Chapter Thirteen
………………………….
Ily
I WOKE WITH A START.
I felt as if I’d lost something but couldn’t remember what.
Echoes of Krish.
Of Peter.
Henri.
God, Henri…
I groaned as sleepiness switched into pure fire. Fire in my blood, my heart, my core.
Every part of me hummed.
Fragments of my dream taunted me and the wetness between my thighs hinted it hadn’t been a platonic kind of fantasy. I felt empty after being full. Cold after being hugged. Lost and confused and lonely and—
Just a dream.
Kicking my legs beneath the suffocating blankets, I rolled onto my other side.
I hated that even the cotton acted like an aphrodisiac. I’d grown well acquainted with achy desperation since meeting Henri, but this was far, far worse.
This felt insidious…growing hotter and hotter—
Ignore it.
Burrowing onto my side, I winced at the slightest flares of discomfort. The softest twinges of pain as I did my best to ignore the heat in my lower belly and tingles in my breasts.
I made the mistake of opening my eyes.
I froze.
Him.
The smallest halo of white light bled over the sweet-smelling cream pages of a book. The nightlight, jammed into the thick story, gave just enough glow to read by—a tiny puddle in the dark.
In the shadows cast by the booklight, my gaze drifted over strong masculine hands holding the binding spread. Veins popped over bruised knuckles, tendons threaded under tanned skin. Both marvels of the human form worked their way up powerful forearms.
I stopped breathing as my eyes locked on his bare chest.
Chiselled with darkness and sculpted by the monster housed within, his pecs twitched as I studied him. The flinch dragged my eyes to his stubble-decorated jaw, over the hollows of his stern cheeks, and up, up, up to his burning, blazing grey eyes.
Even in the pitch darkness, even in this fortress of blackness, he was beautiful.
So wonderfully, horribly beautiful.
The fire in my blood broke into an inferno.
Not thinking. Not feeling. Merely existing in this present, fragile moment, I pushed upright and let the blankets fall away.
I’m burning…
His sharp inhale as his gaze fell to my bruise-colourful breasts made my entire body shiver. He froze where he sat upright, supported by folded pillows, his chin tipped down and face cold.
The room switched from calm rest to savage awareness as we stared at each other.
Goosebumps coated me as he sucked in his bottom lip and bit down.
I couldn’t stop looking at him.
How gorgeous he was holding a book. Reading. How stunning he was strangling a book that wasn’t just a prop but a lifeline.
He’d been reading a while, judging by how many pages existed beneath his thumb.
He held the tale as if it would save him from himself and cursed me for dragging him out of it. This was his meditation. Words were his salvation, and I felt absolutely humbled to know it.
To know him.
I swayed closer.
He stiffened.
A plate covered in crumbs on the bedside table hinted he’d eaten something while I’d been asleep. A sandwich waited on another plate…for me?
How long had I been asleep?
Did it matter?
All that mattered was this.
This man.
This tortured, terrible man who liked to read.
An avenger who’d defended me. A monster who’d mauled me. A ghost, a nightmare, a lonely boy…
I shivered again, flames licking all over my body.
I’d always been drawn to intelligence. Always loved to debate books on history, gemmology, and faith. My parents had given me an entire library on my sixteenth birthday. Titles full of the truths about living and dying and finding a balanced middle way.
The trick to existing was accepting that every facet of life and death was impermanent.
I’d forgotten that in my fight to survive here.
The only law in this world was the law of change. Nothing was permanent. Everything began, endured, and ended.
Eventually, this stolen silent moment of sharing a bed with this terribly gorgeous bookworm would end, and…I mourned it.
I grieved every other moment I’d lived and cursed, valued and unappreciated.
The memory of the caves still haunted me.
The nightmare of dragging Peter still ached in my limbs.
It’d been one of the worst days of my life.
Yet…it was over.
It no longer existed.
But he existed.
I existed.
And we would never have this moment again.
I trembled as I reached out and plucked the book from his frozen fingers.
I didn’t bother looking at the title.
I merely closed it reverently, turned off the booklight, and placed both on my abandoned pillow.
“W-What are you doing?” He croaked in the darkness.
I could barely make out his face. The glow of his uncertain eyes.
The flashing red dots of cameras watched us.
Could they record in pitch blackness?
I hoped not.
Because what I was about to do probably hadn’t been done by any other jewel in the two decades this place had existed.
“Seeing you reading?” My voice came out sultry, husky. Coals simmered in my heart. Embers kindled in my blood. Flames grew hotter, greedier.
Pulling the blanket off his thighs, the faint gleam of his skin appeared. His stomach flexed as I uncovered him. The dark patch of trimmed hair between his legs. And the rapidly swelling erection crawling up his belly. “It’s one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen.”
He coughed and reached for the blankets.
I ripped them to his knees, leaving him as bare as me.
A growl rumbled in his chest. “Nightmare, stop it.”
I shuddered at his nickname for me.
I smirked as I remembered mine for him.
“I need you, Hen.”
“Don’t.” He shook his head. “Don’t call me that.”
With a pounding heart and racing desire, I crawled over him and sat on his lap.
He jerked and looked at the ceiling. “For the love of God, get off me.”
“Nope.” Nuzzling his throat, I sucked in his scent.
He smelled off.
Antiseptic with the faintest whiff of stone.
The white slash of a bandage on his arm hinted he’d returned to the doctor. Had he also patrolled the stronghold on his own? I sniffed again, dragging in the softer smells of soap and the wilder notes of sea and stars.
“Nightmare—”
“It’s Ily.” I giggled, the soft, giddy feeling of before tangled with the debilitating arousal pumping through my blood. “You know that. You know what it means. I love you—”
“Don’t,” he hissed.
“Don’t what? Say I love you?”
He groaned.
I grew drunk on his torment.
I revelled in my power.
“You’ve told me ‘I love you’, oh, I don’t know…two hundred times since you met me. Each of those three little letters. I.L—”
“Enough.” He tried to toss me off, but his touch was too careful, too kind.
My body warned that just because I couldn’t feel my bruises, they were still there…hurting.
I don’t care.
I gripped him with my thighs and pressed us tighter together.
Cock to core.
Heart to heart.
His answering growl made my hunger become starvation.
I needed him.
I needed to rock and thrust and come and detonate.
Whatever this drug was, I liked it.
I’d been afraid before.
Fearful of yearning and wanting and need.
But now…I gave myself over to it.
I quivered and craved and rocked my hips, pressing myself deeper onto Henri’s hardness.
“Fuck.” His hands clamped on the top of my thighs, stilling me. “Stop it.”
“No.”
“You’re hurt.”
“I don’t feel it.”
“I’m not doing this. Not while you’re injured—”
“You’re injured too.” I nipped at his sharp cheekbone.
He drew his head back.
He fell into silent darkness—tumbling into a place I couldn’t follow.
No…
Come back.
“Kiss me.” Pressing my hands against his slightly clammy cheeks, I pulled him close.
I wanted a repeat of that kiss back in our room.
I wanted to see him shatter as badly as he had the moment our tongues touched.
“No—”
“Yes.” I pressed my lips to his.
He froze.
His hands spasmed on my thighs as if I’d deleted all his keen intelligence and replaced it with staticky-white noise.
“Kiss me, Hen,” I breathed against his mouth, licking his plump, slightly too-hot lower lip.
I wanted him to snap.
I needed him to take control.
But a guttural groan rose from the depths of him, and with an almost pitiful whimper, he pushed me away.
He didn’t speak, but I felt him.
Felt his need.
Felt so drawn to him, bound to him, stitched to him.
After living in fear for so long, this stolen moment felt infinitely precious and wonderful.
Falling on him again, I kissed my way along his jaw. I gave him truth and vulnerability because in that moment, both were needed. Both were lifelines to keep him present. “I need you inside me. I need you.”
“Jesus Christ.” He let loose a string of filthy French. “The doctor will castrate me if she finds out I touched you while you’re like this.”
“I told you, I’m not in any pain.”
He groaned, but it came out more like a sob. “Fuck, I am.”
“Where? This pain?” I smeared my wetness over his cock, making both of us shudder and shiver.
He lost his ability to speak.
My blood turned to light as every molecule hummed for more.
The tease of a release poured yet more fuel on my fire.
I stopped fighting it.
Stopped fighting feelings and needs and knowings.
My hand dropped below and found him in the darkness.
“Ah fuck.” He grunted as I fisted him hard. “Stop—”
“No.” I grasped his length and squeezed.
He exhaled in a rush. “Don’t—ughhh.”
That noise.
That groan and growl and grunt.
It made my very spirit quiver as I stroked him, up and down, sharing my fire, making him burn with me.
Another groan fell from him, slashing at his self-control.
The timbre of his growl; the echoing, earthquaking tone. It vibrated through me, rearranging my pieces and sending me higher than the sun.
I squeezed the base of him, teasing us both as I rode his length, coating him in my desire.
His head tipped back. His lips pulled away as he snarled at the ceiling.
“I’m on fire, Hen.” I stroked his erection with tight little twists.
He snarled. Loudly. “Stop saying that—merde.”
I pressed my thumb into his crown.
He jerked and hissed, his voice nothing but black. “And you’re on fire because you probably have a fever.” He grabbed my shoulders, his thumbs finding sore bruises. “Get off me. I’m not doing this tonight. You don’t want me. You’re high and—”
“No, I do want you. I’ve never wanted anyone more.”
His fingers squeezed, hurting me.
I sucked in a breath, hating that pain threaded with pleasure.
That pain only added to my pleasure.
That pain and pleasure somehow became a delightful, dirty thrill.
Memories of him calling me that nasty little M word clotted my mind.
Masochist.
After today, I didn’t think that was right.
I’d hated every moment. I’d panicked the moment Kyle started cutting me. I’d almost passed out from the agony as he shot me with those horrible paintballs.
I didn’t like pain.
In fact, I could safely say I loathed it and had had enough to last me a lifetime.
But…I liked him.
Oh God…
Memories from earlier tonight flooded me.
The way the drug made me swell with fondness and burn with friendship.
I didn’t just like him.
I love—
Whoa!
I couldn’t. Not possible. I could accept I lusted for him. I could tolerate appreciating him when he defended me, but love?
Nuh-uh. No way.
How could I love the man responsible for this tragedy?
I couldn’t.
Ever.
But…you can like him.
I paused, sinking back into need.
Yes, it was tolerable to like him.
I liked his particular brand of pain. Delivered with feelings and fears—his feelings and fears. I liked that each time he touched me, he left little souvenirs of his lust, bruises of his desire, and scars of his affection.
A tidal wave of want flowed far too swift and savage.
I trembled on his lap.
My skin burned with the need to be marked, gripped, squeezed, and autographed. Facets of myself unlocked in the dark, unfurling and embracing without scorn or worries.
Who cared about right and wrong, love or hate?
Right now, I wanted him.
I wanted him to deliver bliss as well as brutality.
I wanted him to kiss me, then bite me, caress me, then fuck me.
No, I wasn’t a masochist.
I was a Mercerchist…or a Wardchist… whichever surname he now went by.
I laughed under my breath.
I’m a Mercerchist.
It could be a new catch-phrase.
I could put it on a t-shirt.
He could tear that t-shirt off with his teeth—
Oh God.
Rolling my shoulders, I sat heavier on his straining erection. “It’s not a fever.” My vision became hazy, my eyelashes heavy. “I’m on fire.”
“You need antibiotics.”
“My blood is burning, Hen.”
“Stop that—”
“No, you stop it.” I moaned and fell onto him, burrowing my face into his strong neck.
With another bed-shaking growl, his hands slipped off my shoulders and landed on my hips. He went to shove me off—
“I had a dream,” I blurted.
He broke out in goosebumps as I kissed his hot skin.
“I had a dream you were inside me.”
His cock lurched in my hands. Words strangled from his self-imposed silence. “I-I’m not going to fuck you.”
“Why?” I nipped his jaw.
He choked. “I’ve already told you. You’re hurt.”
“That never stopped you before.”
He stiffened into stone.
He shut down.
Every connection between us sucked into a black void, and…I took matters into my own hands…literally.
Rising on my knees, I grabbed his erection and angled him up. Without second-guessing, I positioned myself over his crown and sank down.
“Putain!” (Fuck!) Henri snarled as I sheathed him completely.
I cried out as his long, thick length penetrated me in one slick glide.
The thick invasion of him felt so threatening, so comforting, so familiar.
Glimpses of my dream reappeared.
Henri thrusting into me in a meadow full of bluebells. Kissing me in a thicket of purple pansies. Fucking me in a field of red, red roses.
Every glade was the colour of a bruise. Every flower stained with pain.
We might’ve been surrounded by crushed and wounded things, but each pump inside me was pure pleasure, pure happiness, pure bliss.
My thighs stuck to his as I sank down the final inch.
My core pinched a little, not quite ready—despite my erotic dream—to fully welcome such an invasion.
Faint echoes of what my body had endured hinted maybe Henri was right, and I shouldn’t do this. The needling in my ribs was back. My bruises growing hot. But then his cock twitched inside me, and…I stopped thinking.
Folding onto his chest, I found his mouth blindly in the dark.
And I kissed him.
Rode him.
He snapped.
I moaned as he surged upward. Seated himself deep, deep, deep.
Pain transformed into fire.
I became that fire.
He was fire.
We transformed into twin flames as he pierced my body and claimed me.
Twin flames.
Twin flames…
Those two words pushed over a domino of memories—
“He’s a mystic as well as a Vedic astrologer, Khushi. Be prepared for him to scare you as well as enlighten you.”
My heart fluttered as my darling brother called me by my nickname.
Khushi …it meant happiness. He’d named me Ily thanks to a mistake when he was six years old. My mother and father had extended that name by googling what Ily could be short for and had chosen a pretty Arabic one for sunshine, which matched my eyes. I loved my name, but I loved it more when he called me Khushi.
“I’ll be fine.” I wanted to hug him, but that would be too much. He’d come into society despite all its noisy smells, sounds, and people. He’d come to support me. He’d come because today, I’d find out my destiny thanks to the stars.
“Ilyana Sharma?” An old Indian woman with white hair and a hundred beautiful bangles on her wrists beckoned us from her desk. “He’s ready for you now.”
Krish sucked in a breath, fortifying himself to step into a room with a stranger.
I knew better than to offer comfort or touch him. Instead, I let him sink into his way of coping.
Opening the door to a small office with heavy scents of sage and bright yellow calendula flowers hanging in a drying bunch by the window, my eyes fell onto an elderly Indian man sitting primly at a desk scattered with astrological charts, notebooks, and Post-its.
The moment our gazes met, he shot to his feet and frowned.
Krish stiffened. I went to ask if he was okay, but my fear for my brother’s wellbeing was utterly overshadowed as the Vedic astrologer, who was said to converse with celestial energies and far off planets, planted his weathered hands on his desk and said, “You are blessed with soulmates, child. In fact, you have one standing beside you. He found you in this life and recognised you as kin.”
My heart warmed.
I’d heard this tale before. My mother often told Krish and me that we all had multiple soulmates. A clan of them. An astral tribe that could manifest as our siblings, parents, and friends throughout our lifetime.
I smiled but then that smile fell away as the astrologer sat back down and studied my star charts that couldn’t be completely accurate, seeing as I couldn’t provide him with my exact date or time of birth.
Scowling, he said, “You are blessed, but it seems as if you requested to endure adversity. Your karma is worthy of an abundant life, but you will soon have a choice to make.”
I glanced at Krish as we each took a seat on the opposite side of the mystic.
“A choice?”
The astrologer grabbed my hand over my planetary charts and uttered a warning that haunted my dreams for weeks afterward.
“One day, you will meet your twin flame. This is different to a soulmate as soulmates are individual spirits drawn together by past lives and love. A twin flame is two souls from one source. One spirit split into two bodies. When you meet them, you will know. You will recognise them just as surely as they will recognise you. You are the same. You are one. But karmically, you are destined to destroy each other. The moment you meet, your choice is already made. This match will not last. The intensity will destroy both of you. If you accept this union, you will both burn—”
My eyes flew open as Henri bit my throat and thrust harder, yanking me back from the past.
Burn.
God, yes.
Everything was burning.
Every nerve ending, every heartbeat.
But I burned the hottest where we were joined.
Letting my hair go, Henri tipped forward and sought my mouth again.
The moment our lips touched, I forgot about wizened old mystics and detonated with brighter flames.
He cindered me to ash as his tongue dived into my mouth.
Our lips parted wide, colliding with force and violence.
Just like our other kiss, this one transcended the act of sex and made it something more.
It felt as if we merged, melded, fused, and blended.
Tingles spread from my heart and into every cell.
My clit throbbed. My insides clenched around him.
His large hands swooped up my body and cupped my cheeks, cradling me so tenderly, so ruthlessly, all while his mouth plundered mine and his body stabbed deliciously deep.
He thrust hard.
Viciously hard.
He fucked me from below all while I rode him from above.
We turned wild.
Grunting and panting, we struggled to get a proper breath, breathing each other in, sucking each other down, all while the pain in my side hinted medically this wasn’t advised.
Screw commonsense.
If I had any brain cells, I would’ve run from this man back at the bar in Paris.
If I’d listened to the Vedic astrologer, I might never have stumbled into Henri’s orbit.
He sucked my bottom lip into his mouth as I threw my arms around his neck and pressed my chest to his.
“You are the same. You are one. You are destined to destroy each other.”
Pinpricks of bruised agony blazed down my front.
A whimper of discomfort even as bliss coiled and spindled in my lower belly.
I couldn’t see him.
The lack of sight only made our kiss that much richer, that much deeper, that much more terrifying.
Our tongues spoke for us, silently feeding each other our truths.
Our lips made promises, weaving our faults into one.
“This match will not last. The intensity will destroy both of you. You will both burn.”
His every thrust forced me to gyrate and arch over him, riding him harder, faster, rushing toward the finish line that blazed like a comet in the dark.
“You will both burn.”
Too late.
Too late.
I was alight.
Burning.
“You are destined to destroy each other.”
With a moan, I broke our kiss and sat upright.
Henri didn’t let me get far.
Chasing me, catching me, he wrapped his vicious arms around me and did something I never expected.
He hugged me.
Violently, wickedly.
He crushed me with pain and possession and pleasure.
Binding me to him, he found my lips again, and when he kissed me…the world ended.
He licked me. Fucked me. Suffocated me.
He squeezed me to him as if intent on breaking all my ribs with his depraved embrace.
His arms screamed danger. His thrusts delivered bliss. His kiss utterly destroyed me.
I trembled as he invaded my body with dominance and delirium.
And…something happened.
My mind went achingly quiet. All premonitions and warnings blanked out.
Nothing else mattered but us.
Together.
As one.
That strange kind of meditative quality from our last kiss cloaked my mind all over again. Like falling stars. Like breaking dawn. Like the best kind of sleep and dream and fantasy.
I descended into it.
I relaxed as everything became gossamer and gauzy while somehow becoming intensely carnal. Exquisite eroticism feathered out from where we were joined, seeping into my veins, and flowing through my bloodstream like pure light.
Each thrust echoed with miniature earthquakes in my bones.
Aftershocks rippled again and again in my heart.
The longer he plunged inside me, the deeper the sensations became.
I lost track of where I ended, and he started. Our breathing synced, panting and wild directly into each other’s lungs.
In a rush of tingling, shimmering pleasure, my physical form dropped away, and I swore our souls weaved together.
I felt him.
All of him.
The dark spots of his childhood. The black shadows of his present. Our energies coiled and knotted, binding us together as our pace increased and his hug tightened, and I spiralled up and up and touched that blinding supernova where all rapture manifested.
I cried out as he took me so hard, so completely.
I sucked on his bottom lip as I begged him to come.
But…as wonderous and as euphoric as this moment was…I couldn’t trip over that final edge. A barrier prevented me. The final hurdle before flying free.
“Come,” he growled. “I can’t last much longer.”
God, yes please.
I wanted to.
So, so badly.
“I-I can’t…”
Was it the pain my body suffered? The drugs in my system? The strange tantric magic I’d somehow stumbled into for the second time?
All three of those things ought to push me screaming into heaven.
Yet…
Not enough.
Not enough!
I impaled myself on him.
He grunted as he thickened inside me.
“More,” I moaned. “I need more.”
“Don’t tell me that.” He kissed me like a feral beast, teeth clacking, tongues knotting. “You should stop me. Fight me off…don’t fucking encourage me.”
He yanked me harder against his chest and sank his teeth into the side of my neck.
Sharp. Monstrous.
I almost came.
Almost.
He licked away the sting, stopping me from soaring into the stars.
I wanted his teeth. Needed those pinpricks of pain.
“Again. Bite me again.”
“What?” His pace stuttered.
“Hurt me.”
His eyes flashed in the darkness, full of silver fury. “No.”
Temper made me sharp. “You made me this way, and now you’re denying me?”
He couldn’t reply.
“Do it.” Leaning forward, I pressed my throat to his mouth. “Bite me. Mark me.”
He moaned as if I’d torn out yet another vital piece of him.
The hot puff of his breath. The promise of his teeth.
“Please…” I arched again, offering myself up, begging him to take the bait.
His heart pounded against mine. A drumbeat full of tribal war.
“You’ve killed me twice tonight,” he breathed just before he pounced.
“You are destined to destroy each other.”
I gasped as his teeth sank into my throat.
The pressure of his bite.
The puncture of his incisors.
I screamed.
Not in pain.
But in ecstasy.
His hips pistoned up, bouncing me on his lap as he hugged me and fucked me, bit me and loved me.
I tumbled into that blinding light.
My body detonated with a million blazing shards. Rippling with ecstatic waves, I became one with life and loss and love.
Henri roared beneath me.
His orgasm spurted in thick, body-wracking jerks.
I lost track of time as we transcended that bed, that room, that fortress, and for a few microseconds of freedom, we weren’t blood and bone but air and energy instead.
And then, it was over.
And the crash back to earth hurt worse than anything.
Every injury from today welcomed me back. Every awful bump and bruise.
“This match will not last.”
Wincing, I sank into Henri’s tight embrace.
I didn’t care he almost suffocated me.
I didn’t care I was trapped on his lap and his body still speared inside mine.
It was just us.
Clinging to each other in the dark.
“You will both burn.”
I’d been injected with a contraception, collared, cuffed, and imprisoned. I’d been hunted, shot, abused, and tormented, and somewhere along the way, I’d become a different creature.
I still didn’t know who that creature was.
I didn’t know how I felt about needing a dash of pain to erupt my pleasure.
But what I did know was…I’d been warned about this.
Adversity had found me, and if I believed in fate and star-crossed destiny, then Henri wasn’t just a man who’d targeted me and made my life a living hell…he’d been drawn to me.
Just like I’d been drawn to him.
Because we were the same.
We were one.
And this was fate in all its agonising glory.
Maybe I’d feel different in the morning.
Perhaps I’d laugh at myself for entertaining such crazy things like twin flames but…as his body twitched in mine, and he sucked in a haggard inhale, another bubble of hope expanded.
If our density was to destroy each other, what if I made a different choice? A choice to save him instead?
Maybe that was what the Vedic astrologer had meant.
That ending up with him wasn’t a choice, but how I reacted to him was?
What if I stepped into his nightmares and maybe, just maybe…figured out how to drag him back into the light?
Ever so slowly, I shifted off my knees, disengaged, then sat back on his lap and wrapped my legs around him. My feet burrowed beneath his stacked pillows, and I hugged him.
I clung to him like a koala all while fresh pain waked through me.
He fell on me, wrapping me in the biggest bear hug of my life.
The way he held too tight.
The way his biceps bunched, and his face burrowed into my hair.
It hinted this might be his first true embrace.
A full body enveloping.
And if that was true, I was sad as well as grateful.
I grew drowsy.
A drugged kind of sluggishness that made my tongue far too free.
Keeping my wits just enough to be wary of the cameras, I pressed my lips to his ear. “If the man who told me to play along with him is still in there, then…play with me, Hen.”
His thighs stiffened to rock beneath me.
He sucked in a shallow breath.
I closed my eyes and poured my plea into his soul, all in order to save mine. “Play along with me, okay? You’re still in there. I know you are. You’re still good. We don’t have to destroy each other.” I kissed his ear as my eyes prickled with tears. “Get us out, Hen. Please...”
Sudden light-headedness tangled my tongue.
A rush of panic for asking such things.
And then nothing but deep, dreamless sleep.