Page 194 of Like Grim Death: Part One
Tears burn behind my eyes, my cheek pressed to the smooth wood of the door.
“I won’t, Ella. I promise, tonight, you’re all I see.”
Butterflies gasp in my belly with his words. I wish I wasn’t so easily pleased. I wish I could fight him off, stay angry with him, scared of him. But he’s turning my emotions like a tuning fork.
“Say yes. Open your mouth. Think about how good it would feel, just to get something over on him… for once.” He presses his lips to the spot just under my ear. “I won’t tell him. You don’t have to be ashamed. Just once. Just now.I need you, and he doesn’t.Just. Say.Yes.”
My mind is lifting higher still. Like it’s rising to the ceiling. Like my head is a balloon, my thoughts are nothing but air. But I try to hold on. “What is it? The… island?Please, tell me what it is.”
I feel his breath on my skin. He is quiet for a moment, but he doesn’t move. Then he says, “It’s not what you think.”
“Kids? Are they there? Do they get hurt? Are they…murdered?”
He kisses me again, just above my neck. “You care more than they know, don’t you, baby?”
More thanwhoknows? The words are screeching inside my head, but it’s like my tongue is too heavy to speak them.
“They don’t get hurt. No one is hurt on the island.”
The island. It’s real. It’s true. Samson saw it.
His mouth is open when he kisses me again, saliva cooling along my neck. “Be a good girl for me, say yes, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know afterward.”
I don’t believe you.You’re lying.Youare the liar.
He nudges his nose beneath my ear. I can tell how much he wants me right now. It’s like the heat from his body is seeping into mine. “He’s not going to look for you. Not for a long, long time. He’s…preoccupied, Ella.Say yes.”
In my mind, all the times Mavy seems to have chosenherovermerun on repeat. Tonight. At Ignis. But the phone call, when he called her while I was waiting for him, when I was seconds away from being dragged into darkness, it’s the one that hurts the most.
And Lucifer, telling me he’s been a murderer for a long time. Maybe last night didn’t mean to me what it meant to him.
“When this is over, you promise you’ll tell me everything?” Because even with all of those thoughts in my head, despite the fact it feels as if Sid stabbed me in the back, Idowant Rain safe. Maverick would die if something happened to him.
“Everything,” Atlas swears. “I’ll answerallof your questions. Just please.Give me this.”
And so I say, “Yes.” I whisper it, and I repeat it, louder still.“Yes.”
Atlas laughs against my ear, my body shivering beneath him. “Good girl. Open your mouth.”
I do, and a second later, the sickly sweet, thick liquid is on my tongue.
“Swallow,” he whispers, moving his hands from me for a moment, but I just rest against the door. I assume he put the bottle down somewhere, because a second later, his hands are on my hips and he’s spinning me around, then pushing me gently back against the door.
His fingers come to the button of my jeans, and he flicks them open like he’s done it a million times before even though this is the first, for us. He leans into me, his hand between us, cupping me between my thighs as his lips find mine.
“Kiss me.” It’s a command, and I part my lips, letting him lick along the bottom one, my hands plastered to the door at my back.
“Just how drunk are you, Angel?”Maverick’s voice is light, despite what he said to Ella. It’s the lightest I’ve heard it since…well, I try not to think about that belt around my throat too often. Raven Park seems like a different time, another life. We’ve all aged in secrets and sorrows since then.
A giggle leaves my lips, and I know that means I’m fucked up. Lucifer had me taking shots in the kitchen, going toe-to-toe with Ezra, who is sitting on the ledge of the deep end somewhere beside me. My husband wanted me to loosen up, to stop “worrying so fucking much.” And after what I saw upstairs, the only way that could happen was through alcohol.
I hear Ezra laugh, a deeper sound than Mav’s. “She’s fucked up.”
I turn my head and tilt my chin to meet Ezra’s dark green eyes. He’s smiling at me, flashing straight white teeth. He brings his cup up to his lips, and my eyes drop to his chest. He’s shirtless, droplets of water dripping down his dark, ripped skin. My thighs clench together, around Mav, who is holding me up, and he smacks the water, splashing it on my face.
I throw my head back and laugh harder, my elbows propped up on the cement ledge of the pool.
“Don’t look at him like that and don’t squeeze me, you sick fuck,” Mav says, and Ezra only laughs harder.
