Chapter 40
Irelynn
My gown lays in a pool of blue satin on the dark tile of Ilya’s bathroom floor as he sets the temperature of the shower. My shoulders still shake with sobs I can’t seem to kill. Inside, I hurt. Everywhere.
I ache in places I wasn’t even aware of before now.
Ilya has yet to speak a word to me. He passed his men, barking an order to secure the property, before he charged into the house, up the stairs, and straight into his bathroom. He set me on the floor, stripping me of my gown as I shook like a brittle leaf in an icy wind. As he pulled the material down the length of my body, kneeling on the floor, his eyes level with my thighs, the rage that overtook him in the forest only intensifies.
Now, as I sneak a peek in the mirror, I see what’s angered him so deeply.
The same milky white and red that had ribboned his cock stains my thighs.
Shame and regret nip at my insides. Again, I cast my eyes away from the evidence of my very bad, very foolish decision.
“Get in.” I flinch at the low sound of Ilya’s command, and step into the shower.
Under the hot spray, my skin tingles painfully. I realize then just how cold I’d been, and that I’m shivering even now. As the warmth of the water slowly seeps into my bones, a little of the tension in my aching muscles begins to loosen. Until the glass door opens and Ilya’s naked, imposing body steps inside.
He doesn’t say a word as he steps closer and closer, crowding me until my back is pressed tight to the wall and he’s towering over me. He’s looking down at me with those eyes filled with angry disappointment.
A whole new rush of hurt swarms my insides as new, hot tears sting my eyes. He catches my face between his big hands and sighs a heavy sigh that threatens to crush my heart and squeeze all the air from my lungs.
Pinning his eyes to mine, he says gently, “I am so sorry, Irelynn.”
Sorry. Sorry?
What the hell is he sorry for?
“I don’t understand.”
“That is not how I intended to take you your first time.” His thumbs slide through the tears and the wet spray of water under my eyes. “I lost control, and I—I am sorry.”
Understanding registers as my blood cools. He thinks he took something I wasn’t ready to give.
Did he somehow miss the fact I’d pushed him on purpose? That I’d asked him to take me?
“Ilya,” I steal a breath of steam that tastes of him as his eyes search the depths of mine. “I wanted that—you.”
His jaw pulses, teeth clenching even as his eyes widen. “It was supposed to be gentle. I wanted to drive you mad with want. Instead, I took you like the monster you accuse me of being.”
The disappointment he feels in himself shines bright in his eyes. I don’t know what I can say to prove to him that I’d wanted him. That I’d driven his monster to the surface with intent.
Stepping into him, I press my face against the broad wall of his chest. Under my cheek, his muscles clench and his wild heart beats. As my hands wind around his torso, my fingertips whispering over the muscle and ink that stretches over his back, I feel the cords of his strength snapping.
A shuddering sigh spills from his chest as his hands come around me, pulling me even tighter into him. But he says nothing more. Still, I sense that my big monster is struggling.
For the second time tonight, I conspire to give him what I think he needs. I’m sore between my legs, achy in a good way. He is right to say that his claiming hadn’t been gentle. But it had been everything that I had needed. And it was everything he needed, too.
As much as he might have wanted to remain controlled, I’m happy I could be the woman to demolish his ever-present control.
I’m happy that, with me, he was a man stripped of his iron will. Bared to the primal desires that clawed within him to break free.
Slowly, I pull away.
Usually, when I shower with Ilya, he washes me. It hits me now how tenderly and frequently he showers me with care. He might be the monster who stole me, but he’s also the monster who tiptoes around my desires, and battles to fulfill my needs.
My stolen heart throbs for him as he watches me carefully. He’s waiting for me to crack under what he thinks is the trauma of this night.
Filling my chest with steamy air, I reach for his soap. Pouring generously into my palm, I lather his soap between my hands as he watches me through curious, warded eyes. I want to break through all the walls that stand around the monster he tries to hide, and stand bared to the beast he houses, my heart on a platter for his taking.
Against all will, I’m so in love with him.
I start at his chest, rubbing the soap into scarred skin that stretches tight over hard muscle. A canvas of ink tells a story of sorrow and solitude. I can feel his blue eyes shining bright on me as he watches me scrub the soap into his chest, his torso, down the length of his arms. I step into his chest, my swollen breasts and pointed nipples pressing into the slippery canvas of his chest so that I can scrub the suds into his back.
When I step back again, I pour more soap into my hands as he watches me, studying me. I feel my cheeks flame with heat as I lather the soap and start on one thick leg. I crouch low, lathering the suds around his ankle before I start on the other, traveling up his leg as I’d travelled down the other.
My breathing is racing now as I reach for the soap a third time, pouring generously once again into my palm.
As I’d lowered into my crouched position to wash his legs, his cock had started to swell, stretching toward me as though reaching for me. Now, as I lather the suds, it’s fully erect, straining in a way that looks painfully beautiful.
The tip is a deep purple red. It’s covered with thick veins that rise up from the hard looking flesh. My eyes land on his once again, a silent question he answers with a heated dare. Swallowing hard, I drop my eyes to his intimidating length once again. Then I close my hands around his length, surprised, and a little delighted when his hips buck just a tiny bit into my hands.
Why do I like it when he loses control with me?
The thought of him slamming me against the wall and having his way with me a second time tonight has my core aching, wetness blooming between the thighs I press tight together as my hands begin to pump over his shaft, slick with soap.
“You’re so soft here,” I marvel, realizing that it’s the first time I’ve touched him like this.
He doesn’t reply, and I say nothing more. I just continue to stroke his length, learning the feel of him under my hands. The map of his body as my gaze drinks him in. I study every rippled scar and valley of muscle, the lines of ink that cling to his flesh like armour. I’ve seen him without his clothes before, but I’ve never really looked. Not like this. So brazenly obvious.
The images in the lines of ink aren’t easily understood. Layer after layer of images merge to paint a tragically beautiful image of—a fallen angel?—I think.
In the center of his chest, in the hollow between tight muscle, what first appears to be a river of raging water turns into, on longer inspection, a man stripped of clothes. His hands are clawing into his chest as though he’s searching for something that is missing, his head bowed into his chest. It’s from his eyes that the raging river begins. From his back, are massive black wings that stretch over Ilya’s pectorals and down into his torso, following the lines of his sharp abs into the jagged points of a hazy forest, in the valley of which the man/river flows. The wings of the fallen angel are ruffled, and on closer inspection, some wings appear to be needled trees in a dark forest. From the tattoo on his back stretches a taloned claw, the claw of a demon, and between two long digits, it plucks a feather from the wing of the fallen angel. Stars fall over the canvas of it all, creeping over the flesh of his neck, making the art feel, in a way, hopeless.
I don’t realize I’ve stopped stroking his length to trace the art that clings to his body until he catches my wrists in his hands. My eyes snap to his as thick fingers cuff the delicate circumference.
He”s so much bigger than me. So much more powerful.
He really could break me, if he wanted to. I’d be hopeless to stop him from any harm he meant me.
“What are you doing, Irelynn?” That muscle in his jaw is jumping, still. It betrays the calm he’s trying to exude.
“Learning you.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to.” My head tips to the side when his grip around my wrist pulses. “Because you’re mine to learn.”
He stares at me for a long beat. It’s so hard, so pointed, it feels like a glare. Then his eyes shutter closed. Roughly, he asks, “Are you done learning?”
“No.”
His eyes open. Slowly, reluctantly, he releases my wrists. I step into him, feeling the tip of his erection pressing into my belly. My core throbs in painful awareness that I ignore as I lift my hands to the dip of his narrow waist, tickling my fingertips over his skin.
He hisses in a breath, but he doesn’t stop me as I explore him. I can feel the burn of his questioning gaze on my face, but I don’t give him my eyes. I trail my fingertips from his waist, over the ripple of his abs, the jagged rise of more than one scar, up the river man and over his broad shoulders. Every muscle coils tense under my touch, but I don’t stop as I loop my hands around his thick neck, rising onto my tiptoes. Leaning in, I press my lips to the warm flesh of his chest, where a river of water flows from the shower that hits his back, and over his shoulders.
I kiss him again, and again, and again. Up the valley between his pecks to the hollow of his throat, over the shadow of hair that dusts his neck, his chin, and finally to his lips.
At first, he doesn’t kiss me back. I don’t take offence. If he didn’t want me to kiss him, I wouldn’t be kissing him.
The man towers over me. Short of him bending down for me, or me climbing his body, I can’t just lean in and steal his mouth like he steals mine.
My kisses are slow and exploratory. At first, they’re soft and closed-mouthed. Between us, I can feel the eager jump of his hard cock against my belly, telling me that he’s enjoying this enough for me to want to continue. To deepen this kiss.
Parting my lips, I lick at his bottom lip before I attempt to suck it into my mouth.
It”s the thing that does him in. One moment, he’s stone still. The next, his hands grip my waist, and he lifts me as easily as if I were a doll. My back connects with the tile of the wall and breath tumbles from my lungs as I struggle to keep my footing. His big body bends into mine, shoulders curving inward as though to cage me into the wall. As though his hands holding my waist in his iron grip aren’t doing exactly that already.
To my delight, Ilya is breathing just as hard as me. His chest rising and falling with violent breaths that whisper across my lips.
My eyes flash to his, seeing the swirl of dark shadows. This time, he growls low and dangerous. “What are you doing, Irelynn?”
“I told you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I frown, aware of the way his eyes track the emotion as it passes over my face. “Why not?”
“Did you not just run from me? Did you not just try to escape into the winter forest, preferring death by hypothermia, to being mine?” There’s a rattle edging his voice that has awareness prickling my spine.
The man couldn’t be more off base.I almost want to laugh.
I think that would push him over the edge, though—and not the edge I want to push him over.
“I ran because I knew you’d chase me.” Those big hands around my waist pulse. “I knew you’d punish me—threaten me—and I wanted…”
When I say nothing more, he demands, “What did you want?”
“You.” Hot water sprays us both. I blink it away, letting it fall like tears down my face. He tracks every drop. “I wanted you. I want you.”
“Why run?” Suspicion flares in his eyes as they drill into mine. He doesn’t believe me. “Why not just tell me?”
Butterflies burst inside my belly as my mind replays the events of tonight. Heat erupts inside my core, and I fling my arms up over his shoulders, hoisting my legs up and around his waist. The tip of his erection slides over the slickness of my core, and I know he feels it—my arousal.
“I told you I’d never stop running.” I smile a teasing smile. “Besides, my way was more fun.”
He’s frozen for a solid minute as he stares at me. I swear, I can feel his heartbeat in the tip of his cock where it looms at my entrance. Still, when he doesn’t move or speak, the pressure becomes too much. I shift my hips, sliding my wet heat over the hot hardness of his erection.
A moan slides up my throat as a curse tears from his chest. And then we’re moving.