Chapter Twelve
………………………….
Henri
THE FIRST SENSATION OF A WOMAN’S tight heat around me was worse than all the whippings of yesterday. The lack of wetness; the pinching tightness as someone pushed her down over me.
She didn’t want this.
I didn’t want this.
I’d struggled to get it up.
It’d taken every trick in the book. Every memory of Ily. Every desire I held for her just to manage a half-hearted erection with my body on the brink of breaking.
But it’d been enough.
Victor hadn’t hacked off my balls at least.
But then…I’d been given my ‘reward’.
A reward that now sat stiff and silent on my lap. My body deep inside hers. My heart thundering with wrongness.
I felt so sorry for whoever had been chosen to take me.
I felt endlessly sad for Ily having to watch and myself for having to participate.
I would rather die than betray her.
To end my life before Victor could think of other ways to torture us.
I didn’t move a single muscle.
I willed my cock to deflate.
I wanted to forget, to pass out…
Only…
Soft, gentle hands landed on my lower belly.
I flinched as a zing of hot energy shot through me.
Energy that fed me better than any banquet from Victor’s kitchens.
Energy I recognised.
It can’t be…
Why would he—?
She stroked me gently, tentatively, teasing with the lower wrap of my bandages.
The softest cry escaped her.
And in a heart-blazing supernova, I knew .
Ily.
Fuck, Ily.
My cock leapt inside her.
Every shred of strength I had left arrowed between my legs and worshipped the girl I’d missed with every fucking piece of me.
So close.
On top of me.
Here.
With me.
Fuck.
I groaned around my gag.
My ears rang to hear her voice.
But she didn’t make a sound.
Pushing up with my foot planted on the floor, I arched my hips in question.
She moaned and sat heavier over me, wriggling a little to find that perfect welcome. Her dryness swelled to wetness, coating both of us in delicious silky warmth.
Christ , she felt good.
Too good.
My breathing turned ragged. My vision danced with black spots.
I didn’t have the strength to survive this level of pleasure.
I’d longed for her for almost two months.
I’d slept opposite her in a dungeon and missed her while we were kept apart, but now she wasn’t just near me. I was inside her, and…
Why?
Why had Victor done this?
Why give me her as my reward?
He had to know it would patch all my broken pieces together.
I’d remember why I fought, why I didn’t shatter.
Her.
All of the pain was for her.
My head fell back as Ily rocked over me. Planting her hands on my chest, she moved in a timeless rhythm, fucking me, making love to me, driving me past death and into reincarnation.
My mind went blank.
My heart caught fire.
And I wanted so, so much to give in to her magic.
To only exist in this moment. This glorious, surprising, wonderful moment and be with her.
But I couldn’t stop my fear of what this meant.
Why?
Why give us this after taking so much away?
How badly were we falling into his trap?
Biting the gag between my teeth, I schooled my racing heartbeat. The hood over my face clung to my nose and mouth, making it hard to breathe. I trembled as she ran her fingertips over my bandages and up to my throat. Tipping forward a little, she clenched her core around me, yanking a guttural growl from my gagged lips.
Her hands suddenly vanished.
Sitting taller, she shifted as if she removed something. My forced erection swelled to full mast as I speared deeper inside her.
She winced as I hit the top of her.
I stopped breathing as another flush of wetness lubricated and joined us.
She clenched again, fisting me with her inner muscles.
My eyes snapped closed behind my hood as her heat increased to a burning inferno.
Fire.
Fire that’d ignited between us the moment our eyes first touched.
Fire that bound us as twin flames.
Fire, fire, cosmic transcendental fire that incinerated our mortality and allowed us to converse in a spiritual one.
I love you . I tried to project. I’m afraid of what this means . I wished I could see her. He’s up to something. I willed her to be prepared.
This wasn’t just sex.
Not just a reward.
There was a purpose.
A payment—
I grunted as Ily suddenly wrenched off my hood.
The black material sent static crackling through my longer hair before she tore the hood away and threw it onto the ground. It landed on a second one.
Had she been blinded too?
Had they forced her onto my cock without her knowing it was me?
Christ.
My heart broke for her.
My body bellowed to protect her, save her, shelter her.
But she sheltered me instead.
Kneeling on either side of my hips, she balanced on the cream sofa I’d been shackled to. Her eyes glowed gold, her skin bruised in some places, her weight far less than before.
Yet she was still so beautiful.
So perfect.
So mine.
I arched my hips, feeding her my length, showing her just how much I wanted her…even like this.
I didn’t look past her to the Masters watching.
I didn’t care we were the show.
It was just us.
Her and me.
And fuck, I needed that.
Needed her.
To stay strong. Stay fighting.
I fought the tether keeping my arms shackled above my head.
Her sapphire-black hair hung over her shoulders, longer than when we first met. Her silver negligée reminded me of the stars twinkling free in the night sky. The stars she said she flew amongst when she refused to watch Victor rape her.
Ily…
I bared my teeth, trying to chew through the gag.
Why didn’t she speak?
What’s wrong?
With a strained smile, she leaned forward and reached behind my head.
I shifted for her, my heart galloping as she undid my gag and tossed it onto the discarded hoods.
The moment my mouth was free, I went to speak—
She kissed me.
Her sweet lips crashed on mine. Her tongue slipped inside, and the world ended.
I returned her kiss.
I meant to kiss her back with devotion.
Instead, I lost myself and fed her violence.
I opened wide.
I licked her deeply.
I snarled as she matched me, heat for heat, pain for pain.
In a single heartbeat, an innocent kiss turned into biting, tongue-knotting passion, and I couldn’t stop.
Her fingers threaded through my hair, holding onto me as her hips rocked and mine surged upward.
We strained against each other.
We slipped into the primal rhythm of sex, but it was the kiss that blew my fucking mind.
Just like our first real kiss the night before Emerald Bruises, this one destroyed everything else.
All I tasted was her, smelled was her, felt was her.
I’d missed her.
Christ, I’d missed her.
Her tongue pushed against mine, and her gasp filled my mouth with that wonderful little whimper she always made when I pressed against her G-spot.
I knew her body as well as I knew my own.
I knew her soul because it was mine too.
Her every touch and rock made me feel like a god, not a prisoner.
My head swam with lust.
My body ached with need.
I couldn’t hold her. I couldn’t run my fingers through her hair or guide her hips to ride me.
I was at her mercy, and I surrendered every piece of myself.
Pieces I’d hidden from Victor. Pieces no one else would ever earn.
I gave every facet of my being to her, and she took it all as if she could hide them forever from this hellish place.
The sofa legs creaked against the stage as our pace increased.
Her thighs stuck to mine.
Sweat prickled beneath my bandages.
The numbing drugs Melanie Belford gave me shielded me from the constant needles in my back each time I thrust up.
No one stopped us.
No one wrenched us apart.
And I hated that I expected it.
Waited for it.
Feared that Victor would tear her away from me.
I kissed her harder than I should, all because terror made me harsh.
Our tongues tangled, and our hearts pounded. She ran her fingers along my imprisoned arms and held onto my cuffs. Her body stretched over me. Her breasts touched my bandaged chest, and I lost another element of myself.
My sanity slowly unravelled the longer she rode me.
I gasped and grunted as the fire between us gathered. We were nothing more than two mortal sticks, rubbing together, smoke kindling, heat warming, quicker and quicker toward combustion and that mind-melding flame.
Tingles and pressure gathered between my legs.
And for the first time since I’d stood over her in that godawful temple with a diamond-hilted dagger in my hand, I wanted to come.
I wanted to come so fucking badly.
“Ily…” I moaned into our kiss. “You’re going to make me—”
She kissed me harder, cutting me off. Rode me faster, pushing me higher.
“Come with me,” I begged around her tongue.
No reply.
Something drove her.
Her fear matched mine.
I tasted her panic as if time was running out.
Christmas…
I didn’t know who had followed our original plan or what detonations the jewels had in place, but…if we could hold on until tomorrow. If we survived just a few more hours—
“If you’re going to come, mon ami , I suggest you do it,” Victor drawled somewhere in the ballroom. “I’ve been patient, but your reward will expire in precisely sixty seconds.”
Ily caught my eyes.
Her skin flushed as I surged upward, using my foot on the floor to drive myself deep, deep inside her.
Falling over me, she pressed my lacerated back onto the cream couch, and my system drenched with pain and pleasure. The blend of bad and good sent me straight into a fresh kind of hell.
I waited for her to speak.
To whisper something into my ear.
To say a single word.
But she kissed me again.
Giving me her tongue in silence, she stole everything I wanted to say in return.
I needed to tell her what the guard told me. What Ben had uttered. That we still had friends in the shadows, trying…
But her kiss turned vicious, and I shuddered as she bit my bottom lip, threw herself backward, and planted her hands on my belly.
I didn’t stand a goddamn chance.
With rocking, rolling, gyrating hips, she took me.
She drove me up that final mountain.
She forced me onto that cliff.
My eyes flared as heat gathered and sparks ignited, and I fought against my binds.
I needed to hug her.
This felt wrong.
Incomplete.
“Ily…wait—”
I didn’t want to come without touching her.
I didn’t want to release without her falling with me.
But she didn’t give me a choice.
With a final thrust of her hips, she pushed me over the edge, and I fell.
“Ah, fuck.” My head tipped back, my eyes rolled, and I cried out as a swift, savage orgasm tore through me.
I couldn’t decide if it was pleasurable or agonising as I shuddered and jerked beneath her.
Filling her.
Loving her.
All while she didn’t say a word.