Page 50 of Obliterated
I shake the thought off hard, jaw locking. Can’t handle that atop of this bullshit as well. My fingers twitch to grab Whisper, hungry, aching for something to cut. The urge crawls under my skin, coiled and restless, demanding blood.
I need the forest. I need the night. I need thedead.
Sometimes it gets like this… This obsessive need, this burn clawing up through my chest like fire ants under the skin.
Antisocial. Narcissistic. Sociopathic.
Always those fucking words, hissing in the back of my skull. Words I choose not to believe. Not anymore.
You’re no monster, Max. You’re mine.
I can feel. I can care. Idofucking care. That’s something I can’t deny anymore, no matter how much I try.
Courtesy of Kee. Of golden curls and soft whispers in the night.
But sometimes… sometimes those diagnostics fit too well. Sometimes the itch gets too sharp, like a blade pressed against bone. Sometimes the urge to snap skin and crack tendons runs so deep it’s all I can think about.
And I need to let itout.
My head twitches, like a dog trying to shake off fleas. As if I could rattle the urge loose, fling it into the dirt, and walk away clean. But it doesn’t work like that. The itch doesn’t drain out unless I bleed it out first. Unless I feed it. Burn it down to nothing in screams and torn flesh.
“Just go,” Tass whispers. “I got it.”
I nod once, jaw tight, and push off from the bar. The bar is a haze of smoke and spilled drinks, voices that are too loud, too close, following me. My skin crawls. Every sound fucking scrapes.
And then my attention drifts back to him.
Where he’s still on my stool, my Kee, and I move to him before I think.
“I need to go,” I tell him when I step in between his spread knees, so close he needs to tilt his head up to look me in the eye. My voice’s rough and clipped. “I can’t explain now. Later.”
His lips part, a question lingering there, but I don’t let it out. My hand slides up, fingers curling around his throat, his hot pulse hammering against my palm.
I tip his head back until his neck strains, bared, pale against my tatted fingers. He makes a startled sound in his chest, half protest, most of it surrender, but he doesn’t fight me.
Especially not when I bend lower.
My mouth hovers, brushes. Lips grazing his like I’m testing the shape of him.
Gods, how I would love to taste him again, and again, and all over.
The flutter becomes pressure, and I feel him soften beneath me, becoming pliant. I feel the gasp tear free of him and break against my mouth.
My thumb circles the insistentthump-thump-thumpat his throat, steady and frantic at the same time. Every beat pounds into me, feeds that itch, redirects it, twists it into something hotter, hungrier.
I can’t help but graze his lips once, twice with my own, my tongue gliding against that plump lower lip for just a second, earning me a full body shiver from the one that buried his way into me.
“Oh shit, that’s hot,” Sami mutters somewhere close, but I don’t even glance his way. Don’t focus on the fact the bar has gone quiet. Again.
I don’t give a fuck that they’re watching. Let them watch. Let them all watch me lay my claim. He’s mine, and if another man,anotherperson,so much as breathes near him, I’ll tear that breath right out of their lungs.
Kieran’s hands twitch uselessly in his lap, itching to cling me to him, to keep me here. His chest rises too fast, breath hitched and shallow, like he’s afraid even to breathe. His eyes blink open and find mine, wide and glassy, and fuck if I don’t want to drown in that ocean.
“Stay with them,” I murmur against his lips, voice low, raw, final. “They’re safe. I’ll be back soon.”
I kiss him once, hard, my lips fitting perfectly against his, and let go. His head falls forward a fraction, breath rushing out like I knocked it clean from him. He looks up at me like I’ve just torn the ground out from under his feet.
And maybe I have.
