She had nursed his affinity for her, making him crave her like an addict. One drop and he would go too far. He gave in easily, readily; perilously, like madness. His hands clutched her hips and he set her roughly at the edge of the table, inciting a burst of heat.
“People can do unnatural things. Dark things, sometimes.” He sounded hungry, ravenous, desperate. His lips brushed her neck and she sighed; something she’d done countless times before and would do countless times again. Still, it was different even when it was the same, and with him it was unprofessionally persuasive.
This was the magic of sex, the animation. Something coming alive inside her at his touch. “Can’t you strike a deal with the devil if it means getting what you want?” he whispered.
Her eyes fluttered shut and she thought of Callum.
Aren’t you tired? All this work, all this running, none of it you can ever escape; I can feel it in you, around you. You feel nothing anymore, do you? Only erosion, fatigue, depletion. Your exhaustion is all you are.
Parisa shuddered and pulled Dalton closer, so that his pulse aligned with hers. Both were arrhythmic and unsteady.
What are you fighting for? Do you even know anymore? You can’t leave this behind you. They will chase you, hunt you, follow you to the ends of the earth. You already know this, you know everything. How they will kill you a thousand different ways, bit by bit. Piece by piece. How they will destroy you, little by little, by robbing your life from you.
Her hands traveled over Dalton’s spine, nails biting into the blades of his shoulders.
Your death will have to be at their hands, on their terms, not yours. They will have to kill you to keep themselves alive.
She felt him come closer to breaking, teetering on the edge.
You have a choice, you know. You have only one true choice in this life: live or die. It is your decision. It is the only thing no one else can take from you.
Dalton’s lips, when they met hers, were spiced with something; brandy and abandon. She slid her fingers through his hair, reveling in his shiver that tugged her closer, like a reflex from a fall. She reached behind her, shoving the books aside; Dalton slid his hands under her dress, wrapping his hands around her thighs.
That gun you’re pointing at us… Do you even know who we are? Do you know why you’re here?
“Promise me,” Dalton said. “Promise me you’ll do something.”
Turn the gun around.
“Dalton, I—”
Pull the trigger.
Parisa gasped, blood and madness coursing through her when he shoved the dress up her legs, drawing her closer. In her mind, she watched the assassin’s death again, over and over. Turn the gun around. The smell of fire, a woman’s blood spraying at her feet. Pull the trigger. Callum hadn’t even lifted a finger. He’d barely drawn breath. Turn the gun around. He had looked that woman in the eye and convinced her to die. Pull the trigger. Her death had cost him nothing; not even a second thought.
Was that the kind of devil Dalton meant?
“I am not good,” Dalton told her, rasping it into her mouth. “No one here is good. Knowledge is carnage. You can’t have it without sacrifice.”
She kissed him hard; he fumbled with her dress and dropped to his knees, tugging her hips towards him. She felt the hard edge of a book stabbing into the base of her spine, then the indelible sweetness of Dalton’s mouth; his kiss, his tongue and his lips. Her back arched off the wood, accommodating her quiet sigh. Somewhere in Dalton’s mind things were coming loose; a door was opening. She slid inside and sealed it shut behind her, tugging at the roots of his hair.
What was in here? Nothing much. Even now, even in his head, he was careful. She could only find fragments, remnants of things. Fear, still. Traces of guilt. He needed to come untied, come undone. She could pull a few strings and glimpse his insides, find the source of it, if she could set him on a path bound for destruction. She tugged him to his feet, hastily flaying open the zipper of his trousers. There wasn’t a man alive who couldn’t sink into her with the blankness, the blindness of ecstasy. Satisfaction was obstructive that way. She yanked at his hips, clawed into his spine, bit into the muscle of his shoulder. If they were caught like this, so be it. They’d be caught.
He had imagined this before; she could watch the evidence of it like a flipbook in his mind. He had already had her a hundred different times, a thousand ways, and that she could see them now was promising. There was a weakness in his defenses, and it was her. Poor thing, poor little academic, trying to study his books and keep his distance when really, he was fucking her on her hands and knees in the abscesses of his tired mind. Even this—taking her here, on the table covered with his notes—he had seen before: prophecy. It was like he had spirited this very vision to life.