Chapter 29 Bryony #2
His palm finds the dip of my waist, fingers splaying wide.
I have to remind myself to breathe as heat spreads under my skin.
That ache in my chest expands, treacherous and hungry, and in that moment, it’s far too easy to imagine I’m the woman in the painting—powerless against the pull of someone I shouldn’t want.
“They sound like idiots,” I breathe.
A low chuckle. “No doubt about that. Young, dumb, and reckless. They knew it’d end bloody.” His voice drops lower, rougher. “Didn’t stop them from meeting in dark corners to bite and snarl and fuck like the world was ending. Couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”
Like us, I almost say, but I bite back the words. Because there is no us.
“Every night, he’d go to her,” the Wolf says, his hand trailing maddening circles on my hip. “Always in the dark. No lamps, no names. I suppose it let them pretend, for a time, that they weren’t enemies. That it was okay to want each other.”
I shut my eyes, remembering the wind lashing my hair on the Duehavn. The unrelenting rain. His body against mine.
Kiss me like I’m not Bryony Devaliant.
Then who do you want to be?
“How did he touch her?” The question slips out before I can stop it.
He looses a ragged exhale. Then I shiver at the brush of his lips on the juncture between my neck and shoulder, more breath than touch.
“Softly, at first.” He continues sliding his palm over my hip, up and down, up and down, as his mouth wanders.
“Cautiously. He’d drag his knuckles over her cheek and let his breath play on her skin.
” A graze of his lips over my pulse, lingering.
“Like he couldn’t believe she was letting him near. That she wasn’t shoving him away.”
“And then?” I whisper.
“Then he stopped pretending he could be gentle.” His fingers squeeze me hard.
“Stopped acting like he didn’t want to wreck her.
Like he hadn’t been dreaming about getting his hands on her since the first day he saw her.
” One hand drifts lower, dragging my shift up, skimming his fingers over the skin of my inner thigh.
“She wanted him to be rough with her,” he says hoarsely.
“To be a little mean with it. To grab and take and claim until she was covered in his marks, until there was no mistaking who she belonged to.”
I’m panting now, my nails digging into my palms as I fight the urge to turn in his arms. Each filthy word threatens to pull me under and shatter all my defenses.
“He’d bite her here.” Teeth graze my pulse point.
“And here.” A nip at the curve of my shoulder.
“Anywhere he could get his mouth on her. So that even when she was alone, even when she was standing in her palace or kneeling at her Celestial ruler’s feet, she’d feel the sting and ache of him and remember. ”
I squeeze my eyes shut, sparks dancing behind my closed lids. An image rises unbidden—the Wolf pinning me down in his bed, one hand wrapping around my throat as he thrusts into me over and over and over again.
His whisper drags me to the present. “He had her every way he could—bent over her desk, pressed against the wall, spread out on the floor. He was addicted to her. Her taste. Her sounds. The way she’d sink her nails into his back when he fucked into her.”
“And he—” I swallow thickly. “He wanted that? The pain?”
“Oh, he lived for it.” He takes my hand, guiding it under my shift. “There’s truth in pain when you mix it with pleasure. In the way we hurt each other. The sounds we make when we stop pretending to be anything but what we are.”
The Wolf’s fingers twine with mine, shoving them into my undergarments. A broken moan spills from me as he pushes my fingers into my pussy, the angle perfect. He starts working in and out in shallow thrusts, his other arm looping around my waist to anchor me against him.
“Wolf…” I bite my lip, the pain a sharp counterpoint to the pleasure.
He groans softly. Shoves our fingers deeper, more insistently. I lean back into him, riding our hands, pressing the heel of his palm against my clit.
“They whispered confessions in the dark that they’d deny come dawn,” he rasps, his breathing harsh.
“Told lies that felt like truth and truths that cut like lies. I don’t need you.
I could walk away. You’re not under my skin.
And then came the truths, the things their bodies couldn’t deny.
More, and harder, and right there, fuck. ”
I love his voice. The low register like warm liquor, the way his lips shape the words against my skin.
Heat coils low in my belly with every ragged breath, every plunge, every filthy word he breathes into my skin.
I reach back to tangle my fingers in his hair, needing something to ground me.
He grips my hip in a silent encouragement to keep fucking myself. Keep chasing.
“He’d keep her on the edge for hours.” We’re both panting now, my bitten-off moans filling the space between us.
“Pleading so pretty, just how he liked it. In the dark, their hate burned just like need. And it felt so. Fucking. Good. To forget who they were supposed to be. To lose himself in that sweet”—his lips sear the curve of my nape—“tight”—his fingers push in deeper, faster—“pussy. He fucked her so good she felt it for days.”
Oh gods oh gods oh gods—
“Come on,” he growls. “Show me. Show me how good it feels when you stop fighting it. When you let yourself have what you want.”
The tension snaps. With a final thrust, I climax with a sharp cry.
He keeps working our fingers through the aftershocks, wringing out every bit of pleasure until I’m gasping.
Until I can’t feel anything beyond this moment—this surrender.
The heat of him against my back. My chest burning to get in air.
His touch gentles as I come down. Lips graze my shoulder, my neck, my jaw. A nuzzle of his cheek to mine. My heart slams as I sink into him.
For a long moment, there is only the rasp of our breathing. The drum of the rain against the windows, the wind through the trees.
Slowly, carefully, he withdraws from me and straightens my shift with gentle hands. “Every touch between them,” he whispers, stepping away, “was an act of betrayal.”
My chest caves. I squeeze my eyes shut against the sudden sting. “They died, didn’t they?” I ask, unable to turn and meet his gaze. Afraid of what I might see there. “In the end.”
“Of course they did.” Flat. Final. Like a blade between the ribs. “What else could happen?”
I swallow past the tightness in my throat. “Then why do it? Why risk everything?”
“Because sometimes the pain of having someone for a few hours is better than the agony of not having them at all.” He inhales, then lets out a breath, slow and ragged. “Desire doesn’t give a fuck about should or shouldn’t. We want what we want, even when we know it’ll destroy us.”
The words hang between us like a death sentence. Like prophecy.
Before he leaves, I force myself to ask the question I’ve been dreading: “Are you going to take that demigoddess up on her offer to get you through Aethertide?” When he stays silent, I add mockingly, “In the sky, against a wall, bent over any surface?”
There. Now he knows that I watched them in the garden. That I heard everything she said. Did you kiss her after I left? Did you make plans to meet her? Do you want her? Would you ever want me?
I hold my breath, waiting.
“I’ll be alone,” he says softly.
The soft click of the door is like thunder in the silence he leaves behind.