Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Samick’s tongue delves into my mouth, cold and crisp.
The tree scrapes against my back. The pressure against my head throbs, the bark grating and tugging over the spine of my sweater. Splinters catch in the wool, but that’s nothing compared to the harrowing reality that a fae warrior is kissing me.
The surprise slackens me.
It gives him full, complete control.
It parts my lips for him.
Let’s his arm slide around the small of my back, between me and the rough trunk, and pull me impossibly close to him.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised.
It’s not like his fingers haven’t been inside of me. It’s not like his dick hasn’t been inside of me. His cum, even. Crass, but true. He has explored me, adventured around my body, taken and given, but never this.
Never kissed me.
Not once.
It’s not something I thought about.
Not something I registered.
Not until now, in this very moment.
Samick’s hand slides from my jaw around to my nape, fingertips leaving a trail of prickling flesh in their wake. His fingers thread into my hair, and fist.
He tugs, pulling my head back, and that opens my mouth that bit more for him.
His kiss deepens.
A moan whispers from me, and he swallows it, consumes it.
There’s nothing gentle about the way he kisses me. He’s come undone, he’s claiming, he’s…
Losing.
Losing what, I don’t know. An inner battle. A grappling with his pride.
And he’s punishing me for it.
He harshens the kiss until my teeth ache and each stroke of his tongue is a cruel lashing.
The fist in my hair tightens—and he swallows my shout, devours it.
I reach up for him.
Cautious, like my instincts, my muscles, my bones, all know that I’m suddenly walking on a tightrope—and if I fall, I fall right into a crevasse.
One hand finds his forearm, and my fingers clasp.
Hand buried in my hair, the muscles in his forearm flex, as though fighting dark urges—and that sends chills down my spine.
I slide my other hand up his chest, feeling the shudder running through him with my touch.
He stills, his kiss pauses, and for a beat, a moment of stiff tension, in which I barely breathe, his mouth twists against mine.
My hand stills on his collar.
“You’re hurting me,” I whisper, a murmur, and still it feels too loud, too deafening for the quiet of the darkness in the forest. “My neck, my hair—it hurts, Samick.”
The torch fell to the forest floor. Now, it’s balanced on the crease between two rocks, angled in the wrong direction. Only some of the light threads over us.
I blink up at him, at those threads stretching over his chiselled face, the shadows of his lowered lashes darkening his eyes.
The softness of his lips, full and pink, graze along mine, corner to corner. Then, he pauses, and his teeth bare slightly against my skin. “Fragile.”
A breath is tugged out of me, like a frayed thread.
“Yeah.” I nod, faint, my mouth catching on his, plump skin brushing together. “Fragile.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
Dare’s warning came all that time ago—and it’s finally sinking in.
Samick brushes the tip of his nose over mine. But it isn’t a tender, beautiful thing.
There’s something about it, the way his dark eyes smoulder beneath his lashes, the faint twist of his mouth, like he fights to restrain himself, or fights his loathing of me and what I am—
It feels dangerous.
I’m not tricked into thinking the brush of his nose over mine, the graze of his mouth along my cheekbone, is affection. It’s control. Power. Authority.
But he’s gentler about it now.
His fingers relax in my hair.
His kiss comes softer.
Lips plush against mine, the strokes of his tongue are kinder. The crisp taste of mint and ice, and a faint wisp of smokiness.
It melts me, the gentleness of it, like I’m snared into him.
Even the glide of his fingers running down my hair to my nape is soft, delicate—and a soft breath wisps out of me, lured out by the blissful sensation.
But his hand leaves my nape. Travels down my silhouette, glides along my meagre curves—until his fingertips slide along my waistband to the button of my trousers.
My insides constrict.
A part of me wants this.
I’m ashamed of that part. It’s ugly and aching deep in my belly. It flames my cheeks, and I’m grateful for the privacy, that this happens in the darkness of the forest, just some faint wisps of torchlight breaching our secret.
But not all of me wants it.
So my bones are rigid and stiff beneath my muscles that move with him.
His arm tightens around the small of my back, pinning me to him, and my body follows, bends to his will—but the stiffness in me is awkward.
I don’t know where to place my hands.
I don’t know how to kiss him back.
I mould to his will, follow his moves, feeling his mouth still against mine, firm, and his fingers undoing the button and the zip—
But I’m just a puppet.
The zip hisses through the shadows, faint.
And his fingers dive in. Running down my mound, over the shield of my underwear.
He’s already learned me.
He’s practiced with my body already.
So he finds that sweet spot instantly, and as he does, and his fingers slip around the strip of my underwear, he grazes his cold lips over mine.
The first time, I could almost dismiss it as a moment of lust—and curiosity. Experimental and cruel.
The second time, a moment spun from a quarrel, my attitude stirring something incensed in him, that was something that didn’t happen again, not for the rest of the journey back to the unit.
No secret touching, no invasion of my body, no tender moments.
Just Samick back to pretending I don’t exist, except when he had to feed me, take me to a bathroom to wash up, give me fresh underwear.
But none of that flies now.
I can’t make excuses for this one.
No dismissals, no reasoning I can label these moments with, then store away in the vault.
This is real.
This kiss is real.
His tongue dragging up my lips, the stare that smoulders from beneath his lashes, the fingers slipped into my knickers and bringing me to climax.
It’s real.
So when I come undone on his fingers, and I tremble against him, my moan coming out in a blend of restrained whimpers and groans, and Samick gently bites my cheek—
My heart slingshots.
‘He bite you?’
My lashes flutter.
‘He will.’
I freeze, feeling the tender bite on my flesh, teeth grazing over my flushed cheeks and darkened freckles.
But he doesn’t draw blood.
Not yet.
And that’s the thought that chills me.
I can’t dismiss it anymore.
Each time, it grows. Grows into something more. More of his defeat, and his conquering of me.
Mika’s words are ringing increasingly true.
And I don’t know what to do about it.
I don’t think I can do anything.
I’m powerless.
All the false bravado I’ve held onto in my life, the rage disguised as courage, the bitterness eating away at my insides, the pain of never connecting, it’s all peeled away and my true, weak self is exposed.
Samick sees it.
Sees her.
The pathetic, ashamed me; the one who doesn’t want to be looked after, but needs it; the one who lashes out at anyone who gets too close, because the closer they get, the better they can hurt her.
He sees her, weak and powerless.
And he devours her, like the monster he is.
I wish tears would at least come. Like I can be less ashamed of the moan whispering out of me, if I’m at least weeping.
But his fingers slide out of me, and no tears come.
Only hunger.
I lean closer to him, as though I can chase his hand, the pleasure, and get more of it.
Samick’s smile is faint against my cheek.
His bite softens—then he’s grabbing the waistband of my trousers and tugging them down.
Not all the way.
Just halfway down my thighs.
Just enough to expose me.
He peels the strip of my underwear to the side—and in a blur, that fucking frost, that icy shuddering movement of his, like I blink, and there’s a glimpse of a blizzard, and then I’m suddenly up against the tree, my knees pressed together, legs slung over just one of his hips…
And he’s pushing into me.
I come down on his length, slowly, carefully, and he controls it, inch after inch, his hand firm on my waist. So firm that I feel the promise of bruises on my skin.
But the shame doesn’t come.
In darkness, in our filthy shameful secret, I am his puppet.
My head lolls back against the tree, a tight breath trapped in my throat, feeling him fill me, stretch my walls, feeling him curve over me, his breath cascading over the tip of my nose.
And I feel small.
Too small.
Too weak.
Too out of control.
My wetness drips down him.
I know it.
I feel my body responding—and so does he.
Samick’s groan comes out like a growl, guttural and restrained, as he finally sheathes himself inside of me to the hilt.
Our moans tangle together in the shadows.
Samick pauses.
Halts.
Like he’s finding scraps of patience, his brow furrowing in the faint lashes of light dancing over his beautiful face, but never reaching his dark forest eyes.
My walls are tight around him, like they’re trying to grip onto him and keep him inside.
A heat flushes my cheeks. I wish it was from the shame. But it’s the need, the hunger, and I whine a small sound and try to jut against him.
Samick’s lashes shut for a heartbeat, his grip on me flexing, and I feel him tense against me. His muscles clamp against his urges, the urges that clench his jaw, tight, and trap a groan in his throat.
Then, after a beat, he opens his eyes.
“Fragile,” he murmurs, soft, a whisper, an echo—
I don’t think he says that for my benefit.
He’s telling himself, reminding himself, of what I am. That he needs to be careful, softer, than the urges in him tempt him to be.
He distracts himself for a moment, takes a beat to readjust and gather himself. Looping an arm around the small of my back, he holds me to him, and his other hand cups under my knees slung over his hip.
I’m utterly at his mercy.
And it sends a thrill through me.
If he called me weak, I wouldn’t argue.
He’d be right.
I am.