Page 56 of Dreadful

His teeth are clenched. His arms are losing.

I raise the gun and shoot.

The man drops the knife and clutches his shoulder. Bishop’s fist connects with his face, and he goes sideways. Bishop is up before he hits the floor.

He looks at me.

Then at the man on his knees.

He crosses the room, pulls his gun from beneath the edge of the couch, and fires twice. The man slumps forward.

Silence rushes in behind the shots.

Not true silence. Somewhere farther away, men are still shouting, and another gunshot cracks outside before the sound of fighting begins to fade.

But inside this room, everything stops.

I lower my arm just as he straightens and moves toward the shattered window. He fires two more shots, and I already know without looking that he made good on his threat.

Our heavy breathing fills the space, taking up too much room now that it’s just the two of us again. Something warm tracks down the side of my face and drips onto the floor near my bare foot.

I open my mouth. “You didn’t have to⁠—”

He crosses the room in three steps. His hand closes around the front of my throat—palm hot, fingers curling just enough—and drives me backward until my shoulders hit the wall hard enough to empty my lungs.

Instinct takes over, and my fingers press against the cut along the hollow of his neck. Blood wells beneath them, hot and slick, but he doesn’t so much as flinch.

His gaze flies between my eyes and my lips, his chest heaving with deep breaths.

Then his mouth is on mine.

TWENTY

BELLAMY

I freeze for one fractured second before everything still tearing through my chest finds somewhere to go.

My fingers curl into his shirt and I kiss him back.

His hand tightens at my throat. The other finds my hip and hauls me in, and our teeth knock hard enough to sting. His split lip opens against mine—copper and salt flooding my tongue—and I press closer instead of pulling away.

I get both hands under his shirt and find his ribs, his sternum, the frantic kick of his heart against my palms. The drywall scrapes my shoulder blades as he crowds me harder into the wall. I hook one leg around him anyway and pull him in.

There’s a dead man on the floor twelve feet away. Another one through the window. Blood is tacky and pulling at the skin above my eyebrow, and I’m shaking badly enough that my fingers keep slipping on his clothes.

I press my palms flatter against his chest, and he palms my ass and lifts me up, fitting his cock right against my cunt.

Bishop’s mouth leaves mine. We both drag in a breath—ragged, audible—and then I catch his bottom lip between my teeth and pull him back down.

The sound that comes out of him isn’t language, but it moves through me like a familiar current.

Whatever thin thread of control either of us had left snaps.

His mouth crashes back onto mine, a collision of teeth and desperation. I taste his blood on my tongue and dig my fingers into his shoulders.

He shoves my panties and the wide leg of my cotton shorts aside, and the sound of fabric tearing competes with our breathing. Then two fingers drive into me, and my whole body seizes around them, my head knocking back into the wall hard enough to sting.

He doesn’t pause. Doesn’t ease into it. His fingers curl and thrust, and the wet sound of it is obscene in the silence of the room.