Page 164 of Like Grim Death: Part One
I see a smile curve his lips, the inverted cross on his face rising upward.
Then he throws the lighter.
The car goes up in fucking flames, erupting with awhoosh,I can feel the heat from here.
I know he can too, but he only very slowly turns around, walking toward us, the backdrop of the blaze framing his tall, lean form like a halo.
When he reaches Ella, he slings his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his body. But it’s me he turns to and it’s me he’s talking to when he says, his eyes locked onto mine in the night, “Remember this. If you’re fucking with me or my woman, I’ll do the same shit to you,bro.”His eyes cut to Sid, and before he walks away with Ella, he adds, “Nice work,sis.”
I stareat him in the dark, the full moon filtering through our curtains. A cool breeze floats through the open window, and beyond it, I hear the howl of a coyote, answered by another. I’ve grown used to it since living here. Sometimes Mav smokes a joint on the screened-in porch, and I sit in his lap as we listen to the coyotes together.
“How do you know they’re not wolves?” I twist in his lap to meet his ice blue eyes. They’re kind, his lids heavy from the smoke drifting through his nose as he squeezes my hip, digging his fingers in.
“Wolves howl deeper. Longer.” He holds the lit cherry of his joint close to my bare thigh, only my underwear on as he keeps me in his lap, my legs dangling over his.
My breath catches as he gets closer. Less than an inch from my skin, I feel the small pinprick of heat.
“Mavy…”
His eyes lift to mine again. “Would you let me?” he asks quietly in the dark, and even the coyotes are silent to let the wolf speak.
I lean closer to him, threading my legs through the arm of the chair as he pulls the joint back so it doesn’t burn me. I wrap my arms around his neck and rest my head against his chest, hearing his slow and steady pulse beneath my ear as I look up, meeting his gaze.
“I’d let you do anything.”
He pulls me closer by my hip, his arm along my back. “I fucking love you, pretty girl.” Then he tosses the joint in the ashtray on the glass table beside his chair before he circles my throat with his hand and kisses me until I can’t breathe.
He’s on his side, his hands tucked under his pillow, knees pulled toward his chest. Almost like…he’s protecting himself. Before I woke, he had me against his chest too, but I moved slowly, disentangling myself from him.
When we got back inside, hours ago, he took a shower to wash all the blood off before he asked me again what I was doing outside.
I told him I was running, and it wasn’t really a lie.
I don’t know who was in The Madilyn upstairs, but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out, and when I got back to Corpus Avenue, it was Lucifer’s car I was suddenly face-to-face with.
Mavy took my answer, or else, he didn’t push me, but after what he did to the guy who held a gun to my head, and the car with all the corpses, he must have been exhausted because he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the bed. He told me it was some of RC’s men after them, and in the morning we’ll have to leave, but he didn’t explain exactly what went down.
I’m kind of used to it though. And after what he did for me, it’s not like I’m going to complain about anything.
Beyond the shock and horror, I felt something like lust watching him beat someone unrecognizable for me. Light up their car in flames.
It was fucking hot.
I lean against the headboard, my fingertips beneath the covers as I drift them over my cold skin, wincing when I feel the warm bruise on the side of my thigh. It’s the last one, all the others have healed, and even this one is only the palest yellow. I haven’t been summoned to Emily Cemetery lately, and I wonder if it’s over now.
I smile in the dark, letting my eyes drift closed as I listen to Mavy’s soft breathing. He only lets his guard down when he sleeps, and it feels good, sharing this bed with him and knowing he’s relaxed and getting rest andmine.
It almost felt good, after the first few hits, to watch him get all of his anger and frustration out on someone who deserved it. It was cathartic to him, and when Sid seemed like she would step in, I couldn’t let her.
Maverick needs a release too.
But even as I feel safe in bed with him, even as the car going up in flames plays over again inside my head, I can’t stop thinking about other things too.
Like Atlas’s words, on RC. I still don’t know if it was a warning or only a story. If he’s trying to educate me, in his own twisted way. And who was in the house? What if it was someone who came on the street tonight? What if Atlas is fucking everyone over in more ways than only the ones I know about?
I can’t let him do that. Not to Mavy, at least.
Sitting up straighter, I open my eyes. I swing my legs off the bed, slowly, like I did the first night me and Maverick met at Liber, after we had sex for the first time in the woods. It was everything I wanted it to be, and I’m not stupid enough to think sex is love, but it was something more than just fucking. It was like we let loose all of the twisted parts of ourselves, right there in the beginning. He gave me the attention I wanted, and I gave him a release.
