A Grim Love: Can't Fight Time (9 page)

“You knew!” Grim’s voice blasted at her, no longer sounding like a weird whistle, but more like its usual deep timbre with that slight accent.

And then the fog cleared away, and Grim was suddenly standing before her in faded black jeans and a tight gray t-shirt, looking stunned and furious. Seeing him like that, like a relaxed college student instead of a terrifying skeleton, did something to Nina.

It reminded her of the promise she’d made to herself.

“Yes,” she answered softly. “I knew.”

Grim stared at her for a long moment, an unreadable expression on his face. There was something holding Grim back, something that Nina didn’t know if she’d ever be able to break through.
Is it going to be like the last time?
The thought flitted through Nina’s head, leaving her with a feeling of dread.

Swallowing down her emotions, she was ready to apologize and find a way to at least be his friend. Maybe then she could help him work through whatever he was going through. Nina spoke: “Grim, I--”

Her words were captured by his lips and tongue, lost in his throat. Again that feeling of heat just before being frozen to death invaded her body, but the pain wasn’t there. She wondered if it was because she was in the Underworld, her heart beating barely once a minute.

Nina’s world didn’t shatter from Grim’s kiss, and she didn't lose her inhibitions. If anything her world ignited and narrowed down to a soul-deep need to know Grim. They weren’t just kissing, they were binding, coming together to feel each other, explore each other, know each other.

“We can’t do this. You’re human,” Grim whispered against her lips as he drew her closer, tilting her body back and sliding his tongue against her teeth, her lips, her tongue.

Through the fog of desire clouding her brain, Grim’s words registered. Memories of another time he’d called her a human like it was a bad thing flittered through her mind.
Human,
Nina thought about it, what the term signified and the power it had over Grim.

His mother was human, and she died.

Wrenching her mouth away from his, even as it pained her to do so, Nina pushed him away.

“Stop!”

Grim stumbled before he fell back onto the sofa, looking dazed and confused. “What?”

Nina drew in a deep breath, the smell of rich soil and icy cold tightening her nipples and making her sex clench. She wanted him; there was no doubt of that. But it came down simply to the fact that if they continued he’d hate her and himself. As soon as they crossed that line from friends to lovers, he would feel like he’d killed her.

“I can’t continue if you can’t let go of your past, Grim,” she shook her head.

Grim’s face shadowed and shuttered, his earlier anger returning to him, but Nina wouldn’t let it. She wouldn’t let him push his pain and hurt and guilt aside because he didn’t want to deal with it. “No, I need you to face this, Grim.” Nina spoke as she moved and straddled his waist, keeping him pinned down and looking into her eyes.

Grim tried to look away, tried to regain his anger and let it fuel him, ignite him. Nina could feel his power around them, crackling the air. She’d felt the same hum of energy from Uri, but Grim seemed to have far more power, and Nina wondered why she hadn’t sensed it before.

“You don’t know a damn thing,” Grim growled. His hands moved to grip her hips and his nails dug into her flesh.

“I know that you feel guilty over your mother’s death.” Her hands moved to grip his head, her eyes boring into his soul. “I know that you think by having sex with me you’re going to somehow kill me. I know that every time you say ‘human’, what you really want to say is

‘mother’.”

The sofa hit her back, as Grim flipped her and crouched over her body. “You don’t know shit! I killed her; I murdered my own mother!” he raged, shaking her hard.

Nina leaned up, captured his lips and forced him to kiss her, to want her. Anger gave way to passion as Grim tore at Nina’s blouse and devoured her mouth until he tasted blood.

His tongue struck hers, hands sliding roughly up her body to her breasts. Nina let him claim her, let him take what he needed, ever aware of the tears wetting his face. She knew he needed to work through it, and if sex was the only way for him to do that, then... she’d just have suffer through it.

Grim’s mouth pulled away from hers and she gasped in a breath, needing the oxygen. But she couldn’t stop; she needed him to expel the demons that festered inside of him.

“Tell me how you killed her, Grim. Tell me how you murdered your own mother. Tell me I don’t know a thing about you.”

His mouth closed, hard and insistent, around her peaked nipple, teeth tugging hard. It was both pleasure and pain. “Tell me!”

Cool air breezed across her naked breasts as Grim pulled back and buried his head in her stomach. He was panting against her, his tears soaking into her skin. “I--” his voice was pained.

Nina could feel the bite of his nails into her hips, the sting from her nipple, and her lips swollen and bruised. Every spot he’d touched felt raw, but not in an entirely unpleasant way. It was a way that reminded her she was still human. The slight pain reminding her that, despite it all, that despite her murderous father and her reaper beau, she was still herself, alive, breathing, feeling pain, and most certainly herself.

“You’re so fragile, Nina,” Grim’s voice was so soft, so forlorn, that for a second Nina thought she’d imagined it.

But then he spoke again: “I feel like I could break you, and lose you forever.”

Slowly the pressure against her hips decreased until it disappeared and a cooling breeze passed over all the spots he’d touched, healing them.
His power.
It was like being swept in by a wave and gently carried the feeling so sublime Nina would have thought she was in a dream.

Reaching her hands down to him, Nina pulled him up to her, hands splayed across his cheeks. “I’m not as fragile as you think, Grim,” she whispered.

The blue diamonds of his irises were small, obstructed by the obsidian of his pupils. “I might be human, Grim, but that isn’t a bad thing.” Nina pulled his head closer until she could feel his lips on her newly healed ones, tentatively seeking her mouth. “I like that I’m human.”

Grim’s hands moved to the nape of her neck, his thumb rubbing in small circles as he leisurely kissed her mouth. There was no anger in the kiss, no bitter tears of regret for her humanity. It was just a simple kiss.

Slowly Grim pulled back, his lips clinging gently to her as he went. “I’m fucked up, Nina. I can’t help it.”

It was the first thing that sounded remotely like it was from this century, and Nina couldn’t help but laugh; “You and me both.”

Grim’s smile was slightly strained as he kissed her lips again and then pulled back to lean his forehead against hers. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to let go of my past.”

“Screw the past.” Nina closed her eyes and leaned into him. “Live in the present--with me.”

Grim held still, his body taut against Nina’s, but she didn’t stop. As much as she needed him, he needed her. They were both fucked up, their lives unfair from the beginning. “You didn’t murder your mother; she gave her life to have you, Grim. It was love.”

Power curled around her body, slipping under her thighs and back. Just like the first time, it felt like a thousand tongue strokes against every sensitive nerve ending. It was hard for Nina to focus with Grim taking her over completely, trying to drown out their conversation with sex.

But, she let it.

There was no more point to conversation; Nina had said all that she could. She didn’t want to dwell on the past anymore, didn’t want to think past that moment.

“Take what you need, Grim,” Nina whispered a second before his lips descended over hers.

***

Nina’s hands stroked the soft, springy hair on Grim’s chest, relaxed in his embrace. Just the way

he wanted her.

“Nina?” Grim asked her softly.

Lifting her head from his chest, Nina let her curls fall down over them. “Yes?”

Sleepy and content eyes met his, a soft smile playing with the corners of her lips.
She’s perfect.
She’s mine,
Grim thought as he stroked her hand down her back, feeling the lush curves that made his woman.

A dark cloud settled over him as he remembered their future, or lack thereof.
In less than three months Nina will be dead, and I’ll be married.
The thought entered his mind and soured his mood.

Nina seemed to sense the change as she shifted on him and placed her hand over his heart.

“Don’t think about the future, Grim. That’s not where we live.”

Moving his hand up to the nape of her neck, Grim pulled her down for a kiss, placing all the things he couldn’t say into the caress. Again, he felt utterly helpless, unable to do anything for Nina but watch her slow decline into death.

Before, he’d told himself that death was a part of life, a necessary evil. But he couldn’t fool himself with the same lie twice. It was unfair. And in fact it was more than unfair, it was wrong. He was a reaper; he
was
Death. Life didn’t apply to Grim; its rules didn’t apply to him.

“You don’t even understand what you mean to me,” Grim whispered as he gently pulled her back to him and looked into her eyes.

Those intelligent and curious eyes saw everything. “Don’t go all mushy on me, Grim.” Nina playfully smacked him on the shoulder. “Don’t ruin this with promises you can’t keep.”

Nina ducked her head and kissed him again, covering the enormity of her words with a caress. But Grim still heard it, the pleading note that she tried to hide from him--and most likely herself. It was there in her eyes, in the quiver of her lower lip, in the slight tremble of her hand still bearing Uri’s mark.

Grim felt Nina shift, felt her thighs move over his as the blanket fell off and she straddled his hips. Pulling back from him, Nina set her palms flat on his chest and raised her hips until his erection was positioned at her opening.

Digging her nails into the muscles of his chest Nina sank down onto his cock, her body still slick and warm from earlier. Grim watched her move above him, heavy breasts swaying as her hips rocked to take him deeper.

His hands went to the soft flesh of her thighs and kneaded as she took what she needed from his body, just as he’d done to her.

A sigh broke from her lips as he felt her ass hit the base of his cock and rub up against his balls. For an instant she held there, suspended above him, her eyes open but unseeing, her lips parted on an invisible gasp. Grim felt her inner muscles clench him, once, twice, before she bit her lip, a tiny moan escaping her as she came.

Grim didn’t give her another second to adjust, his hands moving up her thighs to her hips as he lifted her body up to thrust into her. “More, Grim!” she gasped as one of her hands moved from his chest to his leg so she could lower herself down as he thrust up.

She was slick and tight and so fucking wet that he could hear the sounds of her body as he took her. Grim closed his eyes and felt the slight throbbing from her clit as it rubbed against his dick, the sporadic clenching of her channel as he thrust up. In that moment, buried deep in her body, stretching her like no other man had--or ever would--Grim found his home, a place where he belonged.

Nina twitched, her whole body stilling above him again. Grim moved his hand with lighting fast speed and stroked the pad of his thumb over her clit, sending her into a hard orgasm.

She screamed as he kept his thumb on her clit, gently working the tight bud of nerves until she reached down and yanked his hand away. “Enough! Enough!”