Chapter 68 Grace
He loves me. He just can’t say the words.
This belief is a fragile, glowing ember in my chest as he pushes the bedroom door open with his foot. It’s a dangerous hope, I know. To love Antonio is to walk a knife’s edge. But after the darkness I’ve endured, this feeling, however perilous is the only thing that feels real.
He doesn’t turn on the main light. A single lamp on the far bedside table casts the room in a pool of soft, golden light, leaving the corners in deep shadow.
He walks to the centre of the vast bed, its covers already turned down by unseen staff and he lays me down upon the cool, silken sheets as if I am something precious, something breakable.
He stands over me, his silhouette blocking the light and for a moment, he is my Master again. My heart stutters, the old fear a cold trickle in my veins. But then he kneels on the bed, one knee on either side of my hips, caging me without touching me.
His hands come to the straps of my simple silk dress.
His fingers, usually so deft and demanding, are impossibly gentle.
He coaxes the fabric from my shoulders, down my arms, peeling it away from my body with a patience I have never known in him.
The air kisses my skin, raising goosebumps, but his gaze is hotter than any sun.
It drinks me in as I am revealed to him, inch by agonizingly slow inch.
When I am bare before him, he doesn’t immediately cover my body with his. He simply looks, his expression one of such intense, awestruck focus that I feel my eyes well up. He is not assessing his property, he is admiring.
He lowers his head, and his mouth finds the frantic pulse at the base of my throat. His lips are soft, his tongue a hot, wet brand that makes me gasp. This is not a claiming bite. It is a tasting. A savouring.
And he takes his time.
His mouth traces a path of fire down my body.
He kisses the slope of my breast, the underside, before drawing a taut peak into the heat of his mouth.
He suckles deeply, rhythmically, and a low moan is torn from me, the sound echoing in the silent room.
Antonio moves to its twin, giving it the same devoted attention until I am writhing beneath him, my fingers tangling in the dark silk of his hair.
He continues his journey, like a pilgrim at the altar of my body. His lips brush over the quivering roundness of my stomach, the crest of my hip bone. He nuzzles the softness of my inner thigh and I jerk, a sob catching in my throat.
It’s too much. This tenderness is a weapon far more devastating than any display of force.
“Antonio,” I plead, though I don’t know what I’m asking for. For him to stop? For him to never, ever stop?
He ignores my broken utterance, his focus absolute.
He parts me with his thumbs and his tongue finds my core.
It’s not the ruthless, skilled assault designed to shatter me quickly.
It is a languid exploration, a mapping of every secret, sensitive fold.
He licks into me with a torturous slowness that has tears leaking from the corners of my eyes, tracking down into my hair.
I am gasping, trying to breathe through the overwhelming tide of sensation, trying not to cry from the sheer, devastating beauty of it.
For the first time since he took me, I do not feel like his slave. Under the skilled ministrations of his mouth, under the weight of this breathtaking reverence, I feel like his equal. I feel like his woman. The thought is so profound, so liberating that it unlocks something deep inside me.
My hands, which had been fisted in the sheets, lift. My fingers find the crisp, white cotton of his shirt. I fumble with the first button, my movements clumsy with passion and emotion.
He goes utterly still. His mouth leaves me, and the loss is a physical ache. He catches my wrists in one strong hand, his grip not painful, but firm. A warning.
“No, Grace,” he says, his voice rough, stripped bare.
The vulnerability in that tone fuels me more. This is the heart of his denial. This is the fortress wall I must breach.
“Please,” I whisper, meeting his dark, guarded gaze. “Let me see you. All of you.”
A war rages in his eyes. I can’t tell if it’s fear, shame, or a flicker of desperate want. He has never revealed his torso to me. Our fucking has always been with him still half-dressed. He has never let me see the damage he carries.
“You don’t want to see,” he grates out, trying to turn his face away.
I cup his cheek, forcing him to look at me. “I want to see you.”
The silence between us is heavy, fraught. Then, slowly, his grip on my wrists loosens. He releases me and sits back on his heels, his expression that of a man awaiting a sentence. His eyes never leave mine as my trembling fingers return to the buttons of his shirt.
I work them open one by one, revealing an expanse of skin that is not smooth and perfect, but a landscape of survival. The lamplight falls upon his chest and stomach, and my breath hitches.
It is mangled. A web of thick, ropy scars, patches of shiny, tight skin, and discoloured flesh maps his torso; a brutal testament to some battle he waged in the name of the Brethren. It is a history of pain written in his very skin.
Dangling right in the middle is that necklace, that trophy, that mix of me and him. My ruin. My destruction that he wears like a diamond.
A tear escapes and rolls down my temple, and he flinches as if it has burned him.
“I told you,” he says, his voice hollow. “It is not a sight for you.”
I don’t reply with words. Instead, I push the shirt from his broad shoulders, down his powerful arms. He is rigid, every muscle tensed for my rejection, my horror.
I lean forward into the space between us, and I press my lips to the centre of the worst of the scarring, right over his heart. The skin feels different under my mouth, textured and tough, but it is warm. It is him.
He sucks in a sharp, ragged breath.
I kiss him again, another patch of ruined beauty. And again. I trail my lips across the landscape of his pain, whispering against his skin. “It’s beautiful.” Kiss. “Because it’s you.” Kiss. “You survived.” Kiss. “You’re here.” Kiss. “With me.”
His hands come up to frame my face, his thumbs stroking my cheeks as he looks down at me, his eyes blazing with an emotion so raw and unguarded that it steals the air from my lungs. In this moment, every wall is down. Every defence is shattered. He is laid as bare as I am.
He lowers me back onto the pillows, his body coming down over mine but for the first time, his weight doesn’t feel like a prison.
It feels like a shelter. Our skin meets, my smoothness against his scars, a perfect, poignant fit.
He kisses me, and it’s unlike any kiss we have ever shared.
It is not hungry or demanding. It is deep, slow, and tasting of salt, his or mine, I cannot tell.
He enters me with a slow, deliberate glide that makes us both cry out.
There is no hurry, no frantic race for domination or release.
I am not a thing to be used. This is a joining.
He moves within me with a devastating patience, each thrust a slow, deep caress designed to build the pleasure between us until it is a tangible thing, shimmering in the air around us.
His eyes are open, locked on mine. He is watching me, learning me, ensuring every rock of his hips, every shift of his body brings me closer to the edge.
This isn’t about his dominance. It is about our mutual pleasure.
Our connection.
Us.
My legs wrap around his waist, pulling him deeper and I meet his rhythm, my hips rising to meet his every slow, penetrating thrust. The world narrows to this room, to this bed, to the feel of him moving inside me.
To the sight of the scars on his back straining with each movement, the sound of our ragged breaths mingling.
The pleasure builds not in a frantic rush but like a slow, incoming tide, inexorable and overwhelming.
I clutch his shoulders, my fingers sliding over the ruined skin, and I feel myself begin to unravel.
He sees it, feels it, and his pace remains agonizingly, perfectly steady, drawing out every second of my ascent.
“Look at me, Grace,” he whispers, his voice thick with an emotion I dare not to name.
I open my eyes. I hadn’t even realized I’d closed them, and I drown in the darkness of his gaze. As the climax crashes through me in wave after wave of pure, blinding ecstasy, it is his face I see. It is his name I cry out not as a submission, but as a benediction.
He follows me over, his own release wracking his powerful frame as a low, guttural groan is torn from his throat.
He collapses upon me, his head buried in the crook of my neck, his breath hot against my skin.
His full weight is on me, and I welcome it.
I hold him as his tremors subside, my hands stroking his back, tracing the map of his past.
We lie like that for a long time, tangled together. This ember of hope in my chest has burst into a steady, warm flame.
He loves me. He must. No one could fake this. No one could manufacture this kind of soul-deep intimacy.
He shifts eventually, rolling to his side and taking me with him, tucking me against his body with my back to his front.
His arm is a heavy, possessive band around my waist, his lips pressed against my shoulder.
The scars on his chest are pressed against my back, a permanent reminder of the man he is.
As I drift towards sleep, wrapped in the safety of his embrace, surrounded by the scent of us, I finally give in, I finally let go of my guilt, and my shame, and all of it.
I am loved. Antonio Macrae loves me, and I love him back. The darkness is behind me. The future is a golden, promised thing.
I am so beautifully, perfectly tricked.