Chapter Twenty-Six
––––––––
I WAS GOING OUT OF MY fucking mind.
Everything was changing—intensifying, compounding, spiralling toward something I couldn’t control unless I touched her.
But...if I touched her, I felt her.
They were just flickers of her feelings, the hauntings of her thoughts, but...I didn’t want to feel them. I didn’t want to have yet another thing to deal with, yet I couldn’t shake it. Couldn’t stop it.
So I needed her to stop it.
So I didn’t incinerate this plane.
Crushing her to the pillowy mattress and swiping off the stupid number of fluffy pillows, I exhaled and pressed my lips to her throat.
Her skin was cool. I needed more.
She shuddered beneath me, her hands straying to my lower back.
A groan escaped as I pressed my hot mouth to her neck and rasped against her skin, “Help me.” The words tore free before pride could stop them. I’d never begged anyone...even on those worst days.
My skin threatened to peel from my bones as she dug her nails into the muscles on either side of my spine and...nodded.
Whatever fragile restraint I had left disintegrated.
Pulling back just enough to get to her mouth, I kissed her.
She moaned and kissed me back, our heads tilting, tongues knotting.
And it wasn’t enough.
Wrapping one arm around her back, I reared up on my knees and hauled her higher up the bed, never breaking the kiss, not giving either of us time to think.
Her dress rode up under my hands.
She gasped as I tossed her into the centre of the mattress. Her fingers clutched my shoulders as I punished her with another brutal kiss, seeking that calmness only she could give me.
She held on while I took everything.
Something twisted viciously in my chest, every part of me reacting to her on a cellular level.
Her fingers clawed at my shirt, yanking me closer as if she could drag the very breath from my lungs. I settled my hips between her spread legs, rocking my throbbing hardness against her.
Her hands landed on my waistband, hesitant and a little unsure, offering herself to me as she tried to loosen my trousers.
I caught her wrists and guided them above her head, caging her beneath me.
The kiss ended and I panted hard, resting my forehead on hers.
Her gaze dropped to my chest—to the dagger wound she’d given me.
Her thighs tightened around my hips as she looped her legs over mine and hooked her ankles together. My eyebrows rose in question then a tortured snarl tumbled free as she rocked against me, blatantly trying to make me break.
I fell on her again.
Letting her wrists go, I kissed her as hard as I could, all while my right hand gathered up her dress and buried itself between her legs. She cried out as I cupped her.
The tightness of her underwear stopped me from touching what I really needed to touch.
A blast of blazing frustration tore out of me and...I couldn’t stop it.
For the first time in my life, the fire that’d burned me alive didn’t hit an obstruction—it didn’t smash against the pain of the vitalsync core and had nothing to stop it from exploding free.
Heat licked down my arm in a violent rush.
The scent of burning fabric filled the air as her underwear switched from cotton to soot. Embers flew around us like dying fireflies and my fingers...
They landed on her hot, damp flesh when the rest of her was so perfectly cool.
She stared at me, wide-eyed, chest heaving—not hurt or burned but bare and mine.
The fire surged again and the plane groaned as if buckling against its rivets.
“Lucien.” She cupped my cheeks with both hands, pulling me down until my mouth hovered over hers. “Calm down.”
So close. So cool. So sweet and soft and mine, mine, mine.
Kissing her hard, my hand settled over her bare core.
My fingers touched her—skin to skin—and the inferno inside me collapsed in on itself. Scalding heat bled away in a rush so violent, it left me dizzy.
She was the difference between catastrophe and control.
The key to switching off the torturous heat.
Pressing my forehead to her shoulder, I splayed my hand over her silky warmth. Her hips surged upward, giving herself to me and...I couldn’t do it.
Biting her shoulder, I pressed a finger slowly inside her.
She gasped and shuddered as her thighs fell open. I did my best not to come from the best fucking feeling in the world. Her hotness when the rest of her bordered on icy. Her wetness that was so much silkier than anything I’d ever felt before.
She shuddered as I dragged my nose along her jaw and sank my teeth into her neck. My finger continued to sink slowly inside her, memorising every ridge and ripple and clench.
“Oh my God,” she moaned as I pulled back a little, stroking every inch.
Kissing my way back to her mouth, I didn’t bother with words or conversation. There were no words or conversation. Merely heat and fire and need.
I sank in a second finger.
She jack-knifed beneath me as I hit an obstruction—revealing what she’d told me back in Cinderkeep had been real. I was her first. Just like she was mine. No other man had touched her like this and fuck that undid the rest of my control.
The urge to push past that tight lock inside her almost had me turning into a monster. I wanted to be the one to take that from her. To forever be linked to her because of what I’d stolen—
She tensed as I pressed against it.
A soft gasp as if it hurt.
I settled with one finger and thrust deep.
She cried out with pleasure instead of pain.
I swallowed her moan as I kissed her hard.
Her heart kicked as I crushed her against the mattress, her fingers clutching the back of my neck, dragging me impossibly closer.
I kissed her so, so hard.
Her lips parted wide beneath mine, kissing me back.
But it was her hitched inhale that undid me—the way her hips arched up seeking more.
My thumb pressed on that little bundle of nerves that I’d learned made her shatter so spectacularly.
Her hands tangled in my hair, tugging me closer, anchoring me to her like she’d drown if we separated.
Everything inside me raged to take her.
To worship her, ruin her.
Smoke unfurled from my back as I dipped my hand again, thrusting up and making my eyesight blackout with desire.
Her body clenched around my invasion as she snarled into the kiss, becoming insistent and hungry, revealing exactly what she wanted.
I slowly withdrew and thrust again, struggling to hold her down as she jerked upward and almost headbutted my nose.
I never thought. Never imagined. Never knew she would feel like this. This soft and wet and greedy—
“More,” she panted, tugging my hair. “Lucien—”
My heart threatened to burst as I withdrew my wet finger and lubricated her clit.
She jolted beneath me, her head tipping back with a quiet scream. “Oh God...why do you have to be so good at this when it’s your first time?”
I drove my finger back inside her, my restraint slipping with every heartbeat.
Every part of my body wanted to be inside her. But...I couldn’t imagine how I’d fit if she could barely take a single finger and...I didn’t want to hurt her.
I wanted to do a thousand dirty things to her but causing her pain...I couldn’t fucking do it.
“You’re driving me insane,” she groaned, rocking on my hand.
I shuddered as she convulsed. I didn’t want to talk. I wasn’t really capable. I concentrated entirely on my task and pulled my finger free again, only to push it back in, imagining it was something else I thrust inside her.
Falling on her, I locked my teeth around her arched throat and bit. Hard.
She shivered, hugging my head as if she wanted to keep me there forever.
Her flavour exploded on my tongue as she turned arctic-cold in my arms.
The faintest aroma of her scent—a smell I hadn’t been able to detect until now—shot up my nose and wrapped insidiously around my heart. Frozen dew and frosty orchids. Sweet mist and sugary snow.
I lost myself completely.
I moved before I could think.
I found myself between her legs, kneeling before her, breaking under the urge to taste everything.
I had no idea what I was doing—just driven by instinct and mad desire.
Falling to my belly between her legs, I looked up the expanse of her stunning body and...licked her.
She didn’t just convulse; she screamed loud enough to cause Whisper to snarl and attack the door.
Her sweet, silky taste completely undid me as she clawed at my shoulders.
I ground my throbbing erection into the covers as the world narrowed to just her and me and the rapidly chilling cabin. The walls cracked as the air temperature plummeted.
Closing my eyes, I drove my finger inside her, careful of that natural obstruction while sucking on her clit. She quaked as I worked my finger in and out, licking her, nipping her, letting animalistic instincts guide me.
The longer I licked her, the more she soothed my fire.
Every ripple and clench of her body brought my inner-thermometer closer to freezing instead of dangerously overheating.
And when she finally combusted around my finger and came all over my tongue, I didn’t stand a chance.
I followed her.
My hips drove into the bed as my release carved through me with fire and gasoline, making my heart stop for one blissful second. My body shattered with waves of cold and heat, fire and frost. I almost lost consciousness before the pleasure ebbed and I cursed myself.
Three fucking times.
Three times she’d driven me wild and made me come in my trousers.
Rook continued to twitch around my finger, her knees shaking on either side of my shoulders. I looked up the length of her, stunned silent that I’d lost control. That I’d gone down on her while we were twenty thousand feet in the sky.
Our eyes met and for one fractured second, the burn inside me stopped torturing me. It completely snuffed out as I swore frost glittered on her eyelashes but then...
PAIN.
Her pain.
It hit me like a sledgehammer, stealing my breath and making me hiss. Rook cried out beneath me, trying to curl up and bury her head in her arms.
A blinding spike behind my eyes—
How?
How was I feeling her?
And how did she survive this level of torture?
Crawling out from the cradle of her thighs, I didn’t know what to do as she bundled into a ball and hugged herself. A trick of the light made me believe snowflakes twinkled in her black hair before melting like lacy filigree.
She moaned and another punch of misery hit me that wasn’t mine.
Moving up the bed, I leaned against the wall and gathered her close. “I’ve got you.” Wrapping my arm tight around her, I swiped away the hair that’d stuck to her brow. Her breathing was shallow and uneven—hurting so damn much.
Glancing around the room, I searched for something that could cut me—to give her the only thing I could.
But the space was full of polished luxury with no sharp edges.
Cream leather panels, softly curved walls, hidden compartments flush with the surfaces.
Even the narrow side table didn’t hold anything that could make me bleed.
Whisper banged against the door again and I wished I hadn’t locked it. I could’ve made use of his fangs, but I couldn’t get up with Rook almost unconscious in my arms, so I did the only thing I could.
Bringing my finger to my mouth, I bit myself hard enough to break the skin.
Pushing the welling blood into her mouth, I commanded, “Swallow.”
She winced and mumbled something incomprehensible, trying to push me away.
I just held her tighter. “Swallow and you’ll feel better.”
I squeezed my finger, feeding more blood onto her tongue. Her throat worked. Removing my finger, I held her through the last of her shivers. Slowly, the pressure in my skull eased as her pain loosened its grip on both of us.
She murmured something I couldn’t catch.
Her glassy eyes met mine from where she lay on my chest and a wrenching tore through me. A violent yank on my heart as if an invisible thread shot from me to her—weaving around our bones and breath, binding us together—
She shuddered as if the force of whatever webbed between us was too strong, too much.
With a broken sound, her eyes rolled back.
She collapsed against me and...
Passed out.