Chapter Eighteen #2
Finally, he locks his dark eyes with mine, and I realize this is real.
So very real. It’s in the way he takes me in.
From the top of my tied hands to the bottom of my flexed feet.
It’s in the way he goes for his T-shirt.
His arm reaches back and fists the neck of it before he takes it off.
I lose my breath at the sight of his bare chest, all large and strong, dusted with dark hair and stacked with dense muscles.
If I thought that bandage on his shoulder would make a difference in the sheer power and dominance he exudes, then I was wrong.
In fact, it makes him look even more dangerous.
Just like that brand.
Letting his T-shirt drop and still taking me in like I’m his trussed-up piece of art, he prowls toward me. Shivering, I twist my hands in the bonds. “Please.”
Please take me down. Please don’t do this. Please just let me hold on to you like before so I can feel safe.
I don’t say any of it, but I know he hears me nonetheless. Because his perusal ends and his eyes come back to mine. And they come back with a look so bright and blatant that I’m hit with it in the center of my chest. It’s like a rope around my wrists, my heart, binding me, choking me.
It’s a look of pure ownership.
Pure possession. It’s a look that says I’ll take what he gives me because I have no choice. Because he holds my free will in the palm of his hand.
My arms shake in the bonds. “Don’t… Please don’t do this. Whatever it is that you’re thinking. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ran. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I promise I won’t do it again. I won’t run. I promise. Please, just—”
I feel a jerk then.
In my body, in my dress, and that makes me stumble, even though I’m all tied up and my toes barely touch the ground.
I glance down to see his large hands fisting the strap of my dress, right where it meets the bodice.
And then I watch his knuckles jut out and his hands shake as in one clean go, he rips it right off.
He tears that flimsy ribbon of a strap that holds my dress up right in front of my eyes before going for the second one and doing the same thing.
Just as I feel my dress rustling down my skin and collapsing around my body, I snap my eyes up to look at him. “That was my… Y-you just tore my wedding dress.”
His thickly stubbled jaw clenches in response, but other than that, he doesn’t say anything. Instead, I feel another jerk around my body. This time I don’t have to look to know what he’s doing.
He’s tearing off my panties; I know that.
I know his rough hands are fisting the waistband at my hips, and just like the dress, he tears it off my body like tissue paper; and all I can do is blink as I feel the night air brushing through my bare curves.
As humiliation burns a path through the center of my chest and belly, all the way down to that pulsing place between my thighs.
The only consolation so far is that he hasn’t looked at me yet. My thick, curvy, source-of-all-shame body. He’s busy taking in my face with impassive features.
No, not impassive.
There’s a pulse in his jaw that looks painful.
Or maybe it’s my humiliation that’s an ache in my chest. Whatever it is, I want it to be over.
I want us to not hurt anymore. And straining on my toes, I arch my body up.
I raise my chin toward him and whisper, “I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry. I’ve learned my l-lesson. Just p-please put me down. Please, Arsen.”
Once again, his name on my tongue feels like an aphrodisiac. A sweet elixir that I was denying myself for so long. I was, wasn’t I? I didn’t want to say it because I was so angry at him for lying to me. I still am, but now that I’ve said his name, I never want to stop.
Especially when hearing me say it, he leans down. He brings his face—God, his mouth, soft and pillowy—so close to mine that we’re breathing the same air. And I realize I want to kiss him. I realize I’ve wanted to kiss him since that night. Since the night he put his mouth on me.
My pussy.
Because how is it that he kissed me down there but never on my lips? How is it that I’ve spent the last six months imagining his lips on my lips, and I’ve yet to taste them?
When he grabs my jaw, I realize I’ve wanted him to touch me since that night too.
Because he hasn’t. Which is a feat in itself since we’ve ridden on the same horse for hours; I’ve sat with my spine almost fused to his chest; he’s lifted me onto and off the saddle with his hands around my waist; I’ve redressed and bandaged his cuts, but still it feels like we haven’t touched at all.
He stretches my neck farther up, tilting my head back and bowing my spine, and I think it’s going to happen.
I think he’s two seconds away from kissing me.
But then he cocks his head to the side as a cruel light flashes through his face.
He tightens his fingers on my jaw, and using his grip as leverage, he gives me a push and my body goes swaying.
Back and forth like a pendulum. Like a piece of meat.
A swinging doll, naked and humiliated, at his mercy and his whims.
My shoulders scream in protest. My wrists are flayed, but the most painful thing is the shame in the center of my belly.
The most painful thing is the thump of my naked spine against his bare chest when, after letting me swing for a few seconds, he rounds my hung body and brings me to a stop with his splayed hand on my trembling belly.
He plasters himself to my back as he rasps the very first words he’s spoken to me since he rescued me from the bear.
“Do you know how long I’ve waited to hear you say my name?
” Through my broken and heaving breaths, I try to look back, but he presses his hand on my belly, making me arch up as he commands, “Eyes up front.”
“A-Arsen, you—”
My words stop when I feel something pressing at my pulse.
When he uses that something to inch my head up. I don’t have to look to know what it is. I know exactly what it is, even though I’ve never—not ever in my entire nineteen years on this earth—had it pointed at me.
A gun.
He’s holding my chin up with the gun pressed just under my jaw, and I don’t know how, but it still feels hot from when he used it to save my life.
My muscles are locked tight in fear and I know my eyes are open, but I don’t think I’m seeing anything other than dark spots.
And in that darkness, I hear him say, “Back when we were writin’ to each other, there were so many times I wanted to tell you my real name.
Wanted to see it written in your handwriting.
I’d sit there, in my bunk, and hunt down the letters of my name in the words you wrote.
And then put them together in my head, tryin’ to imagine what my name would look like in your small fancy handwriting.
But then”—he breathes out behind me, grazing his stubble along the side of my cheek—“I get out and I meet you, but you refuse to say it. You refuse to say my name.”
I swallow. “I-I was angry. I was angry that y-you lied to me. That you—”
He presses the gun harder and I flinch. “I know you were. I am too.”
“I—”
“I kept thinking about it. I kept imagining it. The moment you’d say it.
The moment I’d make you say it. But then you did and I—” He takes another deep breath, his hot chest sliding along my spine.
But this time, when he exhales, I hear a slight hitch in it, a little shudder that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if we hadn’t been plastered to each other.
“You screamed my name. In fear. In panic. And I thought I’d lose my mind.
Thought I’d come out of my skin if I didn’t find you.
If I didn’t get to bring you back where you fuckin’ belong. ”
My heart clenches then, clenches and clenches, and I try to look back at him again. But he presses the gun harder, and I have to stay put. I hate it. I absolutely hate it, but I do. Instead, I dig the back of my head into his sweaty chest. “I-I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“I thought I’d tear this world apart. Turn it upside down until I found you.
And the only time that’s happened was eight years ago,” he continues, his words hot, his breaths hotter.
“I didn’t like it back then and I like it even less now.
So do you understand what I’m sayin’ to you?
” He inches the gun up, pressing it against my lower lip, as he continues, “I’m sayin’ don’t fuckin’ say my name, yeah?
Not my name, not another word. Until I tell you to. Is that clear?”
My heart’s racing, and amid the chaos in my body, I jerk out a nod.
His growl is satisfied. “Now, do you know what this is? Just yes or no.”
My chest shudders when he skims the mouth of his gun over my lower lip. “Y-yes.”
“It’s a gun,” he says in a rough tone. “But it’s more than a gun, isn’t it?”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep quiet, but it’s hard.
“It’s the thing that saved your life.”
“Arsen, please, I’m—”
He shakes his head slowly. “Tsk, tsk. If you keep breakin’ the rules, darlin’, I’m gonna have to cut this short.
And the fun’s just gettin’ started.” My breath comes out as a broken sob, and he pushes the muzzle into my lip even more.
“So how about you put your pink little mouth to better use and thank the gun that saved your life?”
My heart drops, and my eyes scamper up to meet his. This time around, he doesn’t stop me. He doesn’t tell me to keep my eyes up front, and I know why. It’s because he wants me to see the cruelty in them. The meanness, the danger.
The fire.