Chapter 10 Elowyn
ELOWYN
“I’m going to let go.” Dark, fathomless eyes stare into my soul. His fingers, slick with my arousal, smear my shame over my lips while he holds me up by the throat. “As soon as I do, you’re going to get down on all fours. Understood?”
His growly voice turns my body against me. Aftershocks from my orgasm make my thighs clench. More wetness trickles from my sex.
Damn him.
“Stop it,” I repeat, as I have so many times tonight.
“Hands and knees,” he hisses.
“No.” My muscles lock up, all of them.
I bristle against his order, but I don’t hate him. This mean man in front of me—this isn’t my Duncan.
He doesn’t like that person either; I can tell. The old him resents this messed-up situation as much as I do.
It’s all there in his eyes. His feelings for me. The hurt. The longing.
“I thought you loved your brother, Elowyn.” His brow furrows as he pushes his fingers past my lips, dragging them over my tongue. Forcing me to taste myself on him. “And yet you keep testing me. Keep making me repeat myself.”
“I’d do anything for you,” I murmur around his fingers, hoping he hears me. That he believes me. “If you just asked nicely.”
He studies me, searching for a lie.
He won’t find it.
I belong to him.
Yes, I want Barclay to be okay. That’s a given.
I just don’t want it half as much as I want Duncan to be mine.
Truth is, ever since I learned The Restorer is him, the reason I came here has faded into the background. He matters more than money. More than anything.
I’m willing and ready to fight for him.
More so now that I see he isn’t disgusted by me.
Barclay was wrong. Or worse, he lied.
If anything about me or us truly sickened Duncan, he wouldn’t have emptied his seed on me last night. Wouldn’t have been so hard that he had to adjust his erection a few minutes ago.
So he isn’t disgusted with me, at least not anymore.
But he’s hurt over something. He even hates me, or so he likes to believe.
Meaning that whatever has sunk its claws into Duncan is going to resist me. It’ll take time to pull him out of the dark place he’s in. Effort. Patience.
I don’t care. I’m going to save him.
“How about no.” He clings to his cruelty, refusing to let go. “I won’t ask nicely. Won’t do anything to accommodate you unless it suits me.”
“This isn’t you.” My words come out uneven.
Duncan hears them anyway. “I’ve changed.”
His lips are shadowed with day-old stubble, pulling my attention despite myself. He notices. Smirks.
My eyes jerk back to his, reminding myself that sex won’t fix us. Though I’m not opposed to it.
Focus!
“You couldn’t have changed that much,” I blurt out, thankful that my voice is clear of lust. That his fingers have stopped moving long enough for me to talk. “I don’t believe it.”
He shakes his head, wiping the smirk off his face.
“You, on the other hand…” he starts.
Expression stony, he goes silent as he resumes dragging his fingers back and forth over my tongue.
The movement is hypnotizing, stealing my thoughts away. I’m getting wetter, hotter by the second.
“I’m what?” I demand when my pussy throbs painfully, turning me embarrassingly desperate. “What?”
“I can’t tell if you’ve changed or not.” His gaze turns inward as his fingers keep working me. “Hard to tell when I don’t think I ever really knew you at all.”
That last sentence hollows out my stomach, crushing me so completely it’s hard to breathe. Knowing something I did caused him that much pain is worse than anything I’ve ever endured.
I have no idea what happened to make him believe I betrayed him, but it hurts.
“Talk to me,” I beg, bracing for the harsh, painful truth he keeps bottled up inside.
“Forget it.” His jaw tics. “This trip down memory lane is pointless.”
He pulls out of my mouth abruptly. His absence cuts me as it has every day since he disappeared from our town. I should be used to missing him by now.
I’m not.
And yet I don’t call for him. Don’t say a word.
“Kick the dress off the pedestal.” We stare at each other. Me, begging to be seen. Him, a statue made of sharp edges. “Get. On. All. Fours.”
As I watch him put old walls back up around his heart, I realize there’ll be no reaching him tonight.
Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after.
This hope is why I don’t tell him to go to hell. To shove his money where the sun doesn’t shine.
As infuriating as he is, he’s mine. I’m not going anywhere.
And since obeying seems like a good way to convince him to let me stay, that’s what I do.
My dress is on the floor. My hands and knees make contact with the smooth surface of the pedestal.
“Good, good.” He pats my head like he would a pet. Another demeaning gesture that sends heat between my thighs. When I notice how hard he is, how big, I’m trembling with need. “Stay.”
He turns off the lamp, then stalks off with it in his hand. Head high, broad shoulders pulled back, he almost looks invincible.
It’s a facade. That of a hurt, furious man.
He can be mean all he wants. Doesn’t change my feelings about him one bit.
Duncan doesn’t leave me with my thoughts for long. He returns, holding a roll of duct tape in one hand.
In the other, he has a polished ivory-colored item. It’s not a dildo or a vibrator. There’s no head at the top. But it looks phallic.
It looks like it could bruise.
My stomach hollows out, both lust and courage slipping away from me, fast.
Was I stupid to trust Duncan, this new version of him?
Maybe I was. Maybe he’s going to use the duct tape to shut me up. Then he wouldn’t hear me begging him to stop. He could, guilt-free, beat me black and blue with this thing to prove how imperfect I can be.
“Please, don’t.” I gulp, scooting backward until my feet dangle in the air. Blood drains from my face. “Please.”
“No moving.” He shakes his head once. “When I said stay, I meant—”
“Stay.” The word is a shaky sigh. “I know. Just don’t hit me. I’ll do anything. Say anything, like how flawed I am.” How missing you turned me into a shadow of myself. “But I’m not going to take a beating from this thing you’re holding. If that’s what you’ll use it on me, we’re done. Forever.”
The whole time I’ve been talking, Duncan’s face has stayed as hard as stone.
His jaw works now that I’ve finished. His hands clutch the items in them so hard that his knuckles go white.
He glares at me with such intensity that it knocks the air out of my lungs.
“You think”—his nostrils flare—“you seriously think I’d beat you?”
I’m relieved to have been wrong about this. Hope flickers back to life too, since his indignation tells me there’s a crack in the armor.
I didn’t expect it to happen so soon, but it did. I made it happen.
I’m not letting the moment slip by. This is my chance to reach him, to find my Duncan beneath the layers of hate.
“Can you blame me?” I add some attitude, thriving on how riled up he’s getting.
He’s quiet, breathing hard and staring at me.
“Something’s clearly going on here,” I continue undeterred. “Whatever it is, it’s making you lash out at me. So excuse me if I’m not sure what to expect anymore. That’s why we need to talk. If you’d only explain—”
“You want an explanation, Elowyn? I’m going to give you one.” Duncan scowls, rounding the pedestal and stopping behind me. I gasp when he uses the hand holding the tape to push my knees apart. “Have I ever slapped you? Backhanded you? Punched you?”
My pussy is bare and embarrassingly wet. My body is on fire. I can’t say another word.
“Answer me,” he growls, snapping me out of it.
“No.” It’s barely a whisper. “You haven’t.”
“That’s right.” He drops the tape at my side, fisting my hair.
One pull, and my head is tugged back. The sting is as painful as it is delicious.
My heart beats twice as fast with his lips at my ear. “I won’t beat you up. Won’t lay a hand on you unless it has to do with sex. This plastic bone folder is meant to pleasure you. To humiliate you. Not to leave bruises, nothing like that. Don’t you ever repeat those words to me.”
Heat springs to my cheeks, a tingling sensation flaring throughout my body.
If it were anyone else saying those things to me, I would’ve slapped him across the face.
It’s not anyone else. It’s Duncan.
“Hey,” he murmurs, voice thick. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes.” The scent of his cologne fills my nostrils. I have to stifle a moan. “I won’t repeat them.”
“Hmm,” is all he gives me.
“Hmm, what?”
“You’re trying so hard, aren’t you? To pretend to be good?”
“I’m not pretending.”
“Try a little harder now.” His hand slides from my hair down to my throat. When he presses his cheek to mine, his stubble grazes my sensitive skin, and I shudder. “Slide forward until your feet are back on the pedestal. And keep your knees apart…”
A pause. My pulse spikes.
“…when I make you take it.”
I crawl forward, trembling as I ask, “Take it?”
My head turns back in time to see him step to my side, then crouch close to the pedestal.
“Take what?”
“Pleasure.”
As the word leaves his mouth, a war breaks out between my head and my body.
The former demands a reason, any reason, for why Duncan would want me to come again when he doesn’t act like a lover would.
The latter is already thrumming, aching for him to start. For Duncan to touch me.
You should run.
Absolutely not. Stay.
“All done.” He cuts through my thoughts, patting my ass before he sets the roll on the floor. “Be a good girl and sit on it.”
As if woken from a trance, I blink once. Twice. “Excuse me?”
“I said…” His large hand is warm as he flattens it over the curve of my back. “Sit on it. Take the tip in, Elowyn.”
His words don’t make sense until they do.
Until he presses on my back, lowering my hips. Until I feel it.
“No!” That part-pointy, part-smooth tip nudges at my pussy lips. My mouth gapes, everything in me hating being turned on by it. But I can’t get up. Duncan won’t let me. “I can’t lose my virginity like this. Don’t—you can’t use that on me.”
Fire blazes in his eyes. The pressure on my back loosens.
I’ve managed to surprise him.
There’s no satisfaction in it, though. None. Because if he thought I’d been able to get over him, does it mean he’s been with other women?
I try to snuff out the jealousy. The indignation that paints the world red.
For the most part, I’m able to do it.
He doesn’t owe me anything. And he’s not with these other women now.
He’s with me.
My head understands. My heart aches anyway.
“Over and over, you test me.” The sarcastic edge in his tone snaps me back to the present. “To what end? To break our deal so you and your brother end up out on the street? A sheltered princess like you wouldn’t last a day out there.”
That does it. That fucking does it.
How dare he insinuate that I’m incompetent.
He has no idea what I’ve endured. My brother’s rage. The screaming. The fear.
He wasn’t there when I was assaulted either. And even though Barclay saved me, I’m the one who’s had to live with it. The memories. The trauma. The weight of the past ten years.
Last but not least, I’m surviving him. His madness. His cruelty. This sick jealousy of the invisible women that’s poisoning my blood.
So to have him call me weak?
Hell no.
Hell. Freaking. No.