Toxic: A Dark Romance

I am undone.

The kiss is unlike any other I’ve had in my life. I’d never known such a delicate touch could come from such a big, brutal man.

It’s like realizing I have been doing it wrong for years. Like all the touches and fumbling backseat trysts and Vic’s brutal lovemaking have been . . . wrong, and this is what a kiss is supposed to be.

Soft.

God, his lips are soft. Surprisingly so considering how cruel and ferocious he seems on the outside.

I’m learning he is nothing like he seems.

It makes me crave more, need more, and he must sense my growing, clawing desperation, because his lips part and his tongue sweeps forward, dominating me in the most welcome way. I open underneath the first stroke and moan with the second.

The gauze and implements I’m holding tumble to the floor with a clatter that I ignore. The nurses next door are too far away to hear the sound. In that second, I couldn’t care less if they were standing there watching. All my mental capacity focuses on the tender play of his mouth over mine. The hot, wet heat of him that is more explicit than anything I’ve ever seen or done before. It lights me from the inside out, turning everything molten and loose.

After a moment or an eternity, he pulls back. My eyes blink dazedly open, and I tremble against him as need roars up in a relentless rogue wave tinged with guilt and shame. Still, my breath catches in my throat when I study his face. It’s the first time I’ve been close enough to see the gold ring of color around his vivid green eyes.

I wish he would bend and put his lips to mine again.

What kind of person wants more from a man like him? What kind of woman aches for another kiss from a criminal?

Me.

I want more.

I want it all.

I want it right here.

Again. And again. And again.

I think of all the nights I’ve spent underneath Vic’s pumping body, all the times my pleasure was used as a weapon, all the times pleasure turned to pain and then numbness. I remember what he made me do only hours before and how my power, my agency was torn from me against my will. I think of all of that, and now I want more of Gracin’s brand of forbidden. I want it for the way it makes me feel alive for the first time in years. For the way pleasure is my own again. The way my body feels my own again.

So, I twine my hands around his neck, and I kiss him.

It must have surprised him because he makes a sound against my mouth, and it takes a few seconds for his body to catch up with mine. I like that I’ve thrown him off balance. I like that I have the power to shock him, make him want me. Me.

His hungry hands are no longer gentle, no longer hesitant. They constrict around my waist until there isn’t a breath of room between our two bodies. Until there’s no denying the hot, hard length of him against my stomach or the wet heat pooling between my legs, scenting the air around us.

My fingers move over the buzzed length of his hair. The soft, silken rasp of it against my palms causes gooseflesh to cover my arms, and a deep, rumbling sound reverberates in the back of his throat. I’ve never heard anything so sexy in my life. I repeat the movement with my hands and scrape my nails along his scalp, and something in him snaps. I almost swear I can hear his control breaking.

Then he’s shoving me against the wall, and the nonexistent space between us folds in on itself, a black hole of heat and want. He’s so close it’s as if he’s trying to make himself a part of me, which sends a fresh set of shivers dancing along my spine, spider soft.

The prison jumpsuit and my nurse’s scrubs are practically a whisper of material combined, making it so I can feel everything. When I don’t protest the move, he nudges a leg between mine and then knocks them open. Arms free because his weight is holding me against the wall, he grips my knees and hoists me up, aligning his hardness against my softness, causing me to cry out against his lips.

He replaces his lips with his hands to stifle the sounds I can’t control. His eyes on mine, ever watchful, he uses the hand covering my lips to guide my face to the side, then his mouth does things to my neck and ear that make the hand covering my mouth absolutely necessary. Even so, my moans and cries echo throughout the small room.

As though he’s reading my mind, Gracin’s lips come to the shell of my ear. He whispers, “They could walk in at any second and see just what a dirty girl you are.” He emphasizes his words with a slow thrust of his hips. I swear I can feel every ridge, every vein in his cock as it drags along the seam of me.

I don’t respond—it’d be pointless with the hand covering my mouth, but I do respond in other ways. The scent of my arousal grows stronger, and I know my scrubs must be wet. Shame burns my cheeks a violent red at the thought of my arousal being there for Gracin to see. To feel if he can’t already. Breathy, choked cries emanate from my throat no matter how hard I try to swallow them back. My mind oscillates between the thought of the officers walking in and the hard cock between my legs, the combination a volatile, erotic stimulant.

I should push him away.

A good person would.

A good person wouldn’t have let him kiss them in the first place.

His tongue finds my ear again with startling precision. I’ve always had very sensitive ears, and one hot, harsh breath undoes any of the ragged reasoning I was piecing together. Shocks dance along my nerve endings as the sound of his harsh breathing surrounds me, envelops me. My hands cling to his shoulders with a bruising grip that he doesn’t even seem to mind. I give a passing thought to his injuries, to asking if they’re okay—not that his hand over my mouth would let me—and then he shifts, angling his hips upward in such a way that the bulbous head of his cock hits my clit at just the right angle, making my world burst apart.

I forget convention, forget the rules, forget expectations. I even ignore the law. The laws that say I shouldn’t touch this man. Shouldn’t encourage his attention. Forget that he’s my patient. That he’s a convicted felon.

A dark and dirty side of me emerges, and instead of pushing him away, I use my legs to pull him closer. He grunts in my ear, a harsh, sexy sound, and I arch my back, spreading my legs as far as they’ll go to accommodate his hips. My thighs burn, and my hips ache at the wide angle, but none of that matters as the warmth grows inside me. I become a wild, mindless thing, and all I know is I want more.

More pressure.

More closeness.

More aching, filthy, rawness.

His teeth leave marks where they bite into my shoulder to contain his sounds of satisfaction, his fingers are near-bruising on my mouth. I taste blood from where my teeth gouge my lower lip.

Then he’s whispering into my ear, his voice like the devil himself. “You want it. You want it so fucking bad I can almost taste it.”

Needy, animal sounds are my only answer.

“I wanna give it to you, Tessa.” The tempo of his hips slows, and I nearly scream. “Let me give it to you.”

I would have if he hadn’t pulled his hand away from my mouth and replaced it with his own. Then his tongue becomes a metaphor for his cock as they thrust in tandem.

I forget how to breathe. How to speak. How to think. How to care about anything but the steady drive of Gracin’s length against me, his mouth against mine.

I didn’t know anything could feel so good.

Then he wedges a hand behind my back, forcing my hips to tilt at the same moment one of the nurses laughs outside, just outside the unlocked door . . .

All the bad and all the wrong floods back in, and then his hand is at my throat, causing sparks to dance in front of my eyes. The hard, keen edge of pleasure cuts through me, and my head kicks back, slamming into the wall right before he swallows my long, silent scream.

I come down in waves and awareness flickers—hyper-focused on his hard length still pulsing against me. That’s a feeling I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget. He’s thick and long, and the hollowness inside me calls out for him to fill it. My mouth waters with it, even as the come down from the orgasm cools my lust. Following that, his arms are now around my waist, holding me to him—almost . . . tenderly, or what tenderly would be like for him.

Then, I hear the nurses again.

Their voices are low but discernible; their conversation is about some television show or another—an ordinary conversation, as if the world hasn’t just shifted on its axis.

Gracin is watching me with those attentive eyes, and I have no doubt he’s seen the progression of emotions flash across my face. He sees too much. Understands too much.

My body, which had just been red-hot, cools and with it comes the horror.

Oh, God, what did I just do?