cause, or so he said. A cause that was more important to him than I was. I should escape, find Sun, Grim, find out if Arik was telling me the whole truth.
So why was I still standing here?
Because you’re weak.
Denying that truth was impossible. I knew what I needed to do, knew what was best—for me and, if I could bring Sun and Grim into this fight, probably for Arik in the long run—but then there was the other part of me, the part that soaked up every moment of tenderness that had passed between us since we’d made love for the first time a few short days ago. Some small portion of my heart begged for just a few more memories before the ruthlessness in him forced me to flee. Before he opened his mouth and flayed me alive one last time.
Just one more day. Two. He can’t set you on Maddox that soon. You’ve got time.Time with Arik, time I’d never get back once I walked out that door, the door that could no longer hold me in. Time I wanted desperately never to end. Yes, he could be an asshole, but when we were together without all the Archai war and revenge stuff between us, when Arik touched me, I felt whole. Leaving that behind was…well, harder than I’d realized it would be.
But as much as I wanted him, war and revenge were a very real part of our relationship—maybe most of our relationship on Arik’s side—and my self-respect wouldn’t consider any other option but leaving.
Arik was upon me in seconds, barely breathing heavy as he took the leap up to the dock without hesitation and caught my arms in a firm grip. “Come on, Kat. There’s not much time.”
“Time for what? What is going on here, Arik?” That sense of something wrong grew into a tidal wave, swamping my senses as he pulled me down the steps onto the asphalt. “Arik!”
He jerked around to face me. “It’s time to take the next step. You’ve found your skill; now you have to use it.”
Crap. “No. No!” I’d practiced with bottles, bags, logs… I had the terrible feeling that Arik wasn’t talking inanimate objects here. “I thought we were training.”
“We are, just…not alone.” He threw a glowing glance toward the area where he’d jumped the fence. “You need this. There’s nothing like real-world training to force you to improve your skills. I know, it’s how I trained myself, but I can’t have you fighting me full-out and accidentally taking me down.”
“Why not?”
He acknowledged my sarcasm with an arched brow. “You need an opponent you don’t have to hold back with. You need to understand how to control your power in a real fight, not just against a punching bag.”
“I already lived through one real-world test, with Maddox, remember? I do not want to try another.”
