12. Chapter 12 #2
I spat in his face. Or tried to. In dreams, defiance obeyed different physics. It did not matter. His smile sharpened.
“There she is.”
He released my waist only to catch my jaw, forcing my head aside. His fingers were slick with my blood. The smell of it thickened the room until I could taste copper at the back of my throat.
“Please,” I heard myself say.
I hated that too.
Lucian made a soft sound of delight. “There is the truth beneath all that education.”
His mouth lowered to my neck. The first touch of his fangs was cold. Then he bit. Pain became total.
There was no body beyond it, no chamber, no law, no language.
Only the white-hot tearing of flesh, the brutal pull at the vein, the wet pressure of his mouth feeding where terror lived closest to speech.
The scream came out of me raw and high, dragged from some place beneath pride, beneath training, beneath every careful mask I had ever built.
I screamed until the stone cracked. Or the dream did. The chamber shattered.
Amber light broke apart into darkness. Iron vanished from my wrists, but the memory of it stayed like heat after a burn. I came up fighting for air, my throat torn open by a sound that still seemed to be happening.
“Grace.”
Arms held me. Real arms. Not chains.
I thrashed once before my mind could catch up. A large hand moved over my back, slow and firm, not restraining so much as giving my body a boundary it could trust.
“Grace,” Maksym said again.
His voice was low. Even. Close enough that I felt it in his chest before I understood it with my ears.
I was not against stone. I was across his lap.
He sat on the edge of my bed with me cradled against him, one arm beneath my shoulders, the other hand moving up and down my back in steady strokes.
The room was dark, but I could see him. Not clearly at first. Tears blurred everything.
Fear made the shadows lunge. But his face was there above mine, harsh and pale and controlled with an effort I felt more than saw.
“You are no longer in danger,” he said. “You are in your room. In my palace. With me.”
My hands had fisted in his shirt. I did not remember grabbing him. I did not let go.
The fabric was fine cotton, cool under my fingers, stretched over a chest that did not rise and fall with human need. He breathed anyway. Slow. Deliberate. As if teaching my lungs what rhythm meant.
“I will keep you safe,” he said. “No one touches you here. No one enters without my permission. No one reaches you while I live.”
I turned my face into his chest. I did not decide to. My body did. For once, I let it. The scent of him filled my next breath.
Cedar first. Clean and dark. Then something colder beneath it, like stone after rain.
Clean skin. Old power. Blood, but not spilled blood.
Not Lucian’s copper rot. Maksym’s scent carried strength without perfume, violence without display, some ancient shadow held under discipline because he chose not to let it loose in my room.
My breathing hitched. His hand continued its path. Shoulder blades to waist. Waist to shoulder blades. Again. Again. Again.
He did not shush me. I appreciated that dimly. Shushing had always seemed designed for the comfort of the listener, not the person breaking.
“You are here,” he said. “You are safe. He is not.”
My mouth opened against his shirt, but no words formed. Safe was too large for me to believe. Here was easier. I was here. Not stone. Not chains. Not amber light. Here.
Maksym’s thumb moved in a slow arc near the base of my spine, careful through the thin cotton of my sleep shirt. Not invasive. Not claiming. Repetitive enough that my nerves began to count it instead of the remembered iron.
My sobs turned into ragged breaths. Ragged breaths into shaking inhales. Shaking inhales into something almost steady.
The darkness in the room remained absolute, but it no longer belonged to Lucian.
It belonged to drawn drapes, dying fire, and the vampire king holding me like I was not a burden, not an inconvenience, not evidence of failure.
Like I was a person who had been afraid and had the right to be held through it.
I hated that I needed it. I needed it anyway. Maksym’s lips brushed my hair once. So lightly I might have dreamed it.
“Rest,” he murmured. “I have you.”
Those words should have frightened me. Instead, they loosened the last hard knot of terror in my chest.
My hands stayed tangled in his shirt. My cheek stayed against him. His hand kept moving on my back, patient as tidewater. Stroke by stroke, breath by breath, the chamber receded. Lucian’s voice lost its edges. The chains fell silent.
This time, when sleep returned, it brought no dreams with it. Only darkness. Only Maksym. Only the slow, impossible safety of being held.
When I woke the second time, the room was black and I could see everything.
Not shapes. Not vague outlines. Everything.
The carved posts of the bed. The heavy drapes sealing away morning. The faint seam of the bathroom door. The last dead ember in the hearth, red as a thought that refused to go out. Dust motes hung in the air where no light should have revealed them, drifting with an arrogance I envied.
I became aware of Maksym by degrees. I was still in his lap.
He sat against the headboard now rather than on the edge of the bed, one long leg stretched along the mattress, the other bent slightly beneath me.
I had somehow curled sideways across him like a woman who had never once claimed to hate vulnerability on principle.
His arms rested loosely around me, not trapping, not even holding if I chose to leave.
One hand lay open against my back. The other rested near my hip, carefully still.
His amber eyes were already open. Watching me.
Not sleeping. Of course not. I had begun to suspect ancient vampires treated sleep as a suggestion made by weaker civilizations.
For one absurd moment, neither of us spoke. My cheek had been on his chest. My hand was still fisted in his shirt, though my grip had relaxed. The fabric was wrinkled beyond salvation. Millie would probably have opinions. Possibly legal opinions.
“Are you all right?” Maksym asked.
His voice was soft enough not to bruise the dark. I swallowed. My throat felt raw, though no wound remained there. Dreams apparently left fingerprints.
“I think so.”
His gaze moved over my face, careful and thorough. I could feel him cataloging signs of distress.
“I should apologize,” he said.
“No.”
He paused.
I lifted my head from his chest. “Absolutely not.”
His brows drew together slightly. “Grace—”
“No.” My voice was rough, but it had steel in it. Good. I liked finding steel in unexpected places. “You are not going to apologize for comforting me.”
His jaw tightened. “I entered your room without permission. I held you without asking. Your terror came through the bond so violently that I—”
“That you what?” I cut in. “Made a judgment call during an emergency? Congratulations, Your Majesty. That is allowed.”
His mouth closed.
I pushed myself upright enough to look at him directly, though upright placed me more obviously in his lap, which created its own jurisdictional complications.
I ignored them for the moment. “If I had woken up terrified, and you had stood politely three feet away while I came apart because you were worried about etiquette, I would have held that against you.”
Something shifted in his eyes.
“Would you?”
“Yes. I contain multitudes and several double standards. Keep up.”
He gave a small, controlled smile.
I pointed at him before he could ruin it with guilt. “I will not allow you to apologize for comforting me. I mean that.”
The breath left him slowly.
He did not need to exhale. Which meant he chose to. Which meant I felt the meaning of it before I understood why my own chest loosened in response.
The mate bond. Of course.
Relief moved through it like a fist uncurling beneath my ribs. Not mine. His. Or both. It was becoming harder to separate where his feeling ended and my body’s response to it began.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For yelling at you?”
“For your trust.”
I looked down at where my hand still rested against his shirt. My fingers had left creases in fine cotton. “Don’t make it sound prettier than it is.”
“I will try.”
“You will fail.”
“Likely.”
Silence settled again, but it no longer had nightmare teeth.
Maksym’s hand moved once against my back, not a stroke this time, more a question. I did not move away. His palm remained there, broad and cool through the sleep shirt.
“You need to feed before the day ahead,” he said.
I let my forehead drop briefly against his chest.
“There it is,” I muttered. “Vampire breakfast.”
“It is necessary.”
“I know.”
“And after what you endured while sleeping, your body will need more than the glass Millie left.”
I lifted my head. “You just want to see me cum.”
The words left my mouth with all the caution of a prosecutor throwing evidence into a ceiling fan.
I froze. Then clapped my fingers over my lips.
Maksym went very still beneath me.
Not offended. Not shocked. Still in the way predators became still when a door opened unexpectedly, and the thing on the other side was not prey but revelation.
My face heated so fast I resented my restored circulation.
“I did not mean to say that out loud.”
His eyes had darkened. A low sound moved in his chest. Not quite laughter. More dangerous. He did not deny it. That, somehow, made my skin tighten.
“There is nothing I have seen more beautiful,” he said, voice lowering, “than you losing yourself in pleasure.”
My fingers slid slowly from my mouth. His gaze held mine.
“You have endured enough pain for several lifetimes,” he continued.
“I cannot undo what was done. I cannot make you forget. Perhaps no one can. But I can give pleasure where pain was forced. I can give abundance where you were starved. I can give you a choice every time. And I intend to deliver as much pleasure as I am able, Grace.”