Chapter 44
FORTY-FOUR
HANNAH
I’m in the bedroom, polishing off the last bites of the dinner I brought with me and idly thinking about going back for seconds when the door slams open so hard I nearly drop the plate. Thank God I just set it down.
I should have barred the door. Of course I didn’t. Of course Abaddon ducks inside, huge as a shadow, and shuts it behind him like he’s sealing me in a glass globe. The light from the windows shivers and then dwindles under the spread of his wings.
“You go nowhere without me by your side,” he barks.
I cross my arms over my chest because, apparently, we are having this conversation for the hundredth time.
How many ways do I have to tell him I’m not his dog?
Talking is obviously futile—he doesn’t hear me as an equal—so I employ the oldest trick in the book again: silent treatment.
I turn my back and start making the bed.
“Hannah-consort,” he says in a demanding tone.
I keep ignoring him and stuffing the duvet in, imagining how absurd he must look towering over the doorway.
I once had a friend who used the silent treatment like a martial art; I learned from the best. Briefly, I remember when I tried this with him last time and it blew up spectacularly in my face, but stubbornness tastes better than caution right now.
“Hannah-consort,” he repeats, louder.
I hum under my breath to drown him out and yank the bearskin taut until it snaps like a whip.
The motion is satisfying, a small, private joy.
I have as much rage as he does, I realize suddenly—maybe more.
A lifetime of being told I’m a burden has built a well I didn’t know I had. It collects and waits.
“Hannah-consort,” he bellows. “Pay attention to me.”
Or you’ll do what? I know exactly how volatile his temper can be. But he’s not the only one who can get angry. Maybe I never learned how deep my own well of fury ran until now.
His hooves pad closer across the cobbles of the bedroom. If he explodes, I tell myself, I will leave. Really leave. I’ve done impossible things before. I can do them again. The thought steadies me; my movements become sharper as I make the bed like I’m tucking a life into order.
Then his voice changes. Low. Controlled. Dangerous in a different way. “Hannah-consort will go nowhere without me at her side. And if she will not agree to these terms, then she will also go nowhere.”
My mouth opens. What does that mean? But I stubbornly don’t ask. I get my answer soon enough.
He pounces.
One second, I’m smoothing the bearskin covers; the next, he’s across the bed and bearing down over me.
If he’d used force—if his claws had been out—I would have ripped at him like a wildcat.
But every time he’s been brutal, he’s also been careful with me, and that carefulness makes my pulse do traitorous things.
And he is so careful now: claws sheathed, movements controlled, weight distributed so he doesn’t crush me.
He pins me to the bed with a knee between my legs; his wings fan like a blackout over the room, and the daylight dies under their span.
Stubborn to the core, I don’t make a sound at first. I stare at him, furious, then turn my face away so he can’t draw any satisfaction from my eyes. Deny him that, I tell myself. Deny him everything.
“Hannah-consort will make noises for me again,” he breathes, and his fingers close around my wrist. I should pull away. I should, but I don’t. It makes me mad that my chest beats a different rhythm from my brain.
He loops a length of rope from under the bed.
I want to ask what he’s doing, but the motion gives me an answer: the rope slides over my wrist, snug and inevitable, and he shifts and ties it to the bedpost. Then my other wrist, and my ankle.
Wings press warm and heavy at my sides, pinning me while he works.
The coil is practiced—quick, efficient, and not too tight—but also leaving me unable to move.
“Yes,” he purrs, the word velvet and dangerous, “you will scream for me soon enough.”
The sentence dries the moisture from my mouth like a breath of winter. The same cold seems to migrate down to that other place, and for reasons my head refuses to honor, my legs begin to squirm.
Abaddon isn’t finished. Not by a long shot.
He moves down my body, wings beginning to flutter all around me. I know that flutter; it’s the one that means he’s strung tight with want.
Then his hand closes around my left ankle. Anticipation and dread spike like a double-shot hit of adrenaline.
Last time I was face-down, and now I’m on my back and can see everything he’s about to do, which is both worse and somehow more terrifyingly interesting.
I kick with my one free leg, and he snatches it out of the air, gentle about the claws as always but iron-strong in his grip.
He drags it back to the bed and loops another rope around it.
Where the hell are all these ropes coming from anyway?
Does he keep them under the bed like some romantic MacGyver stash?
Jesus. He’s prepared. Of course, he’s prepared.
Alarm spikes. But confession: there’s a lurching, stupid little spark of excitement under it. What is wrong with me? I squeeze my eyes shut because logic is useless here.
That doesn’t save me. He moves back up my body before I can regroup, and my cunt betrays me, clenching on nothing and getting wet, and I feel my whole pelvis arch toward him like a moth to heat.
I am, predictably, way too ready.
His hands squeeze my thighs, and he leans in. I don’t even realize when my apron skirt rides up, my legs already spread by the rope. And when his exhale moves down to ghost my labia, I nearly break my vow of silence. Because holy Mary, mother of—
That feels so good.
These last days have been a mess, and yes, he made most of that mess. I haven’t forgiven him. Not in my head. But his mouth—his impossible, filthy, expert mouth—might just be the nearest thing to a salve for the gulf between us.
My hips buck on reflex as he breathes out again, and he’s on me like a beast who’s been starving.
He grabs my ass and pulls me up toward him as he opens that insane jaw and begins to devour me.
His tongue slides into me, long and hot, while his lips cover his teeth at my clit.
His tongue dives straight for that blind, needy spot deeper in me.
It is the best head anyone could dream up and then some. He slurps and nips and covers me with that rough tongue until I’m clawing uselessly at the furs, trying to get nearer but trapped by my ropes. It’s maddeningly perfect. I want more, and I’m already drowning.
I can’t even tell when it starts, but pleasure ignites almost as soon as his mouth lands. It’s like being lit from the inside out. Wait—no, this is it—this is the one—my brain scrambles as the world narrows to heat and pressure and the impossible architecture of his mouth on me.
I scrabble, fingers tangling in rope, because if I don’t hold onto something, the orgasm will literally tear me apart.
A high, keening scream rips free from my throat, and he only eats faster, growling between my legs as the light of my orgasm explodes through me in electric shards. My legs flutter and shake so hard.
“Another,” he barks as he lifts his head only long enough to demand it.
I try to shake my head no, but my skull hits the mattress. The second his tongue finds that swollen nub again, I am screaming. Fifteen seconds later, I’m on the mountain top again, breathless and burned through and somehow still twitching.
He rises, like maybe he’s done, and I think my body can’t possibly take more. Maybe this is the last. Maybe I’m finally emptied and I can collapse and sleep.
Then I feel him reposition—hands prying my cheeks wider—and his tongue is not just back at my clit but sweeping a filthy, reverent path from my clit, down my slit, and all the way to the shy dark rim of my asshole.
“Abaddon!” I screech because right now there are no civilized noises left in my throat.
“That’s right,” he rumbles, voice coming from the very center of him. “Keep screaming my name.”
Then the probing comes. His tongue is at my anus—so wrong, so dirty, and so astonishingly effective. The tips of his wings bend in and begin to flutter against my clit, fast as a hummingbird and softer than any toy I’ve ever known.
I squirt. I come so hard I feel it in the back of my teeth.
He chuckles, that low, pleased sound that becomes the soundtrack to the next two orgasms as he eats me like he’s learned the language of my body and is fluent in every filthy dialect.
He pries and presses, fingers splitting me so he can taste the darkest parts, promising between mouthfuls, “I will fuck you here, soon. I will take all of you, and you will beg me for more.”
Shuddering and wracked and drowning in aftershocks, I nod because in this impossible, burning second, the answer is yes. Yes to everything. I want it all.
I try to breathe, and instead I quake again with another aftershock, and a little ridiculous, terrified voice in my head whispers, Hope I won’t live to regret this. But even as I think it, I don’t mean it. I mean the opposite. I mean, give me more.