Chapter 36
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
Zephyr
I dreamed of warm places and wet hands sliding over my skin.
Water washed away the memories of strange men grinning and groping, making me cry.
I woke in Beck’s bed, in his arms, being slow-fed bites of his lust. The fragments of desire were broken off something much larger.
Something more meaningful than a primal urge.
It was in his eyes. The light I’d searched for the night I met him.
A pale yellow glow. When he blinked, it was like a firefly flickering, and I remembered that I did love them.
When I was a child, I used to chase them.
I would race through tall grass, twisting and twirling to capture one of the bright little bugs.
Then I would cup my palms around it and hold on, feeling as triumphant as if I’d snatched a star from the sky.
I stared at Beck, thinking of past places and forgotten things, until I remembered something recent.
The poker game he’d carried me away from.
The sidewalk meeting with the angel, Stefano.
Arriving here, where I’d been overcome by the demon in me.
My hunger had grown too strong, become too much.
It would have consumed me, but Beck was there, and I’d told him what I needed—what I needed him to be.
Darby was right. The way Beck held me now, stripped to his underwear between luxurious cotton sheets, was not like a sugar daddy. There were no dicks in asses, though I did want that. This was closeness and comfort. A connection I’d thought severed. And a clinging bit of doubt.
Beck had said a lot of things, sometimes conflicting things, and while I hoped he’d simply changed his mind, I needed to know for certain if he meant what he was telling me now.
That he wasn’t going anywhere.
That he would take care of me.
That he would be my…
“About what I… called you.” I swallowed hard. “It’s just something Darby said. I didn’t mean—”
“You can call me whatever you want,” Beck cut in while coiling languid fingers in my hair. “I called you Beauty because that’s what I see in you. I assume you must have felt the same.”
“I did,” I said. Then added in a quieter voice, “I do.”
Beck’s expression was profoundly sincere. “Then I’ll be your Daddy, and you’ll be my Beauty.”
The statement made my insides churn, stirring the good and bad of the past few days into a sickly sludge.
I’d been closer to happiness than ever before, only to have it stripped away.
I was sent back where I belonged, then caged in with the consequences of my actions.
My regrets and fears compounded. Then I was Maslow’s whore on parade.
His salesman’s sample, and what happened in the Basilica’s hallowed halls had been its own sample of the life the wraith intended for me.
I felt nauseous from the persistent hunger, from the thought of a future of rooms full of men who wanted to taste me, touch me, tear me apart. And Maslow would be there with his hand on my back, pulling everything out until I was reduced to skin and bones.
I didn’t mean to cry again, but it was happening already.
A flood of feeling spilled out, and I drew into myself, terrified of how much I wanted.
How desperately I longed to be free of Maslow.
How I craved a view uninterrupted by prison bars.
How I wished this could be my home for more than one night.
How I still wanted to keep Beck… maybe forever.
His hand moved from my hair to my cheek, drying the tears that dripped from my lashes. “What’s wrong?” he murmured.
I sucked a shuddering breath, then shook my head. “I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t an answer—it explained nothing—but I meant it. I was sorry for wanting things I couldn’t have.
Beck pulled me in tighter, his fingers skimming over my spine, his mouth pressed to the side of my head.
The suite was too quiet for how loud I was inside. My throat burned with words bubbling toward the surface. Things that needed to be said for my own sake, if nothing else.
I couldn’t hold them in anymore.
“I don’t want to be a whore,” I began. “I don’t want to fuck for money. Or for Mazzy. Or for… anyone else.”
Beck’s fingers splayed between my shoulder blades, a stable presence that eased the breaths rushing in and out.
I kept going.
“Those men today?” I shrank at the thought. “They weren’t like you, but I wanted them to be. I want everyone to be like you because that would make it okay. That would make it better, don’t you think?”
I gazed at him, seeking approval. Or forgiveness.
“You’re not a whore,” Beck said solemnly. “You never have been.”
But I was exactly that to so many people. That identity had been hammered into me, blow by agonizing blow, and I crumbled under the shame of it.
“Mazzy says…” I paused to compose myself. “He says I should like it, but I don’t like it at all.” My brow furrowed, adding deep lines to the spiteful expression on my face. “It’s empty, and angry, and it hurts me, Beck.”
“I know,” he replied.
Then the final piece came tumbling out. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”
Beck hummed a disgruntled sound and rolled me onto my back. He arched overhead, silhouetted by the orange glow of sunset pouring in through the window.
“No, baby,” he said. “It’s not like that. It doesn’t work like that.”
How, then?
I didn’t ask, but I wondered what evil I must have done to end up here. Why was I punished when there were angels as cavalier and cruel as Narcissus? The world felt upside down. Or maybe just unfair.
Beck’s broad, muscular body contoured against mine, and his arm curved around, holding me the way no one else did.
“I made you a promise,” he said. “Do you remember?”
I nodded. “You said you’d fix it.”
Beck smiled. “And I’m going to make good on that. But first, I need you to know that I’m not giving you up. Not in forty-eight hours. Not to that bastard Maslow.” He caught my chin to hold my gaze level with his. “And as much as all that, I need you to hear me say that I’m sorry too.”
“What for?”
“For being afraid. Of you.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out small. “I’m not scary.”
“No.” He smiled again, thinner than the last. “I’m just a coward.” His thumb stroked along my jaw in the pause before he said, “I was afraid of something else too. But I’m not anymore.”
“What is it?” I searched his face.
He leaned in and, for a heartbeat, I thought he might kiss me. I pushed toward him, as hungry for that as everything else, but the sting of previous rejections made me flinch back.
“What about the poison?” I asked. “I don’t want to—”
“Zephyr.” Beck’s golden eyes crinkled at the corners. “I’ve been enthralled by you since the moment I saw you. Incubus venom had nothing to do with it.”
The city glittered beyond the window, all heat and motion, but this room felt removed from it. Like we were the only two people in the world.
“Zephyr,” Beck said again, as quiet as a secret. “May I kiss you?”
It was the first real choice I’d been given in a long, long time.
I swallowed hard.
“Yes, Daddy,” I said.
Color blossomed above the dense stubble on Beck’s cheeks. Then everything went soft.
The sheets tangled around us as we pressed skin to skin on the plush mattress. Beck’s lips found mine, and it was nothing like the rough mouths and careless hands from the poker table.
There were no teeth. No bruising pressure. No sense of being claimed or consumed. Just a kiss—slow and reverent. Like he knew exactly what had been taken from me and was trying, in his own way, to give it back.
Still, my body tensed. The memory of being used and forced clawed its way to the surface, warning me to shrink, retreat, and protect what little of myself was left.
But then Beck made a soft sound against my mouth and offered me the purest taste of desire I’d ever known.
I devoured it.
Parting my lips, I leaned in, and Beck responded with a hum of approval. He slid his fingers into my damp hair and snagged them there like he’d been waiting to do this forever.
I’d been waiting too.
I pushed up onto my elbows, pressing my chest against Beck’s while our legs tangled together. Knees dented the mattress as Beck shifted to get on top of me, boxing me in. When my cock grazed the bulge in his underwear, I moaned, and Beck slipped his tongue into my mouth.
I’d imagined it was him before, earlier. His tongue lashing against mine, his taste invading my senses, his hands holding on to me. Now it was, and the sensation was divine. My back arched, and I rocked my hips forward so my hardness touched his again.
The scant friction drove out another groan, and I thrust against him, rising needfully off the bed until Beck broke the seal of our lips at last. He hovered overhead, eyes like twin flames, mouth slanted in a smile. “Colette told me I was your first,” he said.
I gave a wobbly nod.
“No regrets, I hope?” He looked nervous, eyebrows pinched and worry tugging at his lips.
I rushed to reassure him. “None.”
He stayed poised above me, and I wanted him closer. I needed to feel him against me, inside me, filling the void Maslow had left behind.
“Beck…” I strained toward him again, moving my body nearer until the heat between us was scorching. “I want you to be all my firsts.”
It was another thing I couldn’t have. Not technically.
There had been other hands, other mouths, other people taking things I hadn’t given. Intimacy had been twisted into obligation.
But that didn’t count.
This counted. What I chose counted. And Beck was, undoubtedly, my first choice.
His thumb brushed my cheek, reverent. “I’d like that.”
Bending in, he kissed me again. I gasped through it and felt him smile in response. The gentleness of it, the consideration and care, had my toes curling, heart thumping, and head spinning as I drank him down.
We were still connected when I pushed up again. Tentative and hopeful. Asking like he’d asked me.
Can I have you?