Then, Earth Swallowed Ocean

by Shiloh Sloane

His skin was in the dirt, and nothing had ever looked more delicious. When he first sunk his teeth in, he realized they were not his teeth. They were sharp, greedy canines. Predator teeth. Monster teeth. He devoured himself bite by bite. Licking his furred muzzle. Snapping his ferocious, bone-shattering jaw. He’d learn later that other people tasted even sweeter.

If a nuke landed over this part of North Carolina, would he have a moment to let it fill his nose? He imagines taking someone then, digging his teeth into her neck as her pulse hammers hard against his tongue. The sky boiling above them. Fucking her. For no purpose, for no completion, other than soaking in the ultimate fear, the full awareness of her death. No hope. No light. His cock twitches at the thought.

Her scent is honeysuckle, brown butter, salt air. Morning dew and favored sweat. She is an entire world, stepping out of the cab and into the night with confusion lining her sweet young face. He smiles when he sees her. The second he sees her. Feels his lips spread over his sharp teeth and swallows another lungful of her scent. Delicious. Suddenly he’s starved. Suddenly, he hasn’t eaten a proper meal in months. Years. His entire life. It takes all he’s got not to rush her now and gorge himself on her blood. But something tells him not to.

There’s a drying wound on her temple and blood on her fingers like she’s been toying with it. He’d like to lick them.

When she sees him well, her skin flushes. Arousal mixes with her heady scent. Predators are beautiful, he knows, and his maker blessed him well. He’s strong, tall, carved like marble. No flaws on his skin or in his smooth, brushed-back hair. Large hands and soft lips. He’s many kinds of deadly.

She’s got bright hazel eyes and warm freckles, with a bit of plushness to her that pleases Ridge. Softens the muscles that shift beneath her skin. More to devour.

Her scent could knock him out better than a shotgun. He growls low in his throat when she’s close to him but she doesn’t seem to notice, biting her lip and purposefully averting her gaze from his. She blushes like a schoolgirl. Pretty, young, vibrant. He’d like to feel her fight with her hummingbird pulse under his broad palms. He’d like to lick the tears from her cheeks.

He leans forward. Nearly snaps his teeth, and how easy would it be? He could lean in and slice her throat open, his teeth a hot knife through her buttery flesh. Spill her taste over the polished wood. Catch some in his mouth. Be wasteful with it.

He surprises himself. He doesn’t kiss. Knows damn well if she kisses him he’ll bite into her early. But he wants to. He’s famished for her. Wants to devour her for each time she meets his gaze.

He hears most people like they’re yelling but her voice is perfect. Like waves in the ocean. He’s been landlocked for years.

“You’re beautiful,” he says. He’s never meant anything more than those words. Never been so drawn to prey. Looking at her feels like watching a sunset over the blue mountains west of town.

He’d like her to be nude when he eats her. When he digs his teeth into her sweet flesh.

She’s soft, so fucking soft he can feel the pillow of her flesh against the roof of his mouth and he hasn’t even tasted her yet.

He growls at the thought of being baptized with her blood. At the thought of being the first and last man to wreck this woman.

Their hearts beat together. His slams into the muscle of his chest. Reaching.

He’s famished for her and they’ve only just met.

He feels his canines grow long. Hard. Sharp. He sinks them into the flesh of her thigh. She screams. They all scream but hers sounds different, tickling at something in the front of his mind that feels darker than lust. He closes his jaws, groaning, so aroused he nearly comes in his jeans. Still, he slips his fingers under the placket of her underwear. Swallows a small bite of her as he sinks them into her heat. She’s wet. So fucking wet that as he strokes her walls, her scream turns into a shuddering breath. And she’s still moving around up there but she’s not trying to escape anymore. He drinks from the wound on her thigh as his hand explores her, as his cells taste all of her fluids. Nearly too delicious to kill.

If he hadn’t decided to eat her, he might give her his name just to hear her say it.

He’s never experienced anything like her before. His stomach growls. Those few tastes he managed were the first hit of the first drug that ever worked for him. He wants more. Craves and needs more. Now.

“I fell in love last night, Elam,” he says, rolling back his shoulders. He knows how much broader and taller he is than the man, likes seeing the way even his size scares him. “Hunt more; prepare for the wedding.”

He’ll hunt her down. He’ll tear out her lungs and steal her dying whispers. He bets they’d taste like cotton candy used to.

Evil people don’t read, do they? She supposes Hitler read. He wrote a book that all the Germans read, and he was evil. But he couldn’t have read comic books, or he would have known he was the villain.

“If I reach my tongue back to my molars I can still taste your flesh there,” he whispers, his voice wavering to the gentle thrusting of his hips. “The scent of your cunt lingers in between the cracks of my fingerprints. Underneath my nails.”

“I’m going to eat you bite by bite, little fawn,” he breathes. His inhales are jagged. “I’m going to get to your bones while I fuck you, and I’m going to feel your last heartbeat around my cock…”

“You’ll still be warm when I come inside of you,” he says, scooping his pleasure from his skin into his cupped palm. “And then I’ll eat what’s left.”

“Kiss it clean, little fawn,” he tells her. “Lick the rope of your noose.”

Keeping his gaze set on her, he sinks two fingers into the wound on his shoulder. The girth of them widens the small circle. She feels him penetrate the red parts of her. Aches for it to be true, even as crimson streams down his chest. Then, above his heart, he writes her name in his blood. A declaration. A threat. When he turns, he’ll devour the letters on his skin.

But the way he looks at her… The way Ridge looks at Sadie is the same way Wright’s father looked at his mother and the same way he saw himself looking at Jess in their wedding photos. God damn. Because now, she’d better hope she can get far away from Ridge. Otherwise, any man who touches her, god forbid kiss her or make love to her, is as good as dead.

Wright could have killed him for what he walked in on. He’d known his brother was depraved, but that exceeded his concerns. He would have killed her like that. She would have let him. Fated mates. Please, God, no.

Ridge’s sharp teeth are filled with the flesh of another. Unsatisfied. Sadie is the only thing he thinks about. He couldn’t recall the face of the hitchhiker he offered a ride to. Its flesh tasted bland compared to the way even her scent lingers on his tongue. She coats him like powdered sugar. He feels her throat wrapped around his cock, her sweet forest eyes watering, the skin of her face brightening from the lack of air.

He hasn’t masturbated much since childhood, hasn’t had to. There’s always prey to fuck. There’s always someone willing. But the thought of anyone else seems dry to him now. Tasteless, faceless. He wants Sadie. The girl with whose scent has no match anywhere on the fucking planet.

He leans his forehead against the screen. A growl spirals up his throat. “You’ll kill me,” she says. “Not yet.” He pauses. “There’s much I’d like to do to you. Killing you is just the last.”

Still, it makes him stiff to think of biting into her inner thigh hard enough to cut the artery. Pinning her legs apart and fucking her until her pulse grows weak. Knowing the last thing she sees will be him.

Why do her freckled lips make him want to kiss her? He doesn’t kiss but he wants to tease her tongue with his until she’s gasping against his mouth, and he thinks of all this as she’s watching him with her legs squeezed together and her eyes wide with fear.

“God,” he says. “Thank you for what part you may have played in all this, though I doubt you’ve got a damn reason for staying around in our neck of the woods. Most with half a mind might be sure you’ve abandoned this place. And good riddance. But thank you for this meal. Though it has little appeal to me, I think she likes it. Amen.”

lips. The more he looks at her, the more he recognizes that he’s never seen beauty like hers before. That he read Jess’s romance books to relearn language and everything they’ve described lives in the features of her face.

Ridge imagines flipping the table and diving onto his knees before her. Hoisting her legs over his shoulders and devouring her cunt-first.

“Little fawn,” he insists. “Spread your legs when I speak to you.” She whimpers. He’d like to tell his brother to fuck off. He’d like to pull her over this table and thrust deep in her throat again. Instead he pushes her knee until it’s pinned against the wall and he can smell her dripping down to the chair. Yes, he’ll lick the chair too. He’ll scrape the fucking paint off of it.

“Do you wonder what it would be like if I ate your cunt?” Ridge asks.

“I’ll only swallow some of the flesh at your thighs,” Ridge growls. “But I’ll nip and suck at your folds and that sweet bud in between until the only taste left is my spit and your pleasure like salted fucking caramel on my tongue.”

“Every time you come for me, Sadie,” he adds. “I’ll let you live another day.”

“I’m going to fuck you in our blood, little fawn,” he tells her before running his tongue up her cheek.

“I’m going to devour your cunt with this blade against your sweet inner thigh.”

“And if you don’t come for me,” he says, sinking to his knees. “I’m going to slice through your flesh and drink your dying blood.”

“Each time you come, my little fawn,” he says, spreading her wider with his free hand. He slips two long fingers inside of her, curving upwards. She shudders. That noise in the back of her throat. “I’ll spare your life another day. Do you understand?”

This is a kiss he excels at. He feels more like a worshiper than a God now, but they’ll have to pry him off his knees.

Her pleasure is his oxygen now and he’d damn every other thing for one more lick, for one more drop, for the gates to heaven pearled with his spit and her cum.

He grabs her ankles and pushes them to the counter by her hips. He’s hitting a barrier within her but he’ll break it. She meets his thrusts and even when she tries to hurt him she’s like a mating animal. Biting him just to sink her pleasure somewhere, clawing at him to pull him deeper inside her. She can’t speak anymore. Her innocent face is scrunched up, eyes squeezed close and gorgeous mouth parted and he loves her now. He can’t imagine wanting anyone but her. She’s so stunning when she takes him.

Everything is nothing compared to her. In this moment, she’s more powerful and important than any god he can imagine; her moans, the fluttering of her eyelids as her eyes roll back, the feeling of her soft, warm body wrapped around his, are his entire world. She’ll always be his world now. He can’t kill her. He wants her forever. He wants this and only this until the day he dies.

He can’t hold back. He’ll come inside her. He’ll plant his seed in her fucking womb. He wants her pregnant and swollen, wants kids with her beautiful eyes and freckled mouth, wants her warmth all around him and always.