Page 61 of Dukes of Peril

I stay still and expressionless, not needing her to remind me. That night in the rain might as well be tattooed into my flesh, a million pinpricks of light. Sometimes, I swear I can hear thunder in the distance, two celestial bodies meeting, as if we’d given a part of that moment to the universe to hold close, just in case we lost it.

“Once we do this, there’s no going back, Vinny. This will make you mine. Not just your body. Not just because you're my Duchess. You understand, don’t you?”

I couldn’t say the words back then, didn’t know how to articulate a request so big and indefinable. I wanted the essence of her. The spark in her eyes. The fight in her heart. The pain of her touch.

I wanted her soul.

“Take it.”

Jesus Christ.

Sy was right.

When she strikes out, aiming for my shoulder again, I catch her wrist, surging forward to capture her mouth. She struggles and I clutch her upper arms, swallowing the sharp sound she makes, so quiet and full of despair. I push her back blindly, uncaring of where I’m leading her to, until we hit something solid. The jolt makes her push back, her teeth bearing down into my lip.

The metallic tang of blood just makes me grunt. This is what we are–what we’ve always been. Words can’t fix what I’ve done. Releasing her arm, I curl my palm around her neck, yanking her closer. Her fist jabs into my side, knuckles punching into the muscle, but she tilts her head, dueling with my tongue as though she’d rather hurt it.

The memory of that morning in my bed, when she bodily flipped me off of her, rings clear in my mind.

If she wanted to get away, she would.

The truth of it makes my blood rush hotter, and when I reach down to grab her thigh, I feel driven by something primal and bigger than either of us. I dig my fingers in and lift her, spinning to dump her clumsily onto the counter of the vanity. Aerosol cans clatter to the floor with hair brushes and bottles of weird, glittery stuff. The sound she makes is rabid, foot kicking out to catch my knee. It makes me stumble into the cradle of her thighs, my hardness crashing into her.

“I was yours, Remy.” Her breathless words are punctuated with her fingers, gripping a tight handful of my hair. “But I won’t be anymore. Not unless you’re mine, too.”

“I am,” I say, palming her tit aggressively–too hard. “I am, I am–”

It isn’t until she pulls hard enough at my scalp to make me growl that I let her go, hands frantically clawing at my belt. The last time I came, it was all awash with green and black and yellow, and I want nothing more than to clean it away withthis. The blood, the sting, the supernova of purple as she fists my shirt, teeth grazing my tongue.

It all makes such a perfect sense to me that my head spins.

Words are colorless. Vinny and I are an arc of lightning in an endless expanse of black. We need the spark, not the void.

I shove my pants down just enough to free my hard, aching dick, and then I’m back to touching her, grasping her, mauling her. Hooking my fingers in her shorts, her body skates across the counter, colliding with mine as I violently yank the elastic down her hips.

She’s the one to get them off, though.

She flails out sightlessly, our mouths unwilling to part, and wrenches a single knee up to work them off. Even if I wanted to tease her, I couldn’t. Our bodies–our souls–are too magnetized for that.

I slam forward, entering her in one hard thrust.

For a second, everything stands still.

Our mouths hover so close that I can taste her panting breaths, her nails digging painfully into my hip. Her pussy is so tight and wet for me that my toes curl, my hand flying up to catch her chin when she throws her head back. The force of my thrust knocks her back on the counter, skittering away. The purple courses through me, and I curl a forearm around her waist, yanking her back for the next.

Our bodies collide like thunder.

“Do you want to hear it again?” I grunt, thumb digging into the damp flesh of her cheek.

Her face is tense, pinched in rapture, and when I punch forward again, she cries out, low and keening. “Fuck,” she spits, nails clawing at my hips. “Oh,fuck.”

“I love you.” I lick the words right into the crease of her lips, lapping up a smear of blood. “That’s not a fucking lie.” My words come bitten off between thrusts, voice full of red gravel. “It’s the truest thing I’ve ever known, Vinny.”

When she finally opens her eyes, I see it all. The ferocity, the hurt, the frantic, reckless want. Her ankles wind around me like a vise, clutching me close as I fuck her in a short, pounding rhythm. “You know what I want,” she says, voice breaking on the next slam of my hips.

“Whatever’s left of it,” I promise, knowing my soul is gray and tattered, “it’s yours.” It’s not what she deserves. I haven’t had time to fill it with color again, to show her the beautiful things it can make, if only it has her reflection to fill it. I do it anyway, my cock thickening as I bang her against the vanity, desperate to meet the rising tide.

My orgasm rips through me like a monster clawing itself free, and I hold her close–hard enough to press bruises into her hips–as I mouth my way to her ear. I give her the words she once gave to me so freely. “Take it,” I grunt, my cock surging to fill her.

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