He raked his fingers through my mud-soaked hair and opened his mouth so wide, he poured everything into me. Every inch of his tragedy. Every second of his trials.

He gave me all of him.

He tilted his head and stroked my unwilling tongue with his, but it wasn’t until a warm droplet kissed my cheek instead of cold rain that whatever mania infected him infected me.

A tear.

A single tear from a murderer.

A man who I held by the balls. A man who I squeezed so damn hard he’d probably never have children. And instead of striking me. Instead of strangling me like he’d tried to do so often, he surrendered.

He gave me his pain.

He gave me his power.

He kissed me.

He clawed open my chest and crawled deep inside.

He broke me until we were shattered pieces together.

I couldn’t do it.

I can’t do this!

He groaned as I squeezed his cock and balls until my hands shook and my forearms threatened to pop with pressure. Then he kissed me deeper, harder, fiercer than anyone. He kissed me as if he wanted me to end him. As if he was grateful to endure agony by my hand.

He kissed me as if he’d never known kindness. As if pain was the only thing to set him free.

I couldn’t stand it.

Stop!

He gathered me closer, kissing me with violence and anarchy, war and famine.

I lost.

I kissed him back.

And.

That.

Was.

It.

The gun, the detonation, the very end of our existence.

We clawed at each other. We tried to crawl inside one another.

Our fight switched from one age-old grievance to another. From fighting to fucking.

Rolling onto his back, he dragged me with him, splaying me over his stomach as his hands dropped from my hair, his nails raked along my back, and his fingers jerked the sweater over my head.

The rain soaked everything, making the material slap lifeless beside us. He fought with my T-shirt next, yanking it up and throwing it into the slick mud.

The moment my breasts were bare, he cupped them both. His fingers rolled my nipples, pinching me, electrifying the sick craziness in my blood.

My hands switched from trying to wring his cock from his body to jerking him with pleasure. I stroked him viciously.

His breath caught, and his hips pulsed into my palm. “Christ—”

He smashed his mouth to mine. Our kiss tasting of rain and earth, blood and sweat.

Another layer of propriety fell away.

My nails dug into his cock. His back bowed as his mouth opened wider over mine. His tongue was slick and savage. His assault brutish as he kissed me so damn hard. We rolled again, fighting for dominance, our vehemence toward one another adding a ferocity to whatever this was.

This wasn’t about forgiveness or apologies. This wasn’t about the pent-up connection or spine-snapping desire.

This was about fire.

Fire that burned in both of us.

Fire that had incinerated us from the inside out and wouldn’t stop until we were both cinders on the forest floor.

“I need you.” His voice resembled every shade of black in the night. “Fuck, I need you.”

Not a question.

A command.

A matching demand within me.

I didn’t think.

I clawed at his pants, shoving them down, allowing his blazing erection to pop free. It was swollen and red from my punishment. Crescent moon indents from my nails showed how much pain I’d given him.

He fell on me again, biting my throat, my jaw, my mouth. As his tongue hunted for mine, he rolled until I was pinned beneath him, his hands tearing at the fly of my borrowed, ruined slacks, ripping them off me as if they’d been doused in the very flames consuming us.

We were too far gone.

Far from human.

I’d never been so drunk.

So reckless.

Our mouths continued to slip and slide in a heady, monstrous kiss. Our tongues clashed in a dance downright cruel and perverse.

His dirt-covered hands painted my bare chest and hips as he angled me beneath him. Controlling me, manipulating me, spreading my legs with his knees.

I couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t think.

All I could do was feel.

And fuck, he felt better than anything.

He was wild and vile all wrapped up in the totality of twisted tenderness.

And when he took me.

When his cock found my pussy, and he mounted me with all the violence and pain inside him, I screamed for the second time.

My legs snapped around his hips.

My back bowed as he sheathed himself within me.

I quaked as his body buried itself deep, deep, deep, linking us together.

For a heartbeat, we stilled.

My core pulsed around his hard invasion, and his cock pulsed with triumph at conquering me. We shared a stare. A glance that cracked open my ribs and let my treasonous heart free.

Beneath the evil lust in his eyes something else begged me to see. Something caged within him, trapped behind bars, chained up in metal, secrets and memories slowly poisoning him.

I gasped.

I saw.

And then, he moved.

He withdrew then thrust forward. Hard and sharp. Deep and possessing.

I cried out.

I scratched his back and grabbed his bare ass.

I dug my nails into his skin, pulling him deeper, deeper, deeper.

He snapped.

He thrust and thrust, grunting with each impalement, his face highlighted by lightning as thunder crashed around us.

Mud was my bed, and rain was my sheets as I lost whatever innocence I had left to a monster in the woods.

I spurred him on.

I begged for more.

I dug my heels into the back of his thighs and shoved my hips up to meet his, crushing our bodies together, rubbing my clit on the base of his cock so sparks and pinwheels of gunpowder ignited.

“Oh, God.” I moaned.

My body tightened. Quickened. Pressurized.

His mouth found my ear, biting my lobe all while his haggard breathing revealed how lost he was in me.

Gem no longer existed.

Just this creature he’d created. A creature who only existed for this manic kind of pleasure.

His fists landed by my ears, squelching into the mud as he rode me harder, deeper, brutal and unkind.

And that was my trigger.

The release of an orgasm that convulsed and cracked me. That didn’t just clench my core but annihilated it. It poured gasoline in my womb and blazed with shooting stars down my pussy.

I came around his cock.

I came for a man who I didn’t even know his name.

I came harder and more spectacularly than I’d ever come before.

His back tensed. His hips switched from fucking to rutting.

He chased my release. He howled as he buckled over me, crashing his mouth to mine, choking me with his tongue, feeding every inch he had into my body.

His spurts within me went on and on.

He well and truly claimed me in that storm, ensuring I had no other master, lover, or friend.

I was his.

Entirely and irrevocably.

For that night only.

CHAPTER TWENTY

HOW DID ONE EXPLAIN insanity?

Was it doing something again and again, expecting different results?

Was it believing in something completely false and refusing to see the truth?

Was it surviving hell and thinking you deserved happiness at the end of it?

Or maybe...it was this.

This madness smeared in mud. This woman who’d not only concussed me but also made me forget. Forget that sex had always meant shame and poison, molestation and abuse. There were places on my body I could no longer touch nor look at because the memories were always there, just lying in wait to drown me. Scars did their best to whisper what I’d done and been subjected to.