Confusion creases his forehead, and I grip his shirt in my hands. “I should rip your fucking throat out, but I can’t, Alex. Not because you don’t deserve to suffer. And not because of any law or self-preservation. I can’t…because it would cause me to feel something I don’t even know how to describe.”

And there it is—the smallest glimmer, the hopeful well in his pale-blue eyes. He wants to believe. I just have to give this delusional fuck a reason.

“Touch me, Alex,” I say, a hot whisper against his lips. “If you don’t touch me, my chest will explode. There’s too much…just too much all at once, and I need you to siphon off the overflow.”

“Christ, Blakely.” He tries to pull away, but I cling to his shirt. He places his hands over mine. “Don’t do this to me.”

A strangled laugh escapes. “Do this to you? You fucking coward. You torture me. Sadistically subject me to scans, drugs, and literally cook my brain, and now you can’t handle the… What’s the thing you scientists are always touting?”

His gaze flits over my features, his breath slices in and out of his lungs. “Results,” he says, a hint of awe in his voice.

I palm his face, thumb pressed right below his bottom lip. I force his face so close to mine, he can feel the fire of my words. “This is your result, Alex. Everything you ever wanted me to feel, I’m yours to make feel. I’m your monster, waiting for your command, and now you want to abandon me in the dark to suffer—”

His lips crash against mine. The force of the kiss rocks through me, a collision of vicious want and loathing and pure desperation to make the relentless longing end. His lips are steel on mine as his fingers splay into my wet hair. I tilt my head back to meet his demand, my tongue sweeping out to touch his, the assault liquid fire in my veins.

It’s unexpected, and unsettling, the way my breath stills in my chest, the building ache painful and gratifying all at once. I shove any uncertainty down, far down below the disdainful voice in my head chiding that this is a mistake.

His arm locks around my lower back and I’m lifted up. My legs wrap around him to fuse us together in the water. Our bodies are ice and fire, friction from one extreme striking the other and merging until the burn loses distinction. Pain is pain—pleasurable and consuming and agonizing.

Oxygen is combustible, and my lungs will either burst or implode if I take a breath or keep allowing Alex to steal it. He feels my struggle because it’s also his, and he breaks the kiss long enough to pull in a lungful of air.