I hadn’t allowed myself to think of that night in years. I’d lost control. Gone too far, and the person who’d given me their trust paid for their foolishness.
I’d been too young, still learning my own limits and strength. She died because I hadn’t been able to stop when it mattered the most.
I could hear her gasps for breath. See the mottled color of her face. But she hadn’t used her safe word. She couldn’t. Her nails had raked over my cheek, the burn reigniting even at the memory. We’d been so untrained. Not ready for the responsibility of me holding her life in my hands.
In truth, her anguish had driven me on. Watching her suffer triggered my release. I’d been too busy coming to fucking stop.
And so she’d died beneath my hand, unable to breathe as I’d continued to rut like the animal I was.
Rumors were whispered in the dark about Gavin Donoghue and his sinister secret, but being a Donoghue meant my sins never saw the light of day. Everything I’d done had been covered up quickly. Humans disappeared all the time. What was one more missing girl? All my father had needed to do was sign a big enough check, and it all went away.
For them, at least. I still carried the weight of my deeds on my back like a boulder.
I shuddered as Danika’s face was replaced by Roslyn’s.The Blackthornes would never be so easily mollified. They’d never stop searching for her.
A flash of my palm around Roslyn’s throat sent a lick of heat through me, but I pushed it aside.
Never. Again.
I hadn’t attempted breath play since, but the terror lingered. What would happen to me if Roslyn was my mate? If I took things too far? She broke down all of my defenses with a simple shuddering cry of pleasure. How could I trust myself not to let the demon inside, who was desperate to see that same panic in her eyes, take over?
But just the thought of her writhing under me was enough to banish that fear. As I paced my room, working to control myself, I groaned. She was every-fucking-where. My gaze lit upon a flash of white underneath my desk.
I blurred over to it, the balled-up knickers dangling from one of my fingers.
“Well, well, well. You didn’t just like it. You got off on it. You stayed and watched the whole bloody show, didn’t you?”
I pressed the cotton against my nose and breathed deep. They were still damp. Soaked.
Christ.
She’d seen me, what I am, what I need, and she’d wanted it. Craved it as much as I.
The proof of it was too much for me.
How could I deny myself when she wanted it as badly as I did?
I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
Standing, I grabbed my trousers, then tugged them on.
“Careful what you wish for, petal. You just might get it. In fact... I think you shall.”
ChapterNine
GAVIN
Ifollowed her intoxicating scent, not to her room as I’d expected, but to the library.
She didn’t hear me come in, and I took a second to study the fall of her hair over her shoulder, the delicate curve of her throat as she flipped through the pages of the book in her hand, the way she chewed on her lower lip. She was so fragile.
I wanted to break her and then put the pieces back together. Preferably with my lips and teeth and tongue... and cum.
“You dropped these,” I muttered, tossing the knickers onto the floor at her feet.
Her cheeks went a delightful shade of rose. She opened and closed her mouth, clearly searching for some sort of explanation.