Chapter 17 #2
“I should be there for you, as your mother. Your entire life has been a fight, Tavi, and now you’re having to take up the slack for me, too. I didn’t want that. I had no idea it would be this hard for you when I went to Poppy to conceive. I wanted—”
Her lower lip trembled and I squeezed her hand.
“I wanted you so badly. It was selfish of me.
“Mom, no.” I scooted closer. “It’s not your fault. You were captured—”
“And I could have fought harder.” Her eyes narrowed, bitter.
How did I argue when I understood guilt? The memory of Uncle Will flashed before my eyes, his rescue, his death, the pointlessness of it as well as my shame that I hadn’t been able to do a damn thing.
I sighed. “You’re here now.”
“A little grounding magic.” Livvy shrugged everything off. “It’s nothing. I’m your mother. I should have been there more for you. I should be there for you now instead of recovering like some kind of…human.”
“You were seriously wounded. It takes a long time to heal yourself.” And I still had no clue what Dorian had done to her, only that I felt the need to validate her.
I jumped when she drew me forward into a hug, off balance, safe. There was comfort in the unfamiliar sensation of her arms around me, and instead of reacting, of pushing against it to have time to figure out how I felt, I leaned into my mother and let her magic become a cocoon.
Peace would disappear soon. We’d been through enough for me to know it like an unspoken law of the universe.
We stayed locked around each other until my skin cooled and a tremor wracked through her body.
“Come on. Time to get you back to Nurse Julie,” I said.
We’d been strong for so long, lost enough to leave craters in our hearts, yet we pushed through. Warriors. This was something we both shared.
Livvy was wrong. She hadn’t damned me, she’d made me this way. The thought of what she’d endured to get me here, the struggle, the years spent on the run not knowing if I was safe thanks to her sacrifice or not…
We were both a product of circumstances. Carved down, whittled and ground into a form where we’d had no choice but to be strong. And I was tired.
I dropped Livvy off at the healer’s tent and dragged my exhausted ass to mine. The flap landed heavy against my shoulders.
Steam greeted me, billowing through the tent with a soft tang of lavender, a tender brush of chamomile.
A large copper bathtub rested at the center of the tent, with a small circular opening showing the night sky above. Trails of heat vapor stretched for the opening.
My jaw dropped. “What’s all this?”
Mike rose from the bed with an arm full of towels. He set them down in the indent he left behind, and a snap of his fingers lifted a silencing bubble around us.
“This is for you. You need to rest.”
The last thing I felt like doing was having him see me this way, this weak. I shook my head. “You didn’t have to do anything.”
“Look.” He scrubbed fingers along the back of his neck. “I’m already the most useless member of this team. I get it, Tavi. My title is the only good thing about me, but if I can do something for you, if I can help you feel better, feel safe, then that’s what I’ll do.”
“Stop it, Mike.” My lower lip trembled. “Stop with the self-deprecation. Stop cutting yourself down.”
“I’m only speaking facts.”
“You’re speaking nonsense and I’m too tired to deal with it.”
His arms came around me, his body moving in front of me in an instant.
The dam broke, the rush of emotion seeking an outlet. I clamped down, jaw tightening, but still tears burned the corners of my eyes, carving new pathways down my cheeks.
“This is so much harder than I thought.”
“And if anyone is capable of pushing through, it’s you.” He slid a hand up to cup my neck, molding himself to the shape of me.
He kissed me then, lips pressing gently but firmly against mine, heat surging from the contact.
“Sometimes I’m sorry you stopped to pick me up on the side of the road.”
“Hush,” he murmured against my lips. “Stopping to help you was the best decision I ever made, and I’m sorry if I ever said or did something to make you think otherwise.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he grabbed my shoulders, turning me toward the bath.
“Now you are going to sit in the warm water and enjoy yourself. I’m going to scrub you clean and enjoy myself.”
Grateful for a metal bottom I could touch, I sank gladly into the water, the hot water instantly pinking my skin. Mike lifted my arm and drew a soft sponge from my wrist to my bicep.
“Don’t let my grandmother push you around, either.”
I nearly swooned at the contact, losing myself in the steam and scent of herbs. “She’s brutal sometimes, but I don’t.”
“You sure? Because it seems like she’s driving the entire deal with you guys, and I don’t like seeing you come back sick to your stomach and worn out.”
“Trust me, I’m the one who pushed too hard. And then I left her all alone for a day while I spent the night underwater.”
These trips with Poppy caused me pain, but we needed them for the sake of our cause and the innocents who couldn’t fight for themselves.
I told him about what happened with the Encantado, talked him through the entire experience up to the moment when Livvy helped me ground myself.
He listened without the typical let me come in and fix it for you. And damn me but the way he heard me was sexier than him washing me. Mike’s hands lingered at my breasts, at the swell of my hips, before he moved on and left a trail of suds in his wake.
When he finished scrubbing, he lifted me out of the bath, water cascading over my curves. We stared at each other for a long moment before Mike grabbed a towel and held it out for me. His eyes darkened, softened, and his throat worked as he wrapped me.
My arms banded automatically around his neck. I wrapped my legs around his waist and initiated the kiss this time, unwilling to break contact even while he carried me over to the bed, dripping wet.
Mike changed the angle of the kiss before burying his face in the crook of my neck. His teeth scraped and my skin went tight in all the right places. Heat pooled at my core, stomach clenching, hands searching.
“I wish you could come with me,” I whispered.
His palm brushed over my breast, fingers finding my nipple and pinching. “I want that too.”
I arched into him. “So why don’t you?”
“It’s not my place. I see it now.”
He used his knee to nudge my legs apart, settling between them before circling his hips against my core.
“You’re the prince. Of course it’s your place.”
I banished his clothing, leaving him naked and hard against me.
“Not this time, love. But it kills me to stay behind and leave you to do this on your own.”
I would never understand the way this world worked no matter how much time I spent here. But something about the vulnerability in his tone broke me.
When he gripped his erection to notch it against my entrance, I stilled. “And if I want you to? If I want you to damn yourself with me, Mike?”
He held his breath, gaze searching my face, then said, “I’d go to the ends of this world for you if I could. If I ruin you, at least you’ll be mine.”
Then he thrust inside in a single powerful move and I gasped, forced to stretch around the intrusion to accommodate him.
He rotated his hips, flexing them, then pulled out. Drawing a moan out of me. I spread my legs wider and he pushed forward again, spearing into me, swallowing my moans with another kiss.
He was the one who was supposed to issue the commands. I was the one who should be on my knees for him. But when he kissed me and caught my breath on his tongue, when his body pushed into me and my chest heaved and my spine bowed, I wondered if this wasn’t the way it should have been all along.
His hot skin, my core squeezing around his cock, and my thighs vibrating.
“Tavi,” Mike gritted out. “I love the way your body feels like it’s made for me.”
He thrust forward again, his forehead creased and his heart pulsing against the side of his neck.
“And if I want you to fuck me?”
“Then I’ll fuck you and make you scream.”
Before I said anything else, he withdrew until only the head of his cock remained inside me, then thrust fully inside. The movement forced a cry from my lips and Mike shuddered.
He nipped my chin and pumped into me. When the contact wasn’t enough, he jerked me up and onto his lap, capturing my parted lips in a violent kiss.
A kiss full of love and pain and desperation.
Things had always been different with him, from the beginning. From the first time our eyes locked. We were starved for each other. I rode him, the position taking Mike deeper into my body.
His smattering of chest hair grated against my sensitive nipples. I moaned, our hips moving in tandem. I ground against him and absorbed every sound, every gasp. Every curse and shudder as we each chased our release.
Mike reached between us to brush his thumb against my clit, causing another whimper from me. He thrust up into me in time with his circling, teasing touch, my muscles clamping around him and my thighs shaking.
I scraped my fingernails down his shoulder blades as the orgasm crashed through me. I came on him, desire slicking everything, clenching to hold on.
The moment I went over, Mike broke into motion. My pleasure pulled him into his. He went harder, deeper, thrusting through my coming apart until he lost himself completely. His hips jerked and he finished, filling me, kissing me over and over as I struggled to catch my breath.
For now, and for as many seconds or minutes or days we were granted, Mike was mine in every way.
Tomorrow would inevitably come. Fear lurked that one day I’d turn around and he’d be gone.
But fear diminished what we had together. We chose this, we chose each other, and any worry I brought to the table only took away from our love.