“Jill, Jill,” I groaned when we both wasted a precious moment separating, needing oxygen to fuel an escalating intensity. I wanted her so badly. Wanted more than this before I died. “Oh, Jill . . .”
My own voice sounded strange in my ears. Yet somehow familiar. A voice I’d just heard.
Hurry, I told myself. Hurry or stop . . .
“Don’t stop . . . Don’t stop . . .”
Shutting out the command, silencing my now vocal foe, I tried to focus on Jill, tightening my arm around her waist, my lips grazing her throat. “Her soft, soft throat . . .”
“Tristen,” Jill murmured, sounding breathy but a little nervous as I nipped at her neck, hearing myself make a low growl of need. “Tristen?”
“Yes, love,” I murmured against her ear. “Yes . . .” “Yes, yes . . .”
Yes . . . Just another moment, and I would release her forever. “Oh, Jill . . .”
I didn’t mean to be rough or desperate, but time was running out, and I clamped hard upon her mouth, our lips grinding together, my hand digging into her hair.
“Take her, Tristen . . . And what you start I will finish . . .”
No . . . No . . .
My head began to ache from the struggle, a crushing pain, and I sensed that I was losing. Yet I couldn’t stop kissing her. This was my last chance . . . I clasped her more firmly, moving her back against the desk, trapping her, pressing our bodies together. Her hips wriggled against mine.
“That’s right. She wants this, too. Don’t listen, if she protests. She wants this . . .”
“Tristen,” Jill cried out softly, her hands no longer uncertain as I crushed her against the table. No, her palms were pressing against my chest, pushing back against me. Against us.
“Ignore her. Trap her there. Bend her backwards . . .”
“No, Tristen!” Jill called more loudly. More insistently, as if she knew that I was far away and she was desperate to reach me. “STOP! PLEASE!”
I was so far gone, losing to the beast, that I scarcely heard her. But her plea, the sound of her voice—the voice that I loved—it was enough to reach me even as everything began to grow black.
“Stop, Tristen,” Jill whimpered, on the verge of tears. “Please . . . stop . . .”
Like the dream. It was just how she sounded in the dream.
Without a word I snatched my hands away, released her squirming body, and stepped back, dragging the back of my hand across my mouth, which was wet with my saliva, Jill’s saliva. We were both breathing hard, almost panting. Her slender shoulders heaved. And her beautiful hazel eyes were wide with fear.
My stomach clenched to see the terror there.
No. I hadn’t wanted that. Never. Never to scare her. Or hurt her.
“I’m sorry, Jill,” I whispered. “So sorry.”
I’d almost failed to protect her. I’d wanted to be with her so badly that I’d almost been complicit . . .
Jill stared at me, face pale, hands raised slightly as if to ward me off should I step toward her.
“Oh, god.” I buried my face in my hands, afraid that I might break down. Too sickened to face that look in her eyes. “Oh, god, no.”
We stood apart in silence—as distant as we’d just been close. Jill didn’t try to touch me, and I didn’t try to excuse or explain myself, although I longed to tell her that I wasn’t like that. I wasn’t a guy who would . . . Especially not with her . . .
And yet—I almost had . . .
“Tristen?” Jill finally prompted, voice quiet. I heard the faint sound of the slipperlike shoes that she always wore tapping against the linoleum and then felt a tentative hand on my shoulder, and I nearly did break down.
She was better than me. Braver than me. She should have run screaming for help. Yet she touched me.
Dragging my shaking fingers through my hair, I stepped out of her reach and turned my back on her, unworthy of her concern and unable to show my face. “Leave, Jill. Please. Leave.”
She didn’t listen to me. Instead she stepped closer and stroked my shoulder. “Tristen . . . was that . . . ?” She seemed unable to finish the question. But I understood.
Was that the beast? Or you?
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It doesn’t matter now, Jill.”
Straightening my shoulders, I went to the lab table, not giving her a moment to protest—if indeed she even thought of protesting. I raised the foul-smelling flask to my lips and without hesitation drank as much as I could, downing the disgusting brew in huge thirsty gulps, heedless of dosage, heedless of the havoc the strychnine would wreak on my body, because at that point I didn’t give a damn about a cure, and I wanted the agony. I’d seen the look in Jill’s eyes—the betrayal, the terror—and I wanted nothing less than to kill both the beast and myself.
Nothing less would do to punish what I’d nearly done.
Beast or no beast—I’d been there, too.
Chapter 44
Jill
HE HAD TO CURE HIMSELF.
I told myself that as I watched Tristen raise the dark concoction in the beaker to his mouth.
I’d felt and heard the beast start to overtake him when we’d kissed. Felt Tristen slipping away from me, becoming somebody, something, completely different. The boy who’d first touched his lips to mine and the animal that had tried to pin me against the desk: they were two different beings entirely. They felt, spoke, looked, even smelled different. Tristen’s skin itself had roughened, and his beautiful, warm brown eyes had taken on a gray, metallic sheen.
The shift had been barely perceptible. If he hadn’t been so close to me, pressing against me, breathing on me, I might not have been sure I’d seen it. But I had. The beast was real. And I’d met it.
It was a monster, and it had to be stopped.
If it was killed, I could have Tristen . . . the real Tristen. We could kiss again without being afraid.
Looking back, I think that’s why I waited so long before begging him
