Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
The hot water cascades over me, washing away the grime, the tension, the blood. It runs in hot rivers down my ribs and hips, dragging the night with it and leaving me raw. I press my palms against the sleek, cool tile of the shower wall and inhale. Steam curls around me, heavy as a secret.
The scent of some expensive soap fills my senses, something dark and musky, cedarwood with a bitter backbone like smoke. It should cleanse me. It does not.
His scent rides the steam with the soap, a memory that clings to my skin. Deimos. He lingers on my skin, in my lungs, a phantom touch that brushes the edges of me until I am nervous and alive.
My skin flushes under my palms, but the feeling remains because it is not a thing on my skin. It is inside me now—woven into my bones, threaded through my blood.
I should feel lighter. Clean. Instead I am on edge, restless, a coiled thing that wants to tear and be torn.
The hunger inside me is a bruise that hums when I breathe.
Not hunger for food. For something deeper and more ancestral.
It is animal and electric and it does not care for the names polite people give to appetite.
I want to break someone and be broken in the same motion. To make ruin into worship. The thought blooms hot and obscene and I let it sit there because denying it feels like denying myself.
A low growl rises in my throat and surprises me with how right it sounds.
I shut off the water, muscles humming, and step out.
I wrap a thick towel around myself but the fabric is a poor shield.
Restlessness crawls beneath my skin. My pulse is loud in my neck and fingers twitch.
The hunger grows louder until I can hear it like a drum in my head.
A current of power stirs through me. The lights blink.
Shadows curl along the walls though nothing else moves, like the room is listening for the thing I am about to do.
I do not wander for long. Around the corner, he appears—Bastion—stepping out of another bathroom, towel low on his hips.
Water beads trail down the ridges of his chest, clinging to his tattoos, following the planes of him.
His hair is wild and wet and falling into his eyes the way it would when he has just fought or fucked.
When he freezes I know the smell of him before his voice cuts through the steam.
Golden eyes skim me like a hunter reading a map of prey.
“Hellcat,” he drawls, his voice thick, rough. “What are you doing wandering around half-dressed?”
I swallow, grip the towel as if it will anchor me. “I—” I exhale and the sound dissolves into the air as if it never meant to be anything more than a small offering. “I don’t know. I just… I feel overwhelmed.”
I take a step closer though the towel trembles in my hands. Shadows behind me grow long and want to reach for him. His gaze tracks me slow and deliberate, nostrils flaring as if he could taste the shape of my need on the air.
“I feel—” I falter, cheeks flushing with the shame of wanting to sound anything less than monstrous. “Anxious. Hungry.”
At the word his body changes as if someone flicked a switch.
The slow, easy warmth that is his usual armor snaps into something tighter and sharp.
His pupils open until they are predatory coins.
The space tightens. Heat and pressure roll through the room like a storm front; the air tastes like the metal on a new blade.
For a beat he only watches, the way a volcano watches a village. Then he steps forward and his fingers curl under my chin. His palm tilts my face up so I cannot look away. Heat, power, raw strength flood the small space between us.
“You don’t have to say anything more,” he murmurs.
And then he moves.
I am not surprised by the lack of gentleness.
Bastion doesn’t do soft. He does brutal and he does gorgeous.
His mouth crashes against mine in a slap of heat and force.
The towel is gone as if offended, ripped free by large hands with no thought of decorum.
He hauls me to him, body to body, and I get only a second to register the warmth of him before he throws me onto the bed.
My back slams the mattress. My legs dangle and the world tilts, but I do not reach for balance. I am not interested in balance.
He drags his teeth across my skin and the bites bloom into stinging constellations. He does not ask; he takes. He manhandles me like a prize and the word prize is too small for how I feel caught and owned and wanted.
“You need to be fucked, don’t you, little Hellcat?” he rasps, and the way he says my name is a thing of hunger.
“Yes,” I gasp, because the truth sits in my mouth and tastes like sin. “Please.”
He chuckles dark and it is not amused in the light way.
The sound is low and dangerous and there is no tenderness in his look.
He flips me onto my stomach with a palm that keeps me flat like a hand over a trapped animal.
“Hold on tight,” he growls into my ear as if threat and comfort could be siblings.
And then he takes me. Not gentle. Not measured. His hips snap forward with a force that steals my breath. He drives into me hard, pushing until pain and pleasure braid into something so sharp I cannot name it. I scream, nails tearing at sheets, and he laughs like a god pleased with the world.
He tangles his fingers in my hair and yanks until my head falls back. I am his ragdoll and I love it in a way that feels like confession. He will not ease. He will not ask for mercy and I will not give it. My body becomes a place where his power is shown in blunt instrument strokes.
“Oh fuck, Bas!” I scream, and the sound is a bright flame on my tongue. He hisses and curses as an orgasm rips through me, a lightning strike that leaves me raw and open. Before I can find the pieces of myself he lifts me, and flips me onto my back.
He grins wicked and his golden eyes hold something feral and proud. My beautiful brute. “I’m not through with you yet, Hellcat.” His voice is thick with hunger. “I want to see your face while I fuck you.”
It is a demand and a promise and I moan at it, something animal and grateful slipping out of me.
He spreads me again, drives into me with a force that is almost violent, each thrust a punctuation that makes the room tilt.
He growls and grips my thighs as if he can shape me into whatever he wants.
“Hold those for me,” he orders. I obey, wrapping my arms around my legs.
“Good girl,” he growls, and the syllables hit a place in me that makes me crack open and pour myself out.
When the words hit they release a storm.
I feed from him with a ferocity that shames me in the way it heals me.
I take and take until his body is a map I have memorized and his pleasure is the language I breathe.
He gives without question—his power, his hunger, his heat.
I drink him in until the ache that has been living under my ribs since morning loosens like a knot.
He rolls onto his back and pulls me with him, and still he does not stop.
He uses me like an offering and consumes me like worship.
Each time I think I cannot take another, he gives again and I am remade on his body.
He ruins me and rebuilds me and ruins me again until my limbs go boneless and hesitate between pain and profound satisfaction.
Bastion’s groan vibrates against my spine and his arms tighten around me. He chuckles, low and satisfied. “Tired, little Hellcat?”
I cannot answer. Words would be clumsy instruments for the softening that has already turned my thought to fog. I sink into his weight, into the cavern of his chest, letting the warmth dull the edges of everything I fear and everything I want.
A sleep that is heavy and unwaking takes me, pulled into the dark by the gravity of his body.
In it I am full, and in it the hunger either sleeps or waits in a soft place.
For a while there is nothing but the echo of his breath and the smear of heat on my skin and the knowledge that for this hour, at least, someone has filled the emptiness with something fierce and enough.
When I wake, if I wake, the world will have its teeth bared.
I know that even in the soft between-sleep.
Zepharion is out there like a shadow with a name, the bond hums like a wire in my bones, and Deimos watches everything with a patience that holds knives.
But in this swollen hour, with Bastion’s arms still around me and my body finally quiet, I let myself be undone.
For now, that surrender is a small rebellion.