Chapter Fifteen
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Ily
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I TREMBLED BENEATH HOT WATER.
I needed a moment.
A million moments.
After Henri stalked out of the bathroom, I didn’t have the strength to follow him. Didn’t have the courage to survive another fight, so...I chickened out.
I turned the shower back on and raised my face to the rinsing heat, begging it to wash out my mind as well as my body.
Flashbacks of Daxton.
Echoes of Peter telling me to run.
I shuddered.
I wanted to go back to the jewel quarters. To make sure Peter was okay and the others had survived the treasure hunt.
Go out there and ask nicely.
He’s just as angry as you are...it makes sense to have some space from each other rather than stew all night in bed.
Nodding with bravery I didn’t feel, I turned off the water and grabbed a towel.
I’ll go out there and thank him again. I won’t remind him that he’s responsible. I’ll act as if he’s my hero in every way, and then...he’ll let me go, and I can have a night in peace.
Drying my hair, then wrapping the towel tightly around me, I sucked in a deep breath and crept out of my steamy sanctuary.
My eyes shot to the throne chair in the corner.
Empty.
I glanced at the bed.
Also empty.
My heart rabbited with hope that he’d left and then stopped dead as Henri cleared his throat from behind me.
Spinning on the spot, I clutched my towel as he leaned against the wall by the bathroom door. Naked and still slightly damp, draped in shadow where the side lights didn’t reach. He watched me with eyelashes at half-mast, casting his grey stare in absolute darkness.
His tongue ran along his bottom lip as he looked me up and down.
“Seeing as you’re fine enough to argue with me.
Seeing as you still have that intoxicating fire and fight in you and insist you’re of sound mind to make choices to sleep with men you hate just to prolong your life.
I’m going to ask you one simple question. ”
I backed up, heading toward the bed. “Henri...I think you’re still infected with whatever energy the storm churned up.” My eyes flashed to the curtain-blocked window. “It’s gone now. The rain is slowing, and the thunder is gone. How about you calm down and—”
“Calm down?” He chuckled under his breath.
“Calm down?” Pushing away from the wall, he stalked toward me.
“I am calm, little nightmare. In fact, I’m the calmest I’ve been in days.
” Stopping close enough to touch but keeping his hands to himself, he canted his head and gave me a terrifying, totally arousing smile.
“You see, I finally understand that no matter what I try to give you, you’re unwilling to accept any of me.
I am nothing to you. I will remain nothing to you.
How did you so eloquently put it? I was born alone and will die alone? ”
“I-I didn’t mean it exactly like that.”
“Oh?” He shrugged. “How did you mean it?”
“I just...” I pursed my lips. How could I tell him that watching him fight on my behalf did unconscionable things to me? That his violence turned me on. That his vengeance didn’t just invoke gratitude but lust.
Sweet, savage lust that had no place in here.
No place with us.
No place ever.
Cursing my betraying body and the way he hunted me across the bedroom, I tipped up my chin and tried to hide everything. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
“The fact that you acknowledge I even have feelings is an improvement, I suppose.”
I frowned. “Of course you have feelings. I never said you didn’t. I just...they’re not entirely normal, Henri.”
He nodded. “I see.”
Goosebumps shivered down my back. “You see what exactly?”
“You think I’m one of them.”
I scowled. “I’ve told you that. You are. As long as you turn your back on the jewels and are complicit in what the other Masters do, you are one of them.”
“Fine.” He shrugged. “In that case, it won’t matter what I do then, will it?”
I gulped. “W-What are you going to do?”
“Get rid of the towel.”
“What? No—”
“I wasn’t asking. Drop it, little nightmare. Now.”
My eyes flashed to the door.
“Run and see how that ends for you.” He shuddered and wrapped a hand around his hard length.
“Actually, I’ll tell you how that ends for you.
” Backing me closer to the bed, he whispered, “If you run, Ilyana, I will chase you. I will catch you, and I’ll slam you against a wall and fuck you until you scream.
” He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath, his fantasy playing out between us as if he’d projected it on a big screen.
“I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I’m barely holding onto my sanity as it is.
So please, if you want me to live up to the expectations you have of me—the expectations that I will hurt you, bruise you, and use you—then go right ahead. ”
My breath caught.
I couldn’t stop the clench inside me. The sinful little flush. The awful, awful acknowledgement that the girl I’d been before...the nice girl...the kind, normal girl who didn’t punch rapists in the nose and didn’t trade her body for a friend’s life hadn’t died back there in the storm.
Whoever stood in her place, I didn’t know her.
But I did know she wasn’t nice.
She was dangerous and dirty and...
Stop it.
You’re still you.
Just...changed.
He smiled tightly. “By the way, while we’re on the topic of being used...
” With speed too fast to stop, his hand lashed out and grabbed at the knot in my towel.
With a fierce yank, he tore it off me, leaving me naked and shivering.
“You used me at dinner. You’re right about that.
You used me as if I were some vibrator stored away in your nightstand. ”
His chin tipped down, darkening his eyes even more.
“I was prepared to treat you like my wife tonight. The thought of another hurting you? Watching someone else put their hands on you? Fuck.” His fists balled, and his entire body flinched as if he suffered honest-to-God pain.
“I can’t get the pictures out of my head.
Him on top of you. You blank-eyed.” He shivered.
“I thought you’d broken. I feared you’d snapped and left me.
But...I should’ve known you were so fucking strong.
So unbelievably, deliciously strong, and so...
I’m going to treat you exactly as you expect to be treated.
I will do it because I know you’ll curse me and hate me, and if those are the only two emotions I can earn from you, then...
fine. I’ll take them because fuck knows you won’t give me anything else. ”
“What are you saying?” I cupped my breasts, my entire nervous system on high alert.
Scalding heat simmered in my belly, catching fire to all my other cells.
Ever since we met.
Every second since we noticed each other, I’d been at the mercy of this...this unwanted affliction. He was a virus overtaking my system. An insidious illness turning my very wants and needs against me.
If I didn’t find a cure soon, I would die—storm or no storm, island or no island.
“I’m saying that if you want to be my slave so badly...” He exhaled heavily. “If you want to keep that line drawn in the sand between us? So be it.” Striding to the wardrobe, he yanked it open and grabbed the tie he’d been wearing at the nightclub.
The faint whiff of his woodsy, citrusy cologne from that night drugged me instantly.
Memories of the way our eyes had locked.
The way the stars had sung.
And fate had laughed.
I’d meant what I said in the shower.
He’d given me butterflies and every other winged stupid thing.
My eyes locked on his hands as he snapped the tie tight and gave me a dark, devilish look. “Stand by the four-poster. Hands up.”
Another gush of need flowed through me.
I tried to stop it.
I hated that I couldn’t.
His voice. His words. His body. His threats.
It made me a sick, sick person that everything about him terrified me and turned me the hell on. A trickle of moisture. A betrayal of everything I believed in.
I shifted my hips.
I tried to hide.
Too late.
His gaze dropped between my legs, his nostrils flaring. “Shit, y-you’re wet.”
“No, I—”
“Lie to me about that again, and I’ll throw you onto the carpet, here and now.”
Oh God.
The image.
The need.
His entire body trembled as he slowly lowered the tie and cocked his head. “Jesus Christ, how did I not see it?”
“See what?” My nose wrinkled, common sense pouring icy water on the flames in my blood. I looked down at my body, cursing the traitorous shimmer coating the inside of my thighs.
The spark between us threatened to explode.
This was different to when he’d drawn my blood in Victor’s trophy slaughterhouse. Different to when he’d spanked me by the pond and different to all the other moments where we’d done things to survive—both of us knowing full well there’d always been something lurking beneath our acting.
I couldn’t get wet if I wasn’t drawn to him, and he couldn’t get hard unless he wanted me.
That was the truth right there.
The only truth.
The one thing that condemned us because as much as I didn’t want to play this twisted game, I couldn’t deny I was complicit in it.
Marching into me, he grabbed a handful of my hair and held me tight. His eyes lit up with blinding silver. He was starving...starving for the very thing he kept asking for that I couldn’t deliver.
“It’s true. Fuck...I...” His fingers scalded; his body heat seared.
I swallowed hard as electricity crackled between us. His eyes fell to my lips.
For a moment, I feared he’d kiss me.
The one thing he never did.
I had a horrible suspicion of why that was.
Why we both stopped at that line.
A kiss was intense and intimate.
Taste and truth.
Both those things had the potential to decimate the cardboard fortress that kept wilting around my heart.
“If I told you that I have dreams of rutting into you on the lawn. Of making you sob as you come and scream my name as I bruise you...how does that make you feel?”
I convulsed.
The sickness tore through me, hijacking all my control.