Chapter Twenty-Six Irrevocable
Chapter Twenty-Six
Irrevocable
The instant our lips touch, his entire body tenses, and a low noise of surprise reverberates in his throat. I feel it all the way to my toes. I feel him . Pulling him closer, I practically climb up his chest in an effort to better reach his lips, to wind my hands beneath his arms and wrap myself around him. The rational part of my mind screams at me to stop, stop, stop —to release him now and back away slowly, to pretend this never happened—but for once in my life, I do not want to be rational. I do not want to stop. Just this once, I want to forget about undead creatures and esoteric bonds, and I want to kiss Michal as the entire world falls apart.
In the next second, however, his hands clamp around my wrists again, and he pulls back with painstaking restraint. “Célie, we can’t—”
“Why can’t we?” My voice is a whisper against his lips.
He groans in response. “Because if I kiss you now, I’ll want to kiss you again, and again, and again, and it cannot go beyond that.” His hands still slide from my wrists to my elbows, however, and up farther still. My shoulders. My neck. He lingers upon each as if trying to learn the feel of them, to commit each curve of my body to memory. At last, he cups my jaw and tilts my face, so I must look directly into his black eyes. They burn with indecision, with reluctance, with self-loathing and longing so stark that it takes my breath away.
I stretch upward on my toes, pressing another kiss to his lips—this one just a brush of my own. A shudder runs through his body at the contact. His hands slip into the hair at my nape. “Consider this my favor,” I whisper. “Unless you don’t want to kiss me?”
The indecision in his eyes sharpens instantly, and his fingers tighten, tipping my head back farther. Baring my throat to his predatory gaze. “I want to do more than kiss you.”
“No biting,” I warn him.
He nods and releases my hair with one hand. Sweeping a thumb across my cheek, he presses down slightly in the hollow and watches, transfixed, as my soft flesh yields to his touch. “Tell me what you want, Célie, and I’ll do it.”
“I want you to touch me. I’ve wanted you to touch me since Les Abysses, before even, but I’ve never known how to ask.” The reckless words tumble from my lips without hesitation, but even I can no longer pretend they aren’t true. Pressure burns behind my eyes. Because they’ve always been true—even when I thought Michal to be ruthless and cruel, I wanted him to touch me. Even when he abducted me, imprisoned me, threatened me with the people I love. It all should’ve mattered somehow, but it never did.
And God , I want him to touch me.
“You’re sure?” he asks darkly.
My entire body tightens in preparation. Swallowing hard, I nod, and then—with a spark of daring—I tentatively wrap my lips around his thumb, pulling it into my mouth. He doesn’t recoil this time, not like he did in Les Abysses. Instead he watches my lips upon him for several seconds, his expression hungry, before shaking his head and clicking his tongue in reprimand. “Who would’ve known that sharp tongue of yours could be so soft?” Withdrawing his thumb slowly, he drags the moisture across my bottom lip. Now it’s my turn to shudder. Which I do. Violently. “But those aren’t the rules of our game. You defined them quite clearly—you want me to touch you , not the other way around.”
My brows dip in confusion. Because I want to touch him too. I want to touch him very badly. “But what do you—”
“Put your hands on the tree.”
A thrill of shock—of unexpected pleasure—streaks through me at the pure authority in his voice, and gooseflesh erupts down my spine. Still, I’ve never done this before; I don’t know how to move, how to respond to such a command, and though I refuse to acknowledge the creeping flush of my own insecurity, Michal still sees it. His voice gentles as he catches my hands, guiding them to the branch overhead. “Right here,” he says. “Don’t let go.”
“And if I do?”
A sharp grin at the challenge. “I’ll find another way to restrain you.”
It takes every inch of my control not to release the branch after that . When I don’t, however, Michal makes an almost feral sound of approval—and then he strikes.
Even with our shared abilities, he moves faster than I can react; between one blink and the next, he catches the back of my knee, hitching my leg around his hip, and pushes me into the trunk of the tree. I gasp at the harsh scrape of bark on my back, at the feel of his heavy body pressed into mine. Enveloping mine. Because Michal—he is everywhere , all hands and teeth and hard muscle, and when he kisses me, I realize he hasn’t truly done so until this moment. In each of our brief interactions, he held me like glass, like something precious and fragile and irrevocably breakable, like something he could not bear to lose.
Now he has no such reservations. No such restraint. Now he kisses me like a man starved; he crushes his lips against mine, and when I gasp—overwhelmed by the intensity of it—he devours the sound as if determined to claim every part of me. And perhaps it should frighten me. Perhaps it does frighten me, but my thoughts have caught fire, disintegrated, and I can’t stop hearing the words he spoke, seeing the slight tremble in his hand. No one would be disappointed, Célie.
If my heart could still beat, it would be palpitating. As it cannot, my stomach contracts instead—and someplace lower, hotter, a place I’ve always tried to ignore. It won’t be ignored any longer, however. Not when I shudder in Michal’s arms and he breaks away, dragging his mouth down my chin, my throat, my shoulder. Tasting me , I realize. Every inch of my skin. And I ache to touch him too.
Releasing the tree, I claw at his chest, but he nips my collarbone in warning. “Your hands, Célie,” he murmurs against my skin, his free hand slipping to my leg around his waist. He catches the hem of my gown and inches it up my shin, over my knee, until the satin bunches above our waists. I nearly choke when he steps closer, fitting himself more snugly between my thighs. I still try, however—I try to lift my hands, to find purchase against the branch overhead.
Then he flexes his hips against me, and I nearly expire on the spot. Unable to help it, I reach for him again, half-crazed with this blistering want . “Michal—”
He chuckles and replaces my hands. “Perhaps I shall win next time, so you can touch me.”
Next time. If possible, the flames in my body lick higher—because yes, there will be a next time, and my hips have started to roll against him now, seeking more of that delicious friction as my fingers bite into the wood. He trails his knuckles down my arms in response, not stopping until he reaches my ribs. Once there, he spreads his hands wide, watching hungrily as his fingers span below my breasts. He traces the underside of one with his thumb. “Do you remember,” he asks softly, “the morning we met? You were wearing a nightgown, and it was raining.”
“I remember,” I gasp.
“ Do you?”
Fresh heat suffuses my skin at his tone. It deepens the flush creeping up my chest. Abruptly, Michal bends to lave it with his tongue, and a low moan escapes me as he drags his teeth across the soft swell of my upper breasts. My grip on the branch slips. “You—you refused to help me—”
“I didn’t want to help you.”
“ Why? ” The branch begins to splinter, snow drifting between us, as he slowly unravels the front of my bodice—a corset built into the dress with violet ribbons. I forwent a regular corset because of it. Only a silk chemise protects my skin from the fabric, and as the gown falls open, Michal drags it aside, baring my chest to his gaze. His pupils dilate at the sight. His lips part on a rough inhale.
“Because,” he says tightly, “even then, moje sunce, I knew that I could never know you—that I could never earn such a privilege. That I could never deserve it.”
“But—you do know me.” The words are breathless, spoken hastily. “You know me, Michal. Better than anyone.” The confession stretches between us like the tree sap at my back: sticky and difficult to remove.
When he takes my breasts in his hands—when he puts his mouth upon them—the sensation sends a bolt of heat straight to my core. With another gasp, I roll my hips, but my movements are growing wilder now, clumsier. In a mindless haze, I release the branch to grip his shoulders, to gain purchase against him, to relieve this sharply building ache inside me. His lips still against my breast. I feel them curve into a wicked grin.
Too late, I realize my mistake, but I cannot bring myself to care. My head tips back against the tree as I work myself against him. When I speak again, my voice quakes, and God , I need him to—to— “Michal, please . Touch me. I need you to touch me—”
“You broke the rules to our game.”
“ Damn the game—”
With a rumble of laughter and a quick, efficient tug, he rips the sleeve from my gown, and I realize what he plans to do the second before he does it. My eyes widen in shock. “You wouldn’t dare .”
He pauses in winding the violet satin around both my wrists. “Shall I stop?”
The answer spills from me without hesitation. Without remorse.
“No,” I whisper.
Never in my life have I felt more exposed than I do now, with Michal Vasiliev tying my wrists to the tree branch overhead. Never in my life have I felt more alive . Every inch of my skin burns with fire as he ties the satin into a neat bow, as he catches my chin and kisses me again. A feverish, filthy kiss that belies his tender touch. “Keep your hands still,” he warns again, and his grin widens when my other leg clamps around his waist instead.
I wrench him closer, desperate to feel him again, and I revel in the sensation of his body moving with mine. If this is what sex feels like, I fear I’ll never want to stop—until that ache, sharp and needy, quickly spirals higher. Almost too sharp now. Almost too needy. Though I thrash against him, I don’t know what to do to ease it. I don’t know what to do .
As if sensing my mounting panic, Michal snakes a hand between my thighs, and I nearly leap into the branches at the feel of him there. “Easy,” he murmurs at my ear, and instantly, I relax into him once more. Gooseflesh erupts down my spine at the sweep of those strong, dexterous fingers. When I moan, he shudders and presses harder, drawing back to watch me with a hungry expression. “Do that again.”
It isn’t difficult to oblige. He works his fingers faster at the sound, slipping one inside me— two —and I think I might fly apart at the seams if he keeps touching me like this. Though the pressure builds higher and higher, relief lingers just out of reach; I nearly sob in frustration, my fingers curling around the silk restraints. “Michal, I can’t . I—I don’t know how to—”
“Everything you’ve done is perfect,” he says, his voice strained.
At the last, he presses down on the most sensitive part of me, and my entire body shatters. A cry tears from my throat, and Michal’s free arm wraps around me as my legs stiffen, as my hands tear through the violet silk like gossamer to clutch his face. Distantly, I realize I’m saying his name—that I’m saying it over and over again, that his eyes have closed at the sound of it, that he rests his forehead against mine as if he’d like to hear it for the rest of his life.
We stand there, clutching each other, for several long moments after my knees collapse. Neither of us speaking.
Le Lien éternel, he called it. The Eternal Bond.
His voice seems to swirl around us now, equal parts comforting and confusing. The longer two vampires feed from each other, the stronger the bond grows, until it becomes irrevocable.
Irrevocable.
His arms tighten around me, and I return the pressure, burying my face in his shoulder and inhaling deeply. Because the truth is Michal Vasiliev hasn’t fed from me again, yet this emotion unfurling in my chest...
It feels irrevocable to me.