Chapter Twenty-Five
Calliope could still feel him.
He had carried her as though she weighed nothing at all, his chest a wall of heat and steel against her, the steady beat of his heart pounding against her ear as if it belonged to her.
And only her. He hadn’t let her go until he stopped before her chamber door at the tavern, and she hadn’t asked him to.
And lord, the imprint of his arms . . . his body lingered on her skin.
In fact, she swore the raw scent of him had sunk straight into her veins.
Madness!
Utter madness!
Now she stood at the center of the room, Prince sprawled at her feet, staring at him while he remained stiffly in the doorway as though he had no intention of moving farther, broad shoulders shadowing the light behind him.
His scarred mouth was a grim line, arms crossed over his chest, hands curled into fists.
He hadn’t spoken since setting her down. He simply stared.
It was unbearable.
Unnerving.
Pulse-fluttering.
Each time his gaze flicked over her and her wrists, only slightly reddened from the rope and the faint scrape on her cheek from where she’d leaped from the carriage, her scalp prickled. His gaze traced every visible mark with ruthless intensity.
And yet he said nothing.
The silence that stretched caused a full force of prickles to erupt all over her body. She wanted him gone. She wanted him closer. Stars, she wanted to be in his arms again.
Her fingers twisted in her jacket. “If you mean to stand guard, Maxen, at least step inside.” And he could close the door before he attracted the attention of his brothers!
His jaw flexed, but he still did not move. “I can’t.”
That gave her pause. “Well, if you can’t, then can you go?”
His eyes bore into hers. “I can’t do that either, Calliope Turner.”
Lord. This man.
How had he the ability to melt and freeze her at the same time?
His eyes shifted to the bruise on her wrist again.
She had been carried from an unknown threat to safety, but safety was not what throbbed through her veins now. Oh, no. Need was what throbbed. A need for something in its truest form. Her lips confessed before she could stop them. “Turner is not my name.”
The words dropped between them like stones into a still pond, sending ripples she could not call back. Her nails bit into her palms. She had not spoken that truth aloud in the months since she started to use her mother’s name.
Maxen’s head lifted, eyes narrowing.
“I—” She swallowed. “I needed something else when I came to Brighton. A name that did not carry . . . everything from the old one.”
His eyes flashed, before he said. “I understand.”
“You do?”
“How do you think I and all my brothers, half brothers, bear the same name? We left behind our old lives to step into this one.”
Right. She’d almost forgotten about that. “A better one or worse one?”
He pushed off the doorframe, kicking the door shut with his boot, stalking up to her, each step purposeful, a predator closing the distance.
His eyes burned into hers, black and searching, and she had the strangest impression that he could see straight through her, down to the marrow where she had buried every secret.
“That depends on who you ask.”
He stopped before her, the air crackling with danger. A danger she was more than happy to not run from this time. “You should not give me truths, Calliope.” His voice was a low growl, hoarse. “That will only make me want more.”
Her heart broke out in a little dance. “Can you handle more?”
“I don’t know.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. His hand lifted, then dropped, as though he warred with himself.
She reached out to trace the scar on his lip. “I don’t know anymore either.”
With a curse torn from somewhere deep in his chest, he seized her by the wrist, dragging her up against him in one swift motion while be arched his head into her palm, brushing his lips against the red marks.
Her gasp caught in her throat, but it was swallowed the next instant as his mouth crushed against hers.
Sun and stars!
The kiss was nothing like the first ones.
That had been reckless, impulsive. This was ruinous.
A storm breaking its banks. Wildly welcome.
His lips almost bruised hers in their claiming, his hand fisting in her hair, tilting her head back as though he could devour every tremor of breath she had left.
Calliope loved it.
She clutched his coat with both hands, holding on as if the world might vanish beneath her. His body pressed into hers, big and bulky, and yet she felt safer there than she had anywhere else.
The taste of him was desperation, anger, relief.
It matched everything she felt.
She had meant to confess, to explain, to offer him truth. Instead, she was drowning in him, in the fury and the hunger and the terrible, impossible comfort of being wanted this way.
He tore his mouth away with a ragged curse.
His chest rose and fell, harsh and uneven against hers, his hand still a brand at her wrist. She expected him to step back and put space between them.
He did the opposite. His forehead pressed to hers, breath ragged, his words came like a vow and a curse both.
“Push me away.”
“No.” How could she do that when all she wanted to do was pull the man closer? Stars, at this point he’d have to stop her from scaling him!
“God help me, Calliope. Say it now or never say it at all.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Yes. Hell. Yes.”
She chuckled even as her belly twisted, a battle of uncertainty and need raging inside.
But in that moment, with his arms caging her, his kiss still burning her lips, she did not want him to.
And although a part of her feared him, feared this, she could not ignore the way her pulse quickened at his touch.
How this man, seemingly obscured in darkness, chased away her own.
She wanted him. She wanted him more than she’d ever wanted someone in her life before. More than escaping that household. More, perhaps, even than her breath.
“I won’t push you away,” she whispered, her fingers clenching. “So don’t push me away either.”
“Calliope.”
The tone of warning made her smile.
He cursed, and she yelped when he lifted her without warning and carried her across the chamber.
The world tilted before steadying after he lowered her to the bed.
He caged her between his arms as he stared down at her, looming over her.
His hand lifted again, almost as if he couldn’t help it, and tracing the bow of her mouth.
The scrape of leather reminded her that he still wore his gloves. He was still hiding.
“Remove them,” she whispered against his touch.
His brows crashed together, and his eyes flickered, startled, the muscles in his throat working as though she’d asked for something utterly intolerable. “What?”
“Your gloves,” she repeated softly. She parted her lips against the seam of leather. “Remove them. I want to feel your hands.”
He went still, utterly still, as though she had stripped him bare with nothing more than those few words.
“Is this your way of seducing me?” he said roughly.
“Yes.”
“Christ.”
For a moment she thought he would refuse. Then, slowly, like a man stepping into fire of his own free will, he tugged one glove free, then the other, tossing them aside.
How could her breath not catch?
His hands were scarred, inked, branded with violence. She was keenly attuned to his gaze on her as she reached out first, catching one in both of hers. She lifted his hand to her lips, pressing a kiss to the ravaged flesh.
He stilled.
Absolutely stilled. As though she had unlaced him with that single touch.
She kissed his hand again, letting her lips linger on the curve of scar tissue, on the dark sweep of ink that branded him as Brighton’s beast. “These hands carried me to safety today,” she murmured. “You don’t have to hide them from me.”
“If you’d been hurt . . .”
“But I wasn’t. I won’t be hurt with you here, will I? Although, you should probably deal with the wreckage that is Peregrine.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll deal with the wreckage.”
“Well, in that case . . .” Calliope murmured, recklessly, bravely. “Wreck me, then.”
A sound broke from him—half groan, half curse—and then his bare hand cradled her face. She leaned into it, closing her eyes, letting the touch sink into every hollowed, bruised place inside her.
And then his mouth found hers again, nothing held back this time.
It was as though by kissing the beast’s scars, she had kissed the man beneath them.
She pushed her free hand into his hair. She welcomed the storm, the danger, the wreckage of it.
Because in his scars, in his kiss, she had found something truer than any name she could claim.
She’d found herself.
*
Everything about him might be a monster, but those eyes of hers, from the very first moment they’d locked with his, they’d always had a way of fooling him into believing he could still be forgiven for everything he’d done.
But her lips? Her kisses?
They had the power to wreck.
And wreck they did.
His white-knuckle control shuddered apart inside him, the fortress he had built about himself proving nothing more than weathered ruin. There was nothing left to brace against—not when every single touch she gifted him came as a blow to his gut.
“I want you.”
The three words breathed into him.
Three words that had the strength of a thousand lightning bolts.
His entire life, no one had ever wanted him.
What he could do, yes. What he could take, yes.
But not him. He didn’t know what a man was meant to do with such words—where to set them, how to hold them without spiraling into insanity.
So he let his body answer for him and prayed she would hear what his tongue could not shape.
He could taste his absolute downfall on her skin. Her taste.
He kissed her harder, deeper.
He lifted his head a fraction, breath harsh. “Say it again.”