Chapter Twenty Six
At first I’m not sure I heard Jaak correctly. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I’m the danger, Meadow.” He moves my hand off him so that I’m forced to let go and takes a step away from me. He still hasn’t turned to face me. “I cannot be trusted around you while the potion influences me. If I do, I fear I won’t be able to hold myself back.”
“Hold yourself back from what?”
“From you. You are not safe with me.”
“I know the potion has made things…” I bite my lip and settle on “intense, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t-”
“You were going to say work together, weren’t you?” Jaak’s voice is lower, more rough. That delicately sharp edge I glimpsed earlier is back.
I nod because he’s right. I was going to say exactly that. “Yes, a-and I mean that. I really do.”
“I know you do. Far too innocent for your own good, Meadow. Naive enough not to see what’s very nearly here with you tempting me.
” I’m about to ask what the hells that means when he goes on to say, “Tempting me to claim you. From finally tasting you on my tongue, from feeling the weight of your thighs over my shoulders.”
I stare open-mouthed. I’ve wanted Jaak all night, but I didn’t expect him to say that. My sweet, gentle husband is vanishing in front of me. by the second.
“Jaak…”
“You should go. This is your final warning. Pick a room. Lock the door and remain there until sunrise. Now.”
Part of me wants to run, I almost do but no…
no. I don’t want to run from him. I want more.
This has been what I wanted. The raw and ragged parts of Jaak that I know he’s kept from me.
It’s all bubbling to the surface now. Desire weighs me down, keeps my feet rooted to the floor when Jaak orders me to go again.
“Go. Now, Meadow.”
I lift my chin in defiance. “No. There’s no reason for me to run and hide like a scared little mouse. I trust you. I-I can handle whatever comes our way. I can handle you.”
“Handle me? Oh, dear, sweet, Meadow. Then tell me, can you handle the hunger I have for you? Are you willing to sate my desire?”
“I-I-, I mean, well-l.” I’m stammering. I want to say yes, but everything is getting twisted up and coming out wrong.
I want to say yes, so why is it so hard for me to say yes?
I open my mouth again and my throat goes tight.
Phantom hands wrap around my throat and cut my words off.
The ghosts of my parents and the leaders I trusted, the people who I saw as all-knowing, they lean in close and whisper to me.
“You’re wrong inside. There’s nothing good in you. Do you know how cursed you are?”
“You’re lucky you’re a Blossom with the shame you bring to us.”
“Love is for children, Meadow. You’re ungrateful.”
Those were the words spoken to me, thrown at me, hurled like knives and bricks when I expressed any inkling of dissent or questioning about what my life as a Blossom would be, as a bride and the wife they trained me to be.
I thought I did my best in shrugging them off, of keeping myself intact for the day I would finally be free of this place. When I would be in control of my life.
That day is now. Bummer I didn’t know how bone-deep their hold on me went until the moment I try to tell my husband what I want and I can’t.
I’m super powered now, I supposedly can use magic, but on this one thing…
I’m silent. Powerless. It’s not my voice that sounds, it’s their voices ringing in my ears.
Shame burns bright in me at how small I let their ghosts force me to be.
I don’t want to be that girl anymore. My eyes drop to the floor. I can’t help it, the weight of it forces me down.
“Use your voice, Meadow.”
I gasp at Jaak’s voice but still no words come out. I look up, half expecting to find him looking at me the way he did when I got the plates down but he isn’t. He’s still facing away from me.
“Silence, still? Then will you allow me to use mine to tell you exactly what I want from you.”
I swallow hard, the sound is loud in my ears. “Yes,” I choke out, hands clasped in front of me. “Yes, I-I want to know.”
“I want to protect you, but that doesn’t seem to make sense to you so I will tell you what I want.
” Jaak doesn’t hesitate, not like me. He starts speaking the second I give him the go ahead.
“I want to have you beneath me, body mine to please and consume. You are my prize, mine, and I would ruin you for all others. Ruin you until my name is the only word you are able to speak. I want to mark every inch of you until you're a weeping, mewling mess with your trembling thighs in my hands.” One of Jaak’s hands clenches.
“Your thighs. I want to mark them, bruise them while I take you apart and devour you whole, your juices dripping down my chin, your taste on my tongue. I want your mewls, your cries, I want you to beg me to stop, even while you reach for me to beg for more. No matter how much you beg, I won’t stop.
I’ll force another and another peak out of you until I’m satisfied.
I want to command your beautiful body until it’s my name on your lips when they ask you about god and heaven, hell.
All of it is my domain when it comes to you.
All of that I want from you. Do you not understand that you are not safe with me? Do you understand me now, Meadow?”
I feel like I’ve been socked in the stomach.
All the air leaves my body in a whoosh and I only stay standing because the island counter is close enough that I’m able to hold myself up.
My thighs shake, the words that Jaak said hang in the air between us, and the potion comes to the fore once again.
Lust washes over me, my clit aches and my thighs clench.
I’ve never had a man touch me before, it wasn’t allowed with the destiny the cult forced on me.
I want everything Jaak is talking about.
I’m curious about all of it. Could he do those things to me?
My nipples ache, the line of desire moves through me straight down to my core where my clit pulses.
I press my hands to my thighs and try to think straight but it's impossible with my body going crazy. All I have to do is think about what he just said and I’m primed to orgasm.
There’s no explaining my body’s reaction to him, it just is.
I want him to do all of those things. I need him to.
“Meadow,” Jaak prompts me. The harsh edge of his voice sets me on fire.
Gods, why does he sound so sexy just saying my name?
It isn’t fair. How am I supposed to be reasonable or rational, or anything resembling a woman on a quest to save her friends and the world?
Right now, I don’t care about the world’s fate or whatever freaky biz the Chamber of Commerce has going on with the mages.
I care about right here and now with Jaak. This is all that matters.
I startle at his words, rub my palms on my thighs and try to calm down. “Yes, I-I understand.”
“You must go. Now.” Jaak thrusts a hand out in the direction of the door. He still hasn’t turned to me.
“No.”
I watch him go stone still. If I didn’t see the intake of his breath through the rise and fall of his shoulders I’d mistake him for a living statue.
“You are my prize, Meadow. I’ll not be able to protect you from myself. Not if you stay.
I raise my chin and cross my arms. The pressure against my breasts makes me suck in a sharp breath. It’s just my arms but it might as well be Jaak’s hands with how sensitive I feel right now.
“You can’t send me away. I want you just as much as you want me.
I-I want you to do everything you said to me.
All of it,” I tell him. A growl fills the room, it’s low and slow, it rolls through me like thunder.
I know where it’s coming from. I’m so close to getting the wild side of Jaak that I’ve craved, that I’ve only seen in my dreams.
In all those dreams, he kept me safe. He’ll do the same tonight even if he thinks he won’t.
“You can’t force me away, Jaak. I refuse to go. I’m not hiding from you. This is my choice as your wife.”
Jaak slowly turns, he doesn’t face me all the way, his profile stares straight ahead. I watch my husband take in another breath and then he chuckles. I drink the dark and sweet sound of him up.
“If you are to stay with me, there is one thing you must do for me, wife.”
Wife.
He’s called me his wife before, but not like this. I hear what he says with that word. Mine. I love it. I love him. I want to be his.
“What is it?” I ask. I’m willing to do anything he asks, well, other than leave so I tell him that. “Don’t you dare think about telling me to leave again.”
“I wouldn’t. Not after you told me your wish but if you are to stay, you must not run.”
“What? What do you mean I must not run? From what?”
Jaak turns his head to look at me. His eyes aren’t brown anymore, they shine silver in the low light of the kitchen.
“Me.”