Chapter 33
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
IVY
SIX MONTHS LATER
“Truly, why do we have to do this?” Jord grumbles, clipping his boots back on. “What happened to champagne and rugby?”
“You wanted rugby,” Luce answers, skidding to a stop beside him. “Ivy wanted this. I’ll remind you it’s her birthday, and we’re still fresh out of the doghouse with her, so none of us wants to rock the boat right now.”
“Speak for yourself!” Khloe hollers from the end of the line. “Ivy wasn’t mad at me!”
True, I wasn’t. It’s been six months since everything both fell apart and together. I was mad at my family for a long time, until I understood that they were victims of Emeric’s fuckery too.
I wish I could say forgiving someone else ame that easy. It didn’t. Do I forgive him? Yes. Do I miss him? Yes.
God. So much…
But none of that changes the facts, and the fact is that La Maison du Mal needs to be continued, and if Asher stays with me, he’ll never be able to play his part in the family tree.
“Champagne and rugby after this!” I snap at Jord, unlocking my phone for a photo of the view. Beyond the thick white snow at our feet, the lights of Veilarath glitter in the dark. Far too pretty to miss.
I open Instagram and pause over a new post from Asher.
I’ve watched him from a distance while buying the house in Chicago and settling back into my foundation life. Publishing is a dog-eat-dog world, but there’s some satisfaction in helping people chase their dreams. Especially when you've spent so much time running from nightmares.
My heart drops into a slow, heavy beat at his smile. God, he’s fucking beautiful. Bastard. His face is harder, like all he’s done is protein and weights, which doesn’t surprise me.
The reporter asks him about his new prodigy and how the training has been going. It’s the first I’ve heard of it, but I take it it has something to do with him retiring his board.
I need to stop staring and exit this app.
Mountain air fills my lungs in an inhale of ice and pine.
I read the caption three times before the letters stop swimming.
“Stop cheating, Khloe!” Jord shouts, jerking my head up.
Luce laughs behind him. “She’s been taking lessons from Asher!”
Khloe’s already halfway down the slope, her board spraying snow in a tail behind her. She’d counted down from three but launched at two, classic Khloe.
My thighs burn on the push off. The slope drops beneath me, leaving my stomach weightless for a second. Fresh powder peels away under my edge until all I hear is my heartbeat.
This is what I wanted for my birthday. My friends, the cold, and a sky throwing a color show above us.
My board cuts a clean line, and I’m smiling. Actually smiling. Wind roars in my ears as I lean harder into the slope, chasing speed. For once, he disappears from my head.
A hand clamps around my arm and the force spins me in a controlled circle. Expensive cologne fills my nose as we slide to a stop in a drift, my back hitting a solid wall.
“Happy birthday, Venom," he murmurs, so low only I can hear.
My lungs stop working until I feel dizzy, and I lean into his warmth. “Ah, I should have known Khloe wouldn’t listen to my rules.”
“Rules?” Asher slides around to the front of me, and holy fuck, six months did nothing to cool what he does to my body.
His head tilts. “Now you and I both know I don’t follow any rules.”
I sniff. “True.”
“So I’ve come to this conclusion.” His hand laces with mine.
“Oh, and what is that?”
The corner of his mouth tips up. “That I’m done giving you space.”
My chest aches. I picture him in my bed, his mouth on my skin each morning until I forget every nightmare that came before him.
I want him more than I want anything.
My smile slips. Cold sinks through my gloves as my fingers loosen around his.
The House needs heirs, and Asher still has no idea what Emeric took from me.
He deserves a choice.
“Asher…” I shake my head, but his grip tightens. “I can’t do this to you.”
“Do what?” His free hand finds the back of my neck, fingers sliding through my hair. Drawing me forward, his forehead touches mine.
My throat closes.
“You have a family line to continue. La Maison needs—and I…”
Have survived bullets, blades, captivity, and Emeric’s bullshit. Yet this… this I can't even say.
I can’t have children.
“I know, Venom.”
I still.
“I know what he fucking did to you, and I wish I could bring him back alive so I could kill him all over again.”
He caresses the frantic pulse in my neck. “Maybe this time I’d leave his body parts in his piano instead of sending them to Parker and Aléia.”
For a moment, he goes distant, fingers flexing against my neck. Maybe he’s back in that room with Emeric, reliving each butchering moment.
“But I can’t.” His breath warms my frozen lips. “He’s dead, yet he still has you thinking you owe people shit.”
“Asher, your family…”
“Atlas and Punk can spit out some kids once they’re done pretending they hate each other.”
A broken laugh escapes me.
He cups my neck harder, keeping me against him.
“I need you.” His voice cracks, grip tensing. “I swear to fucking God, Ivy, I need you. I love you. I don’t care about heirs, bloodlines, the codex, or any of that shit. They can carve my name off every wall on this island. They can burn La Maison to the fucking ground.”
My eyes sting until hot tears spill over my cheeks. “Asher…”
“I choose you.”
“I’m—I’d never ask you to!” I fist both hands in his jacket.
Fuck it. I kiss him.
He steps us back as his tongue slips between my lips.
Home. He’s home.
His hands land on my ass, dragging me over the thick line of his cock and suddenly he’s not close enough. Not fucking inside me.
With every deep thrust of his tongue, my hunger grows, until a primal sound escapes between us. Teeth catch my lower lip before he licks the sting away.
Air brushes my stomach as his fingers shove past the waistband of my pants, cupping my bare pussy.
“Soaked,” he growls against my mouth. “Been waiting for me?”
My answer is my thumbnail catching on his zipper, yanking it down, shoving denim and thermal aside until hot silk meets my palm.
Bark catches my sweater, snow crunching under his boots as he lifts me. Fingers dig into my thighs hard enough to bruise, then I’m airborne for half a second before he drops me over his cock.
I choke on a scream, half pain and half desperate relief, as he fills me too fast, too deep, stretching me with every thick inch.
“Fucking perfect,” he growls against my neck.“Always so wet for me, Venom. Because your body knows it’s mine.”
His hips snap forward, driving me harder against the tree. The impact rattles through my skull, stars bursting behind my eyes. I claw at his shoulders as he drives into me without slowing.
Grinding deep, he pauses at the hilt.
God, it’s almost too much.
“Ash,” I breathe, the word dissolving into a moan as he grinds his pelvis against mine, that slow pressure sending liquid heat right through my pussy.
He pulls out slowly, dragging every ridge and vein against me before slamming back in.
So thick—so fucking thick I'm going to split open.
“Yeah,” he smirks against my throat. “This is yours. Don't ever fucking second guess this shit again.”
He fucks me fast and dirty, each thrust driving me higher up the tree until my fingers sink into his shoulders.
“So tight,” he grits out, forehead pressing to mine. “Been thinking about this for six months.”
I can’t form words. Each stroke takes the air out of me and leaves a broken sound that sounds awfully similar to his name.
He works hard circles over my clit in rhythm with his thrusts until my thighs shake.
I drag my nails down his back, riding his aggression and chasing every god-damned thing he's feeding me.
“Come—" his breath catches, dropping to a lazy groan. "Fuck. Come on my cock, baby.”
Holy shit—my pussy grips him for a single moment, before every organ in my body explodes in a rush.
His thrusts become heavy, each one hitting hard. “Yours.”
I’m still trembling through my first orgasm when he buries his face in my neck. Every growl, moan, fucking pant, all turn nuclear when his release rips a second one out of me with a muffled scream.
We stay exactly like this, forehead resting against my temple until our breathing slows.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, before kissing the choker. “Always mine.”
“Yes." I lift my palm to his cheek. “Always yours.”
His eyes close, every muscle in his shoulder loosening as he shifts his weight while still buried inside me.
I tense.
He swipes my lip with his thumb. “We should get you inside before you freeze to death.”
“Whose fault is that?” I side-eye him, pulling down my shirt.
“Yours.” He kisses my nose. “For leaving.”
That shuts me up.
Asher grins. "Race you to the bottom.”
“What? So you can let me win again?” I say, brow arched.
“I never let you win.” He kisses me again once we’re decent, pulling me under his arm. “I just prefer the view from back here.”
I shove him playfully as I slip forward.
Wind tears at my ears as the mountain streaks past, and I let the board fly. Asher rides close behind, his board hissing through the snow at my back. Driving my edge in, ice sprays out as I skid to a stop when we hit the bottom entrance to the manor.
Every good feeling disappears when I see who’s standing beneath the canopy near the pool, the fire painting her silhouette in amber.
My mother.
Asher pulls up beside me and gets a boot free, his hand already on my hip. His squeeze is possessive as his mouth skims the top of my head.
“Hear her out.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know.” His thumb traces a slow circle over my jacket. “Do it anyway.”
I stare at her across the pillow of snow.
She hasn’t moved. It wasn’t her fault. I know that.
I’ve known it for months, ever since the truth clawed its way out of Emeric’s grave.
She didn’t abandon me. She didn’t choose any of it.
But knowing that doesn’t fill the hollowed space of her overall absence.
“Ivy.” Asher’s voice drops, that low register he uses when he’s giving me orders in bed. “Venom. Look at me.”
I look.