Chapter 26
Irelynn
After that first night when Ilya returned home and he devoured me, quite literally, in his bed, he hasn’t forced himself upon me again. At least not in the same way.
I’m not delusional enough—yet—to say that what Ilya does isn’t wrong. It is. Everything the man does is wrong. The very fact that I’m here, still, three weeks after he kidnapped me, is wrong.
But he hasn’t made me come unstitched at the seams since that night when he first returned from wherever he’d disappeared to, to deal with whatever business he’d had to deal with. And we haven’t talked about that night, either.
I, for one, can’t seem to make myself bring it up. Just the thought turns my face red hot, and my body buzzes.
What he has done, however, is hold me every night with his hand up my shirt. Or his shirt, but he makes me wear it. His forearm rests in the valley between my breasts, and his big hand cradles me. Sometimes around my neck, sometimes he holds my cheek in his big palm.
Always, every single night, he makes me feel cherished. Wanted. Loved.
Every night, I wish he’d consume me in that forbidden way he did.
I wish he’d ignore my protests as he flipped me onto my back and played the unwilling strings of my body until I moaned a melody just for him. Again, and again, and again.
There are deep, dark things wrong with me.
I’m a broken, despicable creature. And he’s the dark vine crawling to imprison my bleeding heart. Soon, his vines will tighten, and the black thorns will prick into my tender heart, rendering me completely, and inescapably, his.
Ilya sighs an aggrieved sound as he pushes away from his sprawling dark oak desk to lean back in the massive black leather chair. His hands fold in his lap as he regards me on the loveseat where I sit with my closed ereader.
“Do you not enjoy reading, Irelynn?”
“I love reading.”
“And yet, every night, I bring you in here with me. I give you the ereader. I work, but you never read.” He sounds exasperated. “Do you not like my gift? Or is it simply because it’s from me?”
“Oh.” I look down at the little device in my hands. “The gift is nice. I just—I prefer physical books.”
His brows inch slowly up his forehead. “You prefer physical books so much that you would rather sit in silence, every night, than read something you enjoy? I’ve filled it with books for you that I know you will like.”
“How do you know I’ll like them?”
“I hacked into your borrow history at the library.”
Now, it’s my turn to gape. “You what?” I don’t know why I’m surprised by the level of his insanity. His obsession. The man proves again and again, that he’s got more than one screw loose. “You know what?—never mind. That’s,” I sputter. “I—I don’t care. I don’t read ereaders because they give me headaches. It’s why I borrowed from the library. I could never have afforded to purchase new, or even used books at the rate I went through them. I’ve peeked at some of the books Polina has, but most of them are in, I’m assuming, Russian.”
Now, he looks angry. Coolly, too cool to be anything but dangerous, Ilya demands, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I blink, then I frown. “I don’t know.”
“I would have bought you books. Physical copies.”
I shrug. “I’m good with my thoughts.”
He mutters something that sounds a lot like, “I’m not,” but I don’t ask him to repeat himself. Instead, I stand.
“I’m going to head upstairs and take a bath.” The cool danger in his gaze flares with an even more ominous heat that has my own body responding with a totally unacceptable thrill.
I’m just as messed up as him. That, or he’s rubbing off on me.
“There are bath salts under the vanity,” Ilya tells me softly. “Enjoy your bath, my Little Blue.”
The endearment has me stopping by the door, turning back to him. “Why do you call me that?”
His gaze drinks me in, but I stand my ground. Finally, he explains, “When I first saw you, there was a sadness about you. Like an aura of blue. Tears, and sorrow, and grief.” Pinpricks of gooseflesh ripple over me from head to toe. “Then I saw your eyes, and they matched your gown perfectly. A blue so light, it could have been a pool of tears. And you’re so beautifully little. So tiny. So easily overpowered, delicate, and mine.”
“I—” My voice sounds softer than I intend. My hands tremble. “I don’t like that, Ilya.”
He leans forward to place his elbows on his desk, steepling his hands. “You’re learning to like it, though, aren’t you? The depraved things I make you feel, make you crave?”
His blue eyes watch me as though he can see beyond my flesh to the distorted workings of my inner wickedness. The shrouded piece of me that longs for someone to steal the control I’m incapable of gifting of my own volition. The will I long to have stripped, so that I might not have to face the demons I host deep within. To answer for the darkness of their depravity.
The realization hits me like a cool fall of water. Ice bursts within my veins, an eruption of horror settling in the depths of the truth I’ve uncovered just now. A truth about myself I’ve never been strong enough to face.
I’ve never been able to bring myself to agree to date, not any man. And many have asked. Nice, upstanding men have tried to sway me. To swoon me. To romance and woo me.
I’ve always felt, somehow trapped, by the freedom of my own ability to reject, time and time again, the good, upstanding, kind, morally yellow man. A man of sunshine and easy smiles, of tender touches and diamond vows.
Peering at Ilya, I see him for all that he is. He’s not morally yellow or white or light at all. He’s not even morally grey. He’s black as sin. Dark and forbidding as the depths of a corrupt nightmare where the touch of a talon doesn’t maim, but instead promises a ripple of sin, a quake in the foundation that holds my own moral compass, shattering it. Obliterating me.
His stillness is unsettling, the way his animal eyes track me as I move, is darkly thrilling. I’m like a butterfly caught in the haze of a blizzard. He’s a man crafted of ice and shrouded in smoke. Yet, somehow, he ignites me like no other.
I can come to only one conclusion. I yearn for the way he strips me of my will. I crave the depravity in his stolen touches. In his obsession, I have uncovered a need. A deep-seated desire with roots so twisted and ugly, I can have no hope of tugging it from where it grows in the core of me.
Maybe it stems from the moment my father left me to fend for myself. The abandonment has left the little girl in me craving someone strong, so strong that I no longer have to be the only source of strength I know, to carry myself further in this life.
Maybe it’s the assault I suffered at the hands of my foster brother. With him, I’d felt disgust and horror. But maybe it unlocked something with me. Something dark and ugly that doesn’t just crave dominance, but needs it.
Maybe that’s why I respond to Ilya like I do. Because I’m ruined, my pieces irrevocably broken. Maybe that’s why I seem to fit so perfectly with this jagged, sharp man.
He’s broken, too.
I’m not ready to admit this weakness to him. I’m not ready to strip myself any barer than he’s already stripped me.
“Goodnight, Ilya.”
“Irelynn,” he calls, my name deliciously rough where it falls between us. I don’t turn to face him as I wait for whatever it is he wants to say to me. “Get some rest, my heart. We have a big day tomorrow.”
I don’t respond. But if he thinks I’m going to rest after that—he’s lost another marble.