41. Chapter 41
41
Nelle
I ’d given in to Graysen. And I. Did. Not. Care.
I wanted more. More of him. More of us.
What we were doing, how this would end in the morning, I’d deal with it then. But gods, could Graysen’s touch make my body sing.
I kissed and nipped his throat, delighting in the feel of his bristly jaw tickling my cheekbone. He made a rough, desperate noise that had my fingertips digging into his hard chest. We were practically dry-fucking as my hips rocked, desperately seeking friction to ease the torturous pressure building inside my core.
His hands cupped my breasts, kneading my nipples, and I moaned, arching harder into his desirous touch. Threading my fingers around his neck, I drew him down for a kiss, luxuriating in the feel of skin-to-skin. My hands drifted downward and skimmed the knotted bone of his spine—
Brushed over bumpy skin—
What is this?
What am I touching?
My fingertips explored, hesitated in their search, then roamed his back further. His skin felt textural, like a seagrass carpet.
I stilled. “Graysen?”
His gaze was lust-drunk, his kiss-swollen lips parted as they dipped lower to meet my own, and he made a humming noise as if encouraging me to ask my question.
There was something symmetrical about the roughened skin. I traced a line. A line?
Recognition crashed through me. Oh, my gods…
My entire body went rigid .
Graysen felt my reaction, startled, and jerked back. Fear slashed through his eyes, chased by remorse.
Remorse?
I scrabbled from beneath him and swiftly circled his figure. My knees sank into the mattress as I kneeled behind him.
My blood chilled like a lake frozen over.
My hand trembled as I touched his back, and he flinched.
His head was bowed, his spine rounded, and he sat on his heels, facing away.
Who? Who could have done this to him?
Someone had painted his entire back in pain. They’d ruined his flesh with welts and slices and puckered jagged marks. Only a whip could make this cruelty and bite with such symmetrical lines. And this many lines— gods, so many!— pain scored his back. No flesh remained unmarked. He’d had to have endured this time and time again.
Anger burned through me, sweeping faster and fiercer than wildfyre.
Who did this to him?!
I wanted to obliterate them. Burn them to ash!
The air crackled and pulsed with my anger—
The creature reared, hissing—
My fingers clenched into fists, and my adamere bracelet softly clinked with the motion, the sound a reminder— calm, calm, calm.
I struggled to will the creature to sink back down. To withdraw its fangs and claws.
“Who?” The word came out strangled, almost a sob.
Graysen twisted around and grabbed hold of my wrist. He growled a warning, “Don’t.”
A warning I didn’t heed. “Who did this to you?”
He closed his eyes, the long eyelashes feathering the top of his cheeks.
“Graysen?” I softly urged. Who could have done this? Hurt him this way?
The word came out flat and cold. “Go.”
“No.”
When he opened his eyes, they brimmed with rage. So much rage I flinched. “Go on—get the fuck out of here!”
He rose, lunging for me, but I was too fast, skittering off the bed. “Graysen—”
“Leave, now!” Graysen roared. A storm gathered in the depth of his gaze.
Why did I feel that rage was aimed at me? That it was me he blamed.
That’s what cut the deepest—what made me forget to breathe .
What did I do to him?
I didn’t raise the whip.
I didn’t slash it down and mar his back, cut his flesh and make him bleed.
I was torn. I wanted to make him tell me what had happened, who’d done this terrible thing to him, but he wasn’t going to let me in. He wanted me gone. And under that menacing glare, I wanted to run from him too.
Everything we’d just experienced, everything that had been blossoming between us, was cut at the root and he was tossing us away. The softness in his features had vanished. This cold, unyielding face—that was the face I knew only too well. Hard, aloof, disdainful.
There was nothing in his dead eyes—they were blank and unfeeling and utterly dispassionate.
“Let me in,” I whispered, the words choking a little in my throat.
A muscle in his jaw ticked. He slowly blinked, and when he next looked at me, dark amusement glittered in his gaze. A sly smile curled his lips. Rolling off the bed, he stood tall and sinister. He made a move toward me with a graceful predatory stride, and I couldn’t help but take a step back. Then another. My back jolted up against the wall and I almost shrieked in startlement.
Reaching where I huddled next to the wall of the bedroom, his shadow cast me in gloom. He stared down at me with a nasty line to his mouth. “You think just because I made you come, I give a fuck about you?”
His cruel words were a fist to my stomach.
And I let myself feel that pain, if only for a moment. But I was smarter than that. “I’m not stupid, Graysen. All you’re trying to do is deflect me. Who the hells whipped you?”
He ignored my question and instead reached out to capture a lock of my hair and toyed with it, twining it around his forefinger. His voice was low and seductive. “It was a pretty sight to see you come apart, Wychthorn. To hear your panting breaths. Riding my godsdamn fingers. Basically fucking them yourself. And you so easily gave that part of you away freely to someone like me.”
Horror and dread twisted inside my stomach.
Shamefully, it took me a lot longer than it took him to reveal those hurtful words, for his confession to sink in. It was a long, long moment where I stared at him like a godsdamn fool. My heart pounded in my throat as a flurry of confusing emotions—shock, hurt, embarrassment, anger—rushed through my veins and my muddled mind tried to make sense of it all.
But it was the smile curving his mouth that made me finally understand what he was saying. A smug smile only for me.
My legs threatened to buckle beneath me. “You despise me,” I said, more to myself than him, the words barely a whisper.
How could I have forgotten that so easily?
So much had happened over the past twenty-four hours. Dire circumstances brought us together. And I’d stupidly forgotten who he was. A Crowther.
He despises me.
This was what…?
I’m a game to him?
Graysen angled his head to the side, and the hair I’d mussed up by running my fingers through the wavy locks slid across his forehead with the motion. His words were pure venom. “Kenton thought I’d never get you into bed. Jett, maybe tomorrow after the engagement celebrations when you’d be all starry-eyed. But Caidan… Caidan called it just right. ”
I sucked in a sharp breath. Something painful caved inside my chest.
His confession rang with truth. He did, he meant it. He’d made a bet of me.
Nausea roiled in my stomach and my knees buckled so badly, I almost slid to the floor. I flung my hand against the wall to support myself. “You had a bet with your brothers?”
No…it couldn’t be possible. He wouldn’t…would he?
I knew my gaze pleaded with him, begging him to refute it. “You’re making it up, saying it to make me go away.”
“I’m saying it because it’s the truth,” he murmured almost kindly, pity lacing his words. Pity for me.
I felt so small, so tiny in the menacing shadow he cast. I was the mouse and he was the lion. And he’d been toying with me, batting me back and forth with his lethal paws, waiting for the moment to pounce.
Rolling his eyes briefly toward the ceiling, he heaved a bored sigh. “A weekend is a long time to spend in your company, Wychthorn. I had to entertain myself some way.” He’d braced one hand against the wall while he continued to toy with my hair, sliding the strands between his fingers.
I was only half aware I was shaking my head in denial.
He made a humming noise as if trying to figure out how to let down a silly, foolish child. “It’s been fun, Wychthorn. But your wet kisses are dull, and we both know you’re not going to put out tonight. I think I’ll seek release elsewhere. I’ll ask if that pretty little friend of the Pellans wants a fuck. She keeps begging me to slide into her bed, so why shouldn’t I take up her offer?”
I slapped his hand away with a crack that resounded in the room.
Silence fell between us both. There was nothing but the sound of my harsh breathing. I pressed my palm to the ache in my chest. Something had cleaved inside me. My heart—I stupidly realized. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, in his eyes. Just endless black nothing.
My gaze slipped to the wyrmfire ink scorched across his flesh—the whorls of ink spelling out his history.
Would I be there?
Would he write my story—his conquest—the stupid little Wychthorn he’d fooled?
Gods, I’m such a simpleton!
“I hate you!” But it came out pathetically hitched and my bottom lip wobbled.
His broad hand snapped to my neck. He shoved me back roughly and pinned my head to the wall. My hands went to his fingers cuffing my throat, and I dug my fingernails sharply into his flesh. But he didn’t release me, and some masochistic part of me needed to hear this.
His jaw clenched, and his brows furrowed over piercing black eyes that now blazed with life, with fury. “You should. You should hate me…because I hate you ,” he hissed. “You’re a Wychthorn. A spoiled princess. Someone I’ve had to endure. But I own you, don’t ever fucking forget that. I own you. Like a toy. A pretty little toy. So go back to your room and enjoy your freedom before I steal it from you.” Barking a laugh at my distress, he shoved me away. I clumsily slid sideways, while he retreated a step, watching with amusement to see what I’d do next.
I was so shocked and angry my entire being shook.
He played me!
I was the fool!
Me!
I took a moment to gather myself. Lowering my gaze to the carpet and my bare feet, I stood before him, completely unclothed, but I felt like my heart was more naked and raw and vulnerable to him than my physical body.
Bowing my head, my hair cascaded in front of my face and acted as a shield as I blinked back the burning heartache in my eyes.
He had his hands on me.
His mouth.
His tongue.
All for his amusement!
The air charged and crackled against my skin as rage razed through me.
He was ice. But I was fire and brimstone .
Rage felt so much better than the ache devouring my heart, threatening to numb every single cell in my body.
I unconsciously unwound the adamere bracelet from my wrist and swung the length back and forth in furious snaps. I jerked my head up, and my hard gaze clashed with his. But when I spoke, it was gentle. “Two things, Graysen.” And I swore that would be the last time I’d ever use his name.
My mother raised me with kindness and compassion, and that was who I was. Despite the rage, the pain, the hurt, this was what I needed to say, and I meant it too. “First, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that someone did that to you.”
His nostrils flared with anger and he growled, “I don’t want your fucking pity.” The words sliced through me with the ease of a blade. It hurt to hear the disdain laced in his tone, all directed at me. “I deserved it. Every single lash of the whip.”
What did he do to deserve that kind of pain?
And then my fingers fisted—
Why the hells do I care?
The guy is an arrogant asshole who messed with my heart, my body!
“Secondly,” I paused, and allowed the fury to sting and the hate to boil my blood. Power slithered along my bones, hissing and snarling. “Though, right this minute, it would be so easy to wink you out of existence, incinerate you from the inside out, deny your lungs air…” I let those words sink in, satisfied when I saw a flash of unease, a slight shift in his stance. “I’ll settle for this instead!”
I smashed my fist into his nose and heard the satisfying crunch of bone breaking. His head whipped back with the force of my strike.
He rolled his neck and brought his gaze to mine. His nostrils flared as blood streamed from his nose, dripping over his lips, down his chin, splattering on the soft beige carpet between his bare feet. He sawed his jaw from side to side. But he didn’t make a move to retaliate. He merely stared down at me along the length of his broken, bloodied nose, with cold indifferent eyes.
“I hate you! I hate you… you motherfucking prick !” I slapped him, again and again. He stood still, letting me pummel him. “So go on, collect your winnings from your prick brothers! But know this—you dare claim me on my twentieth birthday—I swear to Zrenyth, I will make your life intolerable. And if you try, or give me so much as the slightest suspicion you’ve betrayed me to the Horned Gods, I will end your miserable life before they claim me. You got that, Crowther?!”
I pivoted, not waiting for a reply. I fled to the safety of my room, slamming the adjoining door so hard the frame fractured .
Tears, shameful, hot tears, fell then. I was a fool. A fool for thinking of Graysen Crowther as anything but a cold-hearted jailer. He’d made a mockery of me. He’d toyed with me. He’d made me think he cared for me.
Gods, I’m a stupid, stupid fool.
I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t care about him!
I scrubbed the tears from my face, hating myself, hating him too. But those scars, those vicious bites from a whip that ruined his back… Had they made him into what he was today?
Heartless. Cruel.
I don’t know how long I stood there, a puddled mess of pathetic emotion. Finally, I gathered my heavy, weary limbs and dragged myself to my bedroom. I slid into a nightie and slipped into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin. Sage slept fitfully at the end of the mattress, whimpering in his sleep.
I didn’t think that I could fall asleep, not with the merciless ache in my chest, my mind replaying Graysen’s cruel taunt over and over again. But exhaustion hit me hard. The day tugged at me, and I got pulled under, into the murkiness of slumber. And the dreams were black…
The yawning noise of a curved stone door being shut… The last flicker of light dying…
Silence.
I was alone in the dark.
Such endless unfathomable black… I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face…
I couldn’t see…