Kiss The Villain: Chapter 37

I free fall into the kiss, melting into his arms.

His touch.

His scent.

His breaths.

Everything.

I’m falling and rolling and unable to hit the ground.

My kiss is pain and frustration and bloodlust. It’s the only cocktail my fucked-up brain can conjure, and yet he’s welcoming it.

Grunting into it.

Into me.

Because he meant it when he said he’s like me. It’s why his darkness spoke to mine from the very beginning. Why his touch electrified me to the core and still does.

It’s beating in the hollow of my heart. Filling up the void slowly but surely.

I’m sitting on his lap now, sucking his face, drinking his blood, not wanting this to end.

Needing this not to end.

God, I missed him.

And I need him.

And I want to erase fucking Cassandra from him. I don’t care if that seems deranged, but I want her gone. Completely.

His erection nudges against my ass and I rub myself all over him, my own cock straining and shoving the fabric of my pants, gliding against his abs. A strangled noise leaves me when he digs his fingers into my ass through the jeans.

“Mmmff…” I moan in his mouth, biting on his tongue because I still want to hurt him.

Still want to sink my teeth into his skin and cause him pain, make him pay for the hole he dug inside me. Or more like for tearing the stitches he slowly but surely closed the void with.

He rips his lips from mine, and I jerk forward, my mouth chasing his.

Kayden drops his forehead against mine, his harsh breathing mingling with my own. Then he inhales me deeply, as if he wants to engrave my smell into his memory. As if, like me, he built me a shrine in his mind that he visits every day for a hit.

Like a goddamn junkie.

But my shrine has been lacking smell lately, meaning, life, touch…everything.

So when Kayden’s eyes close as he inhales me in reverence, my breath stutters and my chest hurts.

“Fuck, I missed you, baby.” His gruff words are low and charged, and it makes the pain in my chest stronger.

Because he called me baby and said that he missed me, and I think I’ll burst.

My breath is stuttering, and he must feel how much I’m shuddering against him, but I don’t care as I seal my trembling lips to his and kiss him again, slower this time but deeper, digging my fingers into the back of his head, reveling in how loudly his heart beats against my chest.

Almost as erratic as mine.

Almost.

Kayden grabs me by the ass as he stands up, and I wrap my legs around him, not wanting to break the kiss. It must be awkward to hold a tall guy like me this way, but he’s taller and broader, and I like it.

I like how he kisses me while carrying me. As if, like me, he can’t touch me enough.

Press his body into me enough.

He walks down the hall and into a room. Then he throws me on a mattress and he’s on top of me, ripping my clothes away, and I do the same until we’re both naked.

I’m on my back while he kneels in front of me, pulling lube from the drawer.

“Why do you have that here?” I ask, glaring at the lube.

“It’s a habit. I started stocking all my safe houses with lube about a month ago.”

“Wanting to get lucky?”

“With you, yes.”

“You…thought you’d bring me to one of your safe houses?”

“In case Declan or Grant finds you, yes. But enough about that. I’m having withdrawals and need to touch you.” He kisses me softly before pulling away to unclasp the bottle.

I reach for him to kiss him again, not wanting to waste one second without his mouth on mine or his blood in me—and mine in his.

That’s when I notice something, and my chest tightens with a scorching burn.

The lily tattoo I mutilated has stitches all over it, the whole thing gone. But that’s not what makes me stop and stare.

It’s a new tattoo.

Right in the middle of the snake’s scales, near his heart, there used to be a circle formed by its undulating form. But right now, there are crossed arrows in the middle of a compass.

My fingers shake as I touch the slightly red skin, tracing the small serif, two neat words written on either side of the arrow.

Little Monster.

“Why…” My lower lip wobbles, and I don’t know what to say.

Why get my nickname tattooed on your skin?

Why did you lie to me if you care enough to do this?

“Why a compass?” I ask instead.

“Because you helped me find myself, baby.” He takes my arm and peppers gentle kisses along my stitches, his lips shaking. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do the same. I’m sorry I hurt you enough to make you self-destruct. Seeing you in pain eats me alive.”

The skin he touches burns, his lips burn, my heart burns.

And even my eyes burn, because why the fuck is he being like this when I only planned to fuck him out of my system and leave?

Well, I wouldn’t leave until he’s safe, but still.

I came here with jumbled thoughts and fear. Lots of terrorizing fear at the thought of never seeing him again. I didn’t know what I want and I still don’t.

But when he touches me, I realize that the pain of being with him, knowing everything he did, is better than the dark void I felt without him.

My throat closes when he kisses my neck, nibbles on my earlobe, and then drops several kisses to my nose as his chest rubs against mine.

His hard nipples cause mine to bunch up and ache like crazy as he kisses my nose again and again.

“S-stop that,” I whine because he’s humping my cock and it’d be embarrassing if I come from just his kisses.

“Shh, let me worship your freckles.”

I lift my hand to hide them, but he slams it above my head on the pillow, intertwining his fingers with mine. “They’re beautiful, all nineteen of them.” He nibbles on my jaw. “So is your mole here.” He kisses the shell of my right ear. “And the twenty-two freckles here.” He bites my left ear. “And the twenty-seven here.” He slides down my chest, then kneels between my legs. “Because you’re a goddamn masterpiece, baby.”

And then he takes my cock in his mouth.

My toes curl and I’m panting, my head is dizzy, and my face is so warm, I’m going to explode.

Literally.

“Fuckfuckfuck…” I blurt in one breath as I sink my unsteady fingers into his hair as he deep-throats me, taking my cock so far inside, my eyes roll to the back of my head.

I’m so starved, so wound up, I’m riding his mouth, falling into the scorching pleasure he’s giving me.

“Jesus Christ, Kayde…your mouth feels so fucking good, I’m gonna, I’m gonna…” My hips jerk, and Kayde takes my cum deep in his throat as I empty my load.

I keep watching him, mesmerized, just the view of him between my legs giving me butterflies. God damn. Am I even able to get butterflies?

But as I watch him gathering my cum off his chin and licking it off his fingers, I can’t help but feel them multiply, the butterflies.

I don’t think it’s sexual gratification. I’ve gotten that with many people before, even if it wasn’t as intense.

It’s all him. The person behind the sexual gratification and the feelings that come with that make his touch searing.

“Mmm. I missed your taste.” His gruff words pierce my chest and settle into the void, filling it drip by drip.

“I missed my pussy, baby. I want to spank your little ass, but I need to be inside you first.” He squirts lube all over his cock, but before he can work himself, I reach over and wrap my fingers around his girth.

“Let me do it.”

“You’ll make my cock nice and wet so I can stuff it inside my pussy?”

“Yeah.” I release a choked sound when he rims me with two lubed fingers and then thrusts them inside me.

“Fuck, you’re so tight.” He curls his fingers against my walls and I slump over, still jerking his throbbing cock. “Did you let someone else touch you, Gareth?”

“You know I didn’t. You had Simone with me at all times.”

“True. I wouldn’t have been able to stay away if you did.” His voice darkens.

“What about you? Did someone touch what’s mine?”

“Baby, I couldn’t breathe properly without you, let alone be able to look at anyone else.”

“Good. I would’ve killed them.”

He chuckles. “Always a menace.”

“I mean that.”

“I know you do,” he says, but he’s still smiling, almost like he’s proud of me. “Did you touch yourself then? Did you touch my cunt?”

“Mmm, once.”

“Once?”

After the time he kissed my forehead and I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s insane how I never considered myself a sexual person before, but being with this man made me horny at all times, as if I couldn’t get enough.

“Yeah, I…couldn’t get off by jerking off, so I…put two fingers in.”

He thrusts against my sensitive spot and I groan, my cock thickening in an instant as if I didn’t just come. “Like this?”

“Mmm…fuck…yeah…like that.”

“Did you imagine it was my fingers?”

“I closed my eyes and imagined it was your…your cock.”

He goes still and I peek at him through my lashes and his nostrils are flaring. “Fuck, I need to watch my cock slide into you.”

He pulls out his fingers and grabs my hand around his cock, then makes me guide him inside me.

I can’t look away, watching him disappear inside me slowly, surely, and my cock leaks onto my abs.

“That looks so good,” I moan as his hand tightens around mine.

“You look so good, baby. You take my cock so well. God, I missed this. I missed you.” He kisses my forehead over the Band-Aid, my lashes, my eyes.

And fuck.

Why do I feel like I’m coming again?

“You’re so goddamn beautiful.” He removes our hands and pushes me onto my back. His hand falls on my hip, pulling my legs up, and the other wraps around my throat as he kisses me.

I’m moaning and groaning and speaking nonsense in his mouth as he gives a delicious shove and pushes all the way in, his pelvis slapping against my ass.

My arms wrap around his neck and my legs around his thighs, pressing him closer, needing him nearer.

Everything in me roars to life. My brain, my body, my heart, my soul.

Everything.

He stimulates me in ways no one else can. No one else will ever be able to.

And I crave it.

I crave him.

Because he tames my demons.

He’s removing the blood from my white room with every thrust, every shaky breath against my mouth. Every glide of his abs against my cock.

“I could stay inside you forever,” he pants against my face, kissing my nose again, my lips, my jaw. “You’re my goddamn home, baby.”

My entire body shudders because I believe him. I believe his thundering heartbeat against mine, his stuttering breaths on my lips, the way he touches me as if I’m sacred.

The fact that this stoic man is trembling against me, unable to get enough of me, does things to me.

But it also makes the pain and stupid thoughts rush to the surface.

“More than her?” I strain, my chest burning.

“More than anyone,” he grunts, going faster but still deep, and not as hard as usual. The way he fucks me today sets my entire body on fire.

“Really?” I’m mumbling against his lips, digging my fingers into his muscular back.

“You’re my one and only, baby.”

I’m coming then.

I don’t even feel it.

A choked noise rips out of me as I spray cum all over his abs and the sheets.

But I keep rocking, keep pulling him into me, and he curses and kisses me as he pulses and throbs inside me.

My walls clench around him as he fills me up.

“Mine,” he growls. “You’re only fucking mine.”

“Mine,” I bite his lower lip, then suck it into my mouth.

We kiss until I go numb.

Every inhale fills me with the sharp tang of him as he consumes me, devours me so entirely, that I become part of him.

It’s a heady, dizzying rush, and my whole body hums in delirious bliss. I feel high, not from anything physical, but from the way his entire existence seems to orbit around me.

I’m still dazed as he pulls out of me and then cleans me up with a wet towel.

I lie there, my eyes following his movements. I can’t help but notice that he’s lost weight, his legs look thinner than usual, his face has definitely sunken, and his stubble is longer.

For someone who wanted him in pain, I sure am not enjoying this.

And my chest twists whenever I see his new tattoo.

Something he got even with the possibility of never seeing me again.

Kayden lifts me up and slides me on top of him as he sits against the headboard. His big arms wrap around my waist as my back rests on his chest, my legs between his and my head pressed to his shoulder.

For just a moment in time, it feels like we’re in the apartment, just existing together, being peaceful.

Happy.

But that’s not the case.

And the silence is strained, which is an anomaly, because we often existed perfectly well in silence together.

Before I knew everything.

“You were never her replacement,” his quiet voice carries through the room, sucking all the air out of it.

“What?”

“Declan mentioned telling you that you were her replacement and that made you snap. He was just provoking you. That was never the case.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does, Gareth. You’re entirely different, and I never saw her in you. Are we clear?”

“Even though you married her?”

“Is that what this is about? Marriage? It’s a business transaction in my world.”

“I don’t care. I don’t even believe in the institution, okay?”

Well, I didn’t before. Not sure now.

Now, I’m battling with a disgusting taste at the back of my throat.

“I never intended to rape Yulian,” I whisper.

“What?”

“I think you were so mad that first time we met because you thought I wanted to rape him, and that I was a piece of shit like those men who drugged and raped your wife, but I just wanted to mess with him. I had semen-like lube and wanted to take a picture, and that’s all. I swear.”

“I believe you. You don’t need to explain, Gareth.”

“But I want to. I don’t want you to think I’m like those men.”

“I know you’re not.”

“My grandfather isn’t either.” I stare at the door opposite us. “I talked to him and he said he was there, but he left when Cassandra came along, not knowing what would happen. He stayed quiet afterward because the senator threatened to expose the murder I committed when I was fifteen. Baltimore was the police chief at the time, and he kept evidence and blackmailed Grandpa.”

He stares down at me, the gray similar to a storm. “What happened to that evidence?”

His question catches me by surprise, but I still say, “Grandpa and Dad got rid of it.”

“Good.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“I want to ask why you murdered someone, but I don’t want to push you.”

I tell him about Harper and David and how it felt euphoric. For some reason, I don’t feel like I’ll scare him anymore.

He’s quiet by the end, and I clear my throat. “So what I mean about this whole thing is, you should blame me, not Grandpa. He was blackmailed to stay silent because of me.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Not anymore, no. Even if he did it, I wouldn’t hurt him.”

“Why not?”

“I told you. Because he’s your grandfather and I won’t hurt someone you love.”

But you’re okay hurting yourself?

I pause at that thought, my eyes widening. I don’t want him to hurt someone I love and that’s him, because he seems tired and is not taking proper care of himself.

And I do love him.

Fuck. I think?

It’s love if I can’t live without him and can feel this peaceful in his arms, right?

The realization crashes into me harder than a hurricane. The reason I nearly lost my goddamn mind isn’t because I’m so obsessed with him that I can’t tolerate someone else having him. It’s because I was hurt, so deeply, thinking he never reciprocated the magnitude of the feelings I have for him.

Feelings I had for the first time in my life, and they scared me because I was giving up control to him.

His lips meet my forehead, over the Band-Aid, lingering for a few long beats. “I’m so sorry.”

I reach a trembling hand for his cheek, stroking the stubble on his jaw. “It’s not your fault I hit my head on the wall or slashed my own arm open. I’m just…weird and very intense when I’m obsessed with someone, which is why I only had two serious romantic partners in my life. You shouldn’t want me this much or tattoo me on you. If you let me in, I will consume you.”

“Too late.” He strokes my hair. “You already are.”

My heart feels like it’d burst, enlarging and engraving each of his words inside its walls.

“Who are the two serious romantic partners?” he asks with a note of apprehension.

“You and Harper. Isn’t that obvious?”

“Harper, whose father you killed to avenge.”

“Yeah. I just told you that.” I pause, my fingers twitching. “Do you feel bad for her prick father or something? Am I a monster if I kill a monster? I mean, I am, but at least I don’t stoop that low.”

I’m blabbering now because he’s not saying anything, and the silence is deafening.

It’s true that I don’t care if others see me as a monster. But will he be scared of me now?

“Did you love her?” he asks in a low voice.

“Who?”

“Harper.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” The words taste hollow, like I’m grasping at memories that don’t quite fit anymore. “My perception of love is skewed. She was pure, and I liked that, I guess. I liked her company.”

But even as I say that, it sounds weird. What I felt for Harper was quiet, soft, like a ripple in a pond. But what I feel for him? It’s a storm. Relentless, all-consuming chaos that’s burned its way into my very core.

He literally flipped my world upside down. Took everything I thought I knew about myself and smashed it into a million unrecognizable pieces.

But I can’t say that. I’m still jittery and in pain.

I’m also terrified that if I lay my heart on the table, he won’t take it. And I’ll be left picking up the pieces all over again. So I bite my tongue, keeping the words buried where they can’t hurt me.

“I never loved Cassandra,” he says out of the blue, the rough timbre of his voice vibrating against my back, sending shivers down my spine. “I liked her as a friend, but it was never love.”

“H-how do you know for sure?” I whisper, my voice cracking under the weight of his words.

“Because you’re the one who ripped my heart open and made yourself a place inside, Gareth. You’re the one who makes me irrationally mad and hurt because a dead teenager had your heart before me, and I can never be pure enough to compete.”

His words crash into me like a tidal wave, and my heart soars, rising like it’s been untethered from the ground. It’s dizzying, overwhelming. My chest feels impossibly full, bursting with his presence, his scent, his touch, his voice—they flood my senses, leaving no room for anything else.

I open my mouth, my lips trembling with the words I want to say. To tell him that no one—absolutely no one—has my heart but him.

That, as obsessive and unusual as it is, my heart beats only for him.

But before I can utter a word, a sharp, piercing sound rips through the moment.

Gunshots.