Chapter 45
45
M y teeth clamp together as I punch the bathroom door. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Poe wasn’t meant to find out this way. I was going to sit down with her and show her all those messages once I’d been able to find a way to explain things to her properly. To beg for her forgiveness, in the only way I can damn well communicate, because I can’t very well cup her face and pour out my sorrows and regrets in a poetic waterfall like the others are able to.
Except now she’s seen the worst of me, the darkest recesses of the times when I’ve loathed myself and what this world has forced me to become, and she’s seen my most awful days typed out in a brutally uncaring fashion.
I know exactly what is written there. All the inner thoughts I’ve contemplated deleting, for fear of this very moment. But it doesn’t fucking matter now, does it?
It doesn’t matter that I kept them for the very reason that I didn’t want to lie to her. I wanted to be able to explain myself and show her how much things have changed for me since that first day I was instructed to track down the missing Elysium House child.
What I had to do and how I felt when this all started, all of it has been erased by the fact I’ve fallen in love with her.
Now? Now, I’ve ruined it all. I’ve torn everything into a thousand jagged, tattered shreds and lost her.
I fucking lost her.
My breath saws in and out of my chest as I stare at the sight of my phone, the scattered debris of tarot cards I’m always tasked with leaving for the initiates to find, and the two mugs that taunt me with an alternate reality. One where I might have been able to walk out of this shower and scoop my girl up and drink those steaming coffees together.
Bitterness thumps behind my ribcage, cursing my veins with the knowledge of what I’ve done to her. How I was twisted the fuck up for months on end, knowing the time was drawing nearer when she’d be consumed by this world.
I’ve dragged Poe into the jaws of the beast and made sure she had no alternative but to step into this dark and depraved existence. Yes, it might have been on orders, but I’m selfishly to blame for obsessing over her at the same time.
My lungs ache, filled with terrible longing to yell her name. To call after her.
I have to go after her. There’s no way Poe can escape us, even if she wanted to. Did she discover the true extent of my manipulation of her life? The tracker I inserted in her nape just above her hairline, during one of the many times I combed her apartment as she slept.
There’s a snarl on my lips as I grab my phone and immediately pull up the pin to show her location. As I half expected, she’s headed for the forest again. That flashing icon on screen moves in a straight line for the cover of trees and invisibility those woods might provide. No matter where she goes, I already have the means stored right here on my phone to track her down. Seeing it stabs me with a painful reminder of just how sickening it felt during those weeks when I’d been unable to locate her—when this very same device had been interfered with.
I don’t even bother to find a shirt or boots; I start running.
Every thundering step heightens the self-loathing. The hatred of my own existence, of my upbringing at the hands of Lilith House, of what my sister and I were forced to be. It all seethes in my veins, wanting to burst and overflow in a murky blackness. If there was a way to despise myself more, this right here is the moment it all coalesces into a sickening ball in the pit of my stomach.
As I reach the glass sliding door, I catch a glimpse of the white t-shirt she’s wearing as it disappears beyond the tree line. My stride lengthens, flying over the terrain, easily able to follow the path Poe has cut through the dewy grass where it forms a darker trail beneath each of her footsteps.
Overhead, the heavens are thick with billowing clouds, and spots of rain sting my bare skin as droplets begin to tumble down. By the time I reach the outer limits of the forest, those sparse splatters of wetness have begun to intensify. Rain falls thicker, faster, building pace in time with my desperate heartbeats.
Even though I can trace her every movement—could ever so casually stroll this entire estate following her location and corner her before she ever had a chance to make it beyond the furthest reaches of the property—none of that is relevant.
I’ve lost her.
I’ve fucking lost her.
The words roll through my mind on a thunderclap of self-flagellation for losing the only goddamn thing I’ve ever cared for in this way. You cannot tell me love at first sight doesn’t exist when Poe lives and breathes and walks around this earth. Because that’s what this has felt like for me from the very first day I watched her exit that apartment. Since the moment she first set foot across that threshold and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear that fateful morning, I’ve been drowning in this girl.
My mouth hangs open as I try to call for her. As my footsteps crunch over leaves and branches, I’m terrified she’s going to injure herself running out here with nothing to protect her feet. The air squeezes inside my lungs, and my abdomen compresses with the force of trying—begging without hope for a single fucking sound to form—to shout her name.
Poe.
Her name screams inside my mind, but nothing manages to come out. Not a sound, except for a foul gurgling that emanates from some deep part of my diaphragm. It’s a terrible noise, one that I’m conscious not to make in front of others because it usually disturbs them so much.
Stop. Please.
It doesn’t take long until I’ve gained on her, even though my pace slows to weave and duck through low-hanging branches and shrubs. Poe’s dark hair flies behind her, and that t-shirt is a glowing beacon, allowing me to continue reeling her in.
As much as I need to catch her, as much as I can’t bear to have her run from me, there’s a nausea building and writhing in that spot deep in my gut that wishes she could somehow vanish without a trace. Poe deserves to be able to disappear from here.
I’m almost behind her. When my shoulders crash through a thicket of branches that I don’t even register scraping my skin, her head whips around. Tears stream down those paled cheeks, and her voice is strained as curses fly my way.
They’re everything I deserve. Give them all to me. Coat me in all the layers of shame and white-hot liquid disgust for my very presence.
It’s only a half dozen more paces, and her figure is within reaching distance. Poe lets out a mournful cry as I wrap her from behind. One arm closes around her shoulders, and the other drags her body back to mine by encircling her stomach. It tosses us together with a force that makes me stumble, and I have to catch us both as we skid to a stop amid the rain, now pelting down.
Water cascades through the leaves overhead, pattering relentlessly onto that thick canopy and tumbling down to soak the both of us. Her t-shirt is saturated at the shoulders and chest. Strands of hair are plastered against the side of her ashen face.
“Fuck you. Get the fuck off me. Don’t you fucking dare touch me.” Poe sobs as she tries to claw away my hands, and each time she thrashes, it takes another shard of that torn muscle inside my chest and eviscerates it.
I can’t let her go. This can’t be the last thing between us. My lust, my love, my soul-crushing infatuation with everything about this girl is at the helm while I force her to be in my clutches. My arms band tighter, clinging onto her in a voiceless plea to let me make amends.
As Poe fights me with every furious cell in her body, my face sinks into the side of her neck. Rainwater coats her skin, mingling with the tears sliding down her face freely. And I taste every devastated emotion contained in those free-flowing drops.
“How could you? How could you be that cold? Was it all a fucking lie?” Her muscles tremble, and we both sink to our knees as I still cling tight, pinning her against my chest. “You promised me there were no lies. Was all of this just a goddamn game for you?”
Her voice turns raw, the words starting to crack with the force of how hard she’s yelling.
I don’t know how to tell her. How to explain when I have no way of doing so in such a spiraling tempest of emotion. I’m floundering in this storm, with tattered sails, and nothing more than a hope she might be willing to give me a chance to provide some answers. Or, at the very least, to be able to crawl across the sea of shattered glass that was her trust in me, to beg on my knees while bleeding.
“I—I trusted you.” Poe’s limbs shake, and it’s the worst fucking feeling in the world eating away at my insides to know that I’m the cause of her tears. “I can’t believe I let myself fall for you. I can’t believe I was a fool to think anything was real between us.” She doubles over with wracking sobs punctuating her words.
All I can do is hold on tight and weather this hurricane threatening to tear our flesh apart as Poe continues to hurl all that hurt and emotion at me. I silently take every single lash of her verbal flogging—stripped down to nothing but the welts and lines and bleeding stripes across my skin where she flays me with the entirety of that trust being broken.
“None of it was real, was it?” Her body quakes and slumps as shock starts to take hold. We’re both completely saturated with the sheeting rain thundering onto the ground, surrounding us in the scents of damp earth and moss and fallen leaf litter. If we stay out here too much longer, she’s going to freeze.
“Nothing about this was anything but a way to carry out orders. You never fucking cared about me.”
I flip Poe onto her back so that my body covers hers. There’s no way for me to explain, but I have to goddamn try to do something to fix this.
Her fists pound against my chest, and seeing her tear-filled eyes kills me when I loom over her. My body pins hers into the ground, and I deserve every blow she’s attempting to land as her hands wrestle and try to shove me away. Poe’s a snapping, snarling creature lying on her back below my frame.
“How could you manipulate me like that? I’m just the slut who fell for the bad guy when he never gave a shit about me. All I am to you is just a stupid girl you can’t wait to get rid of.”
Poe’s breathing is labored as she sniffs back those tears that keep flowing, joining the droplets splashing our skin.
I shake my head.
No. It wasn’t like that. You have to believe me.
“Fuck you. Don’t deny it. Don’t deny that you played me.”
No. I would never do that to you.
“All you do is lie.”
Never to you, Poe.
“Just let me go. Leave me alone. You got what you wanted out of all this. Got to fuck me and use me. So now that you’ve ripped my heart out, too, congratulations.” She chokes on a sob. “You’ve succeeded in truly breaking me.”
I would never.
“I didn’t expect you to care… but I hoped you felt something for me.” Poe shakes her head, mirroring the action I keep repeating.
God, my lungs burn with the need to tell her. The aching, pulsating pressure builds inside me to try and form words when it’s impossible. My throat and voice were stolen, and fate will never damn well ever grant me that gift back.
I’m so sorry. I’m sorry in a million different ways, and then a million more.
“How could you be so cruel… to make me feel like this… to make me—” Her eyes scrunch closed, bottom lip trembling with raw emotion. “You made me fall for you, Angel. You bastard. You made me care and open my heart, and I hate myself for being so pathetic.”
A deep rumble breaks out of my chest, and I drop my mouth to meet hers. I join our lips and taste salty tears and the wetness of rain and all the hurt hanging there on Poe’s tongue.
She sobs against my mouth, trying to draw away at first, but can’t escape. I press my kiss to hers, and with each movement of my mouth over her damp lips, I try to tell her.
I love you. I’ve been in love with you since the very first time I saw you. I’ll be in love with you until I no longer have life left in my bones.
My mouth moves and roams, hardly leaving the surface of her skin, dropping down again and again to trace her face. Kissing away those tears and pressing against the fan of damp lashes against her cheeks as Poe makes desperate whimpering noises of protest beneath me.
“Don’t. If you don’t mean this, then please stop, Angel. I can’t take it.” She begs me, and I keep letting my lips run over all those hurts, trying to let her know I want to take all of them away. I want to lift every single one of them from her shoulders and reassure my girl that I’m beyond gone for her.
Bringing my mouth back to hers, I sink into her, and she tastes like sweetness I’ve forever dreamed of. Honeyed longing and the nectar of needing her coat my tongue as I press forward into her mouth and let our fingers interlink.
My hands cover hers, palms locked and fingers threaded together as I push Poe’s arms above her head, and I keep kissing her with a fever running white-hot through my bloodstream. Each soft noise against my mouth sends me further into a headspin, lost to this moment of gliding our tongues together, angling our mouths, and it’s only when I draw back to lick away more of the tears soaking her cheeks that I realize Poe is kissing me back.
Her head lifts off the wet ground, and she chases my lips, not wanting to break the force connecting us. The urgency turns into a heated, desperate wave of passion as I seal my mouth against hers, and we’re both becoming more and more forceful with the way all that emotion is pouring through the joining of our mouths .
I love you. Kiss. I’m so in love with you. Bite. I don’t want to ever lose you. Suck.
“Angel…” Poe pants against my mouth. “Please.” Her legs come up to wrap my waist, and I’m never going to deny anything between us. This girl is my absolute ruin. My undoing. I’ll forever burn to hear my name spoken from her mouth directly into mine.
It’s like she’s filling my lungs with words, none of which I have the ability to form. But with Poe, she lends me a voice—however temporary that act might be—and I’m addicted to how that feels.
Taking her bottom lip between my teeth, I pin both of her wrists beneath one palm. My other hand fumbles to push down my waistband, and there’s no mistaking or misinterpreting the way Poe feels the same sense of urgent driving need to be fully joined together.
“I need you inside me,” she moans beneath my bruising pinch of her bottom lip when the crown of my cock presses forward. Her t-shirt sticks against the outside of her thighs, and the material of my sweats clings around my hips.
As I fit myself at her slick entrance and feel her channel wrap me tight, welcoming me in, I know this is going to be quick and frantic, and in all honesty, we’re both so frantic I don’t think either of us wants anything more than that sense of explosive connection.
I need to feel her, and I need to fuck my love into her.
Bringing my palm up to settle over the front of her throat, I let my fingers wrap the slender curve of her neck and squeeze, pushing my hips forward at the same time. Poe’s eyes are glimmering inky depths that pull me under as I shove my way deeper, feeling her pussy stretch and form around me. With each moment I add more pressure to collar her with my palm, there’s wave after wave of flutters around my length, and I’m unable to fight that compulsion to take her mouth once more.
Poe hooks her ankles around my back, and I drive into that velvety heat in time with the thrusts of my tongue past her lips. I’m a creature possessed by the yearning to have every part of her. To be connected right down to our fucking souls, to let all my desperation and longing be pounded into the dirt right here on the forest floor. Because I don’t want to carry any of that around with me anymore.
I want to own her, love her, and get to be connected in the most intimate of ways. My heart willingly wants to be hers.
As much as I want Grey to have that part of me, too, he’s already had a part of my everything for so long. With him, it’s different. It’s a different kind of connection, and both feel profound in their own unique and undeniable ways.
Admitting how deeply sunk into the abyss I am with my love for Poe has opened my eyes to how much I love Grey, also.
Beneath me, her pussy spasms and ripples as the force of my thrusts turn brutal. My mouth keeps on claiming hers and there’s a swelling sensation inside my chest as my lungs feel ready to burst with the moans Poe keeps making against my tongue. I’m devouring every sound, every vibration, every sweetened note of pleasure that races straight down my own throat, transforming me into nothing more than a thrusting, pulsating need to fuck and swallow her noises.
“Angel. Oh fuck. Oh fffuuck .” Poe tenses up and whimpers loudly, her channel squeezing tight. “Tell me. Tell me you fucking love me.” She begs as her climax threatens to consume her whole.
Another of those rumbling sounds leaves my chest as my fingers tense around her neck and the rhythm of my thrusts intensifies. My mouth claims hers with a final searing kiss that I pour every drop of my soul into, as much goddamn emotion as possible .
I fucking love you.
Poe moans as I suck on her tongue, letting my heavy palm rest over the column of her throat, and she simply falls apart. I’m driving deep, chasing her release with my own. Heat surges through my groin, blinding me as that pressure zaps down my spine and pulses forward. All that I can do is drift along, with blood thumping as I bite and nibble at her lips. Poe does the same back to me, both of our mouths sloppy and wet and filled with need. Moving in time with each throb and spurt of hot cum filling her pussy while her inner walls still ripple around my length.
My heart is in the back of my throat, chest heaving, as the force of everything washes through the two of us. There’s no hint of cold now, thanks to the fact we’re both burning up and swept away by how powerful that climax was, claiming us both at the same time.
Beneath me, the girl I need to take care of and explain so much to stares at me from behind a curtain of thick, damp lashes. Pattering rainfall surrounds us still, and as much as I wish we could lie here connected, we can’t stay here, covered in mud and leaves and soaked to the bone. Except, there’s something important I have to tell her right here and now.
Using the hand I’d had wrapped around the front of her neck, I bring my thumb up to sweep over her flushed, kiss-bitten lips. Sliding my fingers to cup her jaw, I lower my head again and place a gentle, promise-laden kiss against the pillowy soft curve of her mouth.
Settling my weight on my knees—so as not to crush my precious girl—with my other hand, I guide her palm to the front of my chest. I lay her fingertips over my heart thundering against my ribcage. As I reluctantly draw back from her mouth, I flick my gaze to where her hand sits right above the muscle that pumps furiously, repeating her name with each thud, and then dip my chin, making sure Poe understands how serious I am at this moment.
It’s yours.
Take it.
Keep it forever.