Page 75 of Into Pitch

“Alex,” I warn and he hums, pushing just a little harder and encouraging me to move. This should be the point where I shove him away, where I ignore how close our faces are or how intense his gaze is that holds mine. I of course care little for my wellbeing, because my hips roll just once. Just enough.

“What happens when you finally get bored?” I manage thickly.

The question I’ve been circling since the mirror room and since the charm clicked onto my bracelet. Since I realized survival was conditional.

“Bored?” He repeats as he grinds his knee right where I need him.

“Yes,” I rasp, forcing the word up. “What happens when I stop being interesting?”

There is a long moment of just our breathing, my own chest heaving against his as my brows furrow against the pleasure. Against the sharp spike of heat that pools through me with each rock of my hips against his knee and thigh. His smile is a dark, dangerous thing.

“That won’t happen, little fox.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he insists. “Because interest isn’t what keeps me.”

My pulse thrums hard, my head falling back to thump against the wall as his hand slides over my sternum. Up between the valley of my breasts to wrap around my throat. And knowing that he has killed someone—many someones—should be a turn off, but I’m burning and he’s the only one who has ever effectively lit the match.

“Then what does?” I whisper as the heat begins to build. As the knot in my core begins to spiral and tighten in on itself, threatening to burst if we just go a bit longer. A bit harder. His fingers tighten around my throat, his mouth dipping near my ear.

“Resolution.”

His hand at my hip works its way forward, fingers dragging beneath the band of my shorts. My breath catches as they find their way beneath the plain cotton I had found in the drawer and straight to where I’m already soaked. He groans and I answer it with a soft whimper of my own.

“And when you get it?” I moan as his fingers sink past my entrance and curl. The motion long and slow, hooking just right.

“You’re assuming the conclusion ends you,” he breathes. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

My breath stutters as he presses deep a second finger, adding to the already blinding pleasure of having him this near. The kind that short circuits all logic and replaces it with nothing but the air between two bodies or the sounds they make in the dark when no one is around to judge them.

I want him.

That truth is humiliating and undeniable. I want him even now, even like this, even with my face on the goddamn news. I want to own him as thoroughly as he seems to own whatever quiet beast he has unraveled inside of me.

“You don’t get to decide if I vanish,” I say hoarsely. “I’m not one of your subjects.”

My hips undulate against his palm, grinding down into the release that is so close and kept on the wire by the fingers that give just enough to keep me going but won’t tip me over. Like he knows the moment I fall all coherent conversation will drift away with it too.

“What you are is mine,” he growls, voice low, steady. “And I don’t discard what belongs to me.”

Those words should terrify me. Instead, they ignite something twisted in my chest.

I hate him for it. For locking me in this space between wanting and knowing better. For making the world feel distant and unreal and for making the thought of leaving hurt.

“They’re going to keep looking. Imogen won’t stop,” I moan thickly as his fingers pick up their pace.

“I know.”

“And you—fuck, Alex—you’ve got to let me go.”

“No, I really fucking don’t. Now come.”

I close my eyes and I am obliterated beneath the hand locked around my throat and the second inside of me. My entire body locking up as I push up onto my toes to both escape the sensation and climb into it.

I don’t know how long I hover there on cloud nine before falling back to earth and the sensation of him pulling his fingers out of me. His hand at my throat sliding to twist into my hair at my nape, tugging it back in possession.

“You’re going to ruin everything,” I pant.