Page 2 of Another Damned Storm
Damned if he didn’t know just how to get to me.
Desire rose up inside me like a power of its own, almost drowning out the other thought I was struggling to keep in my head. But I couldn’t think about what I needed to do too hard or he would sense it. Luckily, if I was fighting this hard to not get lost in the moment, so was he.
That was one thing I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Hook wanted me.
It was all too easy to let myself sink into him, into the taste of him and the weight of his body on mine. His other arm wrapped around my waist, and he rolled to his back, dragging me on top of him as he went.
That was my opening. Despite the fire burning through me, I cupped his face in my hands, kissed him once more, and then somersaulted over his head and out of reach. The second I was on my feet, I flashed again.
I wasn’t oblivious to how dangerous this little game was, and not just because it riled the predatory side of my broody pirate every time we played. The island was riddled with traps left over from Petra and her Lost. The band of soulless young men she’d collected over the centuries—what was left of them anyway—must have found some dark hole to hide in, because I hadn’t seen any sign of them since we’d trapped the demon at the bottom of the sea.
The entire realm was one big, beautiful nightmare. And yeah, there were probably safer ways for me to learn how to use my fancy new ability than a heated game of hide and seek, but there was something about the thrill of the chase I couldn’t deny.
And being hunted definitely wasn’t something I ever expected to enjoy quite so much.
Darkness swallowed me whole back in the forest. Humid air clung to me like a warm, wet blanket. I glanced at mysurroundings, searching for a hiding place. Hook had the ability to follow me when I flashed. An ability that sharing his power should have given me in return, logically, but that handy skill had only manifested in fits and starts.
“Now you’re just taunting me,” Hook said from behind me, his voice dipping low.
I whipped around to fight off his attack, but he was fast. He caught me by the waist and shoved me against a nearby tree. Despite my fucking killer ability to heal, he still cushioned the crush, bringing his hand up to cradle the back of my head before he planted another hard kiss on my lips.
And that wasn’t the only thing that was hard. He pressed into me, rolling his hips, showing me exactly how much this little game was getting to him. It was a special kind of torture, considering he wasn’t the only one affected by the primal hunt.
His heat, his scent, his hot breath on my neck... it all worked together to steal my focus.
“Do you yield?” he whispered in my ear.
God, I wanted to. A groan slipped out of me, and I stretched my neck to one side to give him better access.
“That wasn’t an answer.”
No, it wasn’t. It was an involuntary reaction to his proximity. I thought my attraction to him was bad when I first met him, but his pull was so much stronger now. Like gravity.
He gripped my hair and tugged hard enough to send a few little stings zinging across my scalp. “Say it, Never.”
It took far more effort than it should have to find my voice. “No.”
“Then fight,” he growled. The eerie amber glow in his irises shined even brighter in the darkness of the forest, and frustrated energy spilled through our connection. I just couldn’t tell how much of that frustration was sexual and how much was tied to my refusal to give in.
The dirty fighter in me was tempted to knee him in the balls. If he’d been anyone else pinning me to a tree the way he was, I would have done just that. But I couldn’t bring myself to inflict that kind of damage on him.
“Ah, ah,” he chided. “No going soft on me. This is training, remember? In a real chase, you won’t be running fromme.”
Right. I could feel his frustration, which meant he could feel my hesitation. I slammed the door between us, reducing the emotional bleed to a trickle, and without weighing the pros and cons, brought my knee up hard.
A pained grunt exploded out of him, and his grip loosened. Guilt swarmed me. At the same time, though, a sense of satisfaction slipped through the cracks in my mental door.
“I didn’t think you would do it,” he wheezed.
Yeah, well, neither did I.And I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it either.
Before I could second guess myself, I thought of the beach on the far side of the island. I pictured staring out across the expanse of deep blue water with my feet sinking into the black sand.
The next thing I knew, I was there, but instead of watching the waves wash lazily over the sand a few yards away, they lapped at my boots. The tide was far higher than it should have been in the middle of the day. The reason, no doubt, had everything to do with the thick gray clouds lumbering through the sky toward the island.
Lightning struck in the distance. Once, twice. Then it lit up the sky like one of the fireworks shows Matty and I used to watch from the roof of our apartment building, alongside all the other poor souls who couldn’t afford tickets to see them fired off from the stadium.
