CHAPTER 14 THE QUEEN OF ASHES POV THAYER #2
"I told you," I reply, my voice a dark, velvet rasp that reaches out to physically caress her. "They will never kill me."
She reaches out. Her small, delicate fingers wrap around the cold steel railing of the hospital bed. Her knuckles turn white.
"I thought about letting you bleed out on that floor," she whispers, the absolute, unfiltered honesty of her words slicing through the sterile air like a scalpel.
My heart executes a heavy, violent thud against my ribs. I don't look away. I don't apologize. "But you didn't."
"No," she agrees, a single, hot tear finally breaching her defenses, slipping past her dark lashes to cut a path down her pale cheek. "I dragged your heavy, miserable body through the mud instead. And then I packed your wound while you choked me in your delirium."
"I would never hurt you, Sybil," I growl, the instinct to protect her from my own violence surging wildly in my blood.
"You already did," she counters, her voice dropping into a fierce, commanding whisper that completely commands the room. She leans closer over the bed railing. "You confessed, Thayer. In the cabin. You told me you knew my father was going to betray you. You let him do it."
"I did," I admit, the unapologetic, toxic truth hanging heavy between us.
"You burned my entire world to the ground," she chokes out, her chest heaving as the raw, unadulterated anger finally begins to break through her calm facade.
"I burned your cage to the ground," I correct her, my right hand shooting out.
I wrap my massive fingers entirely around the back of her neck, my grip firm, unyielding, dragging her down until our faces are mere inches apart.
The scent of the cheap medical soap on her skin is entirely overridden by the intoxicating, addictive scent of her sheer proximity.
"Your father's world was a prison, Sybil.
I just provided the match. I destroyed it so that you would have absolutely no choice but to reign in mine. "
"You're a psychopath," she breathes, her lips trembling, her eyes darting to my mouth.
"I am your husband," I murmur, my thumb brushing over the frantic, wildly beating pulse at the base of her throat. "And you pointed a loaded gun at my underboss to protect me. You claimed me, Sybil. Just as surely as I claimed you."
The cognitive dissonance in her brain completely shatters.
She doesn't pull away from my grip. She leans into it. Her hands release the steel railing of the bed and fly up, completely burying themselves in the thick, dark hair at the nape of my neck.
She crashes her mouth down onto mine.
It is an explosion. It is the violent, catastrophic culmination of six years of obsessive stalking, eighteen years of trauma, and forty-eight hours of pure, unadulterated hell.
Her kiss is desperate, punishing, and entirely consuming. She bites down on my lower lip, a sharp, stinging pain that I welcome with a dark, feral groan. She tastes like antiseptic, salt tears, and pure, intoxicating surrender.
I ignore the blinding, agonizing scream of my torn shoulder. I slide my right arm entirely around her waist, gripping the fabric of the medical scrub top, and haul her up onto the narrow hospital bed with me.
She gasps as her knees hit the mattress, straddling my hips. She is careful, entirely hyper-aware of my injuries, keeping her weight suspended above my wrapped chest, but the sheer friction of her thighs gripping my waist sends a catastrophic surge of dark, heavy blood straight to my groin.
I break the kiss just long enough to drag a ragged, desperate breath into my burning lungs.
"Sybil," I groan, my head falling back against the thin pillow, completely entirely at her mercy.
She doesn't stop. The tentative, terrified virgin is dead. The woman straddling my hips is completely feral, driven by the absolute necessity to prove that we are both still breathing.
She grips the hem of her scrub top, crosses her arms, and pulls the garment entirely over her head, tossing it onto the floor.
The harsh fluorescent lights of the medical suite illuminate her completely. She is wearing nothing underneath. The pale, flawless curve of her breasts, the delicate, sharp jut of her collarbones, the frantic, rapid rise and fall of her chest—she is a masterpiece of ruin and resurrection.
I stare at her, the sheer, paralyzing beauty of her completely robbing me of speech. My pale gray eyes dilate until they are entirely black.
"Touch me," she demands, her voice a breathless, completely shattered plea. She reaches down, grabbing my right hand and dragging it up her stomach, pressing my palm directly over her wildly beating heart. "Prove to me that you're alive, Thayer. Make me forget what you did."
"I will never let you forget," I growl, my fingers splaying wide, possessing her entirely.
I drag my rough, calloused palm up to cup her heavy breast, my thumb dragging aggressively over her tightening peak. She throws her head back, a sharp, melodic cry tearing from her throat that echoes loudly in the sterile room.
The sound completely severs the last remaining thread of my control.
I slide my hand down, tracing the subtle curve of her waist, slipping beneath the waistband of the loose medical scrub pants she is wearing. The moment my fingers brush the damp, slick heat between her legs, her entire body arches like a drawn bowstring.
She is completely soaked for me. So desperate, so entirely undone by the violence and the survival, that the mere touch of my hand is enough to make her completely shatter.
"Look at me," I command, my voice a demonic, vibrating hum.
She forces her heavy, languid eyes open, looking down at me through the tangled curtain of her dark hair.
"Tell me who you belong to," I demand, sliding two thick fingers deep inside her.
She gasps, her fingernails digging brutally into the uninjured muscles of my right shoulder. Her inner walls clamp down around my fingers, a tight, scalding velvet vice that almost makes my eyes roll back in my head.
"You," she sobs, her hips instinctively rocking against my hand, completely chasing the friction, entirely surrendering her autonomy. "I belong to you."
"Say it again," I order, my thumb finding the swollen, hyper-sensitive bundle of nerves at her center, applying a slow, agonizingly heavy pressure.
"I am yours!" she screams, the volume completely unrestrained, tears pouring down her face as the first violent wave of her climax hits her.
I don't let her come easily. I manipulate her, forcing her to ride the agonizing, blinding edge of the orgasm, maintaining the psychological dominance even while I am physically incapacitated beneath her.
I watch her face contort in pure, unadulterated pleasure, completely erasing the terror her father stamped into her soul.
When I finally stroke her into the abyss, her entire body completely locks up. She shatters, crying out my name, her inner muscles milking my fingers in violent, rhythmic spasms. She collapses forward, her damp forehead resting against my uninjured collarbone, completely gasping for air.
I wrap my right arm tightly around her trembling back, holding her flush against my side, burying my face in her hair.
My own body is screaming for release, the heavy, agonizing ache in my groin a physical torture, but I am entirely satisfied. The physical consummation can wait until I can pin her to a mattress and take her completely. The psychological consummation is absolute.
She is marked. She is claimed. She has accepted the darkness.
We lie in the quiet, sterile room for a long time, the only sound the steady, synced rhythm of our breathing. She doesn't move away. She stays curled against my side, her fingers lightly tracing the edges of the dark tattoos on my right arm.
Then, the heavy reinforced doors of the medical suite slide open with a sharp hiss.
Sybil gasps, scrambling to pull the discarded scrub top over her bare chest.
Dante steps into the room, his eyes immediately dropping firmly to the floor tiles, completely refusing to look at the rumpled bed or the half-dressed Donna scrambling to cover herself.
The atmosphere in the room instantly drops below freezing. Dante wouldn't interrupt us unless the world was ending again.
"Speak," I command, my voice dropping back into the cold, lethal frequency of the Don.
"Boss," Dante says, his voice completely tight, a muscle ticking violently in his jaw. "We just intercepted a secure transmission on the Commission's frequency."
"And?"
"Arthur Vance isn't in Europe," Dante reports, the words landing like heavy stones in the quiet room. "He never boarded the plane. He is here, in Chicago. He is hiding with the Commission's elite guard."
Sybil freezes completely against my side. The blood drains entirely from her face.
"And," Dante finishes, swallowing hard, "he just sent a formal request for a parley. He wants to meet."
"A parley?" I sneer, a dark, murderous laugh vibrating in my chest. "He ordered a hit on my wife. There is no parley. Tell our men to find his location and burn the building down with him inside."
"Thayer," Dante interrupts, lifting his head just enough to meet my eyes, a clear sign of absolute desperation.
"He says he has leverage. He says if we don't meet him at neutral ground by midnight.
.. he is going to release the heavily encrypted files regarding the true nature of your father's death to the federal authorities. "
My blood turns completely to ice.
Sybil looks up at me, her blue eyes wide, completely registering the catastrophic shift in the room's gravity.
Arthur Vance doesn't just have a target on his back. He has the one secret that could completely annihilate the Thorne Syndicate from existence.