CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO #2
I shot into his arms, burying my face in his chest. Drowned in the scent of pine that seemed to follow him everywhere.
He held me so tightly that it bordered on painful, but I held onto him with just as much strength, if not more so.
It was like he knew just how fractured I was, just by looking at me, and knew that if he let me go, I would fall apart completely.
It was always meant to be you.
A few minutes. I would allow myself a few minutes to let the pot of my emotions to boil over. And then I would seal the lid back on tightly.
Reassuring fingers wove into my hair, infusing warmth into my scalp. “I have you,” he murmured. “I’m here.”
But the tears wouldn’t cease, soaking the shirt under Kodhan’s vest.
I pulled back, grabbing his lapel with both fists. “I need to make it stop.”
With a shake of his head, he pressed a soft kiss to my cheek, catching the next rivulet. “Dismissing your emotions will only bring more pain. It’s okay to feel,” he said. “You need to feel.”
He didn’t know that I couldn’t possibly feel any more pain. That I was made of it, my very essence replaced with hurt. And I was so tired of hurting.
“You’re right,” I answered. “I want to feel.” Something else. Anything but this. He made to pull back, but my hold on his lapel kept him close. “Will you help me?”
His fingers dug into my waist. “Eloise…”
I rose up on my toes. Skimmed my lips along the side of his neck, halting right above his fluttering pulse.
“This is not what I meant.” The words rumbled underneath my fingers.
“I know that,” I murmured into his skin.
“But I am tired, Kodhan. This darkness is a plague. It is all I feel, all I have felt, for too long. I am tired of being swept under.” Letting my soles fall back onto the ground, I looked up at him.
“There is no strength left in me to fight it. Not when it has taken too much this time.” My fingers slowly uncurled from his lapel. “I just need…”
“What do you need?” he asked, slowly. The intensity in his gaze was dangerous. More so than the scalding heat filling the air. “Tell me.”
I let the heat fill me, begged it to chase away the numbing tundra.
The shadows lurked by my dressing rooms. They’d grown bolder since I’d come back.
They lurched at me when artists weren’t looking.
When maids had their backs turned. Made sure to sweep across all the lights when I was alone, so that I was well and truly drowning in the dark.
“You hold back the tide. I don’t know what it is or how you do it but—”
“Eloise.” A demand. No, an order. “Tell me what you need.”
“I need this. Us. I need you. I need everything you can give me.”
He frowned.
“I’m sorry.” Splaying my fingers across his chest, I readied to push him back. “It’s too much. I shouldn’t have asked.”
The hairs at the back of my neck stood on end. The shadows had moved, readying to strike once he left.
“Oh, darling.” I froze. “You didn’t know?” He began working on the ribbons at my back. Pulling them apart, one by one. “You already have all of me.”
Using the strings, he turned me around, and walked us away from the dining area. All I could do was try not to stumble over my own two feet, speechless.
He had me face him again when we stopped by the bed.
“And there is nothing that you could ask of me that is too much. Anything you want, and I will do everything in my power to make it yours.” My corset was wide open now, the front of it held up only by the friction of our bodies.
“If that has been made clear,” he murmured, hand sliding across my cheek to cup my jaw.
“I recall making a certain oath. And I plan on acting on it now.” His thumb brushed across my bottom lip. “Do you oppose?”
My senses finally came back to me. “Of course not.”
“That is not an answer.” His hand shifted, no longer cupping my jaw but holding it firmly instead, fingers lightly pressing into my cheeks as if they could dig the words right from my mouth. “I need a yes or a no. Do you oppose?”
Hot, pulsing need unfurled low in my stomach.
“No. I do not oppose.” Without breaking eye contact, I undid the first button of his shirt. Then the next.
“Say it again.”
“I. Do not. Oppose.” Each punctuation ended with another button undone.
It was when I reached for his belt that whatever had been restraining him shattered, and then he was upon me.
His lips captured mine almost desperately.
He let me push both his vest and shirt off his shoulders, until he stood before me, bare from the waist up. My dress fell not a moment later, pooling at my feet.
It was effortless, the way he scooped me into his arms, the way my legs wrapped around him as he laid me onto my bed. Even more so was the way he tore the remaining scrap of silk from my body, only to replace it with his fingers.
Not once did his lips leave mine in the process. It allowed him to capture each moan, every whimper as he worked me. Through the haze of sparks and fire, I heard the faint clink of metal, and then he retreated for all but a moment before he was upon me again.
There was no time to mourn the loss of his fingers, as he lined himself up with my entrance, the sweet friction of him enough to wring another wave of sweltering pleasure through my core.
Kodhan was not a patient man, that I knew. It was why it surprised me when he took his time pushing every inch of himself right where I needed him. Until he was fully seated. And then he began to move, inciting a shuddering breath from us both.
I could see the edge I’d fallen from—that same one he’d shown me back in the tower—when he pushed one of my knees up to my chest, deepening the angle of his thrusts.
I could see it when it felt as though a string had been pulled taught, right in my middle, as he picked up speed, meeting each writhe of my hips.
Still, it refused to let me fall.
Kodhan’s gaze sharpened. He knew. So he pulled back. And flipped me.
His hands found my hips and lifted them just enough for him to fill me again. “Hold on to the post, love,” he whispered against my shoulder.
There wasn’t a star in the sky that could’ve convinced me to disobey him. So I reached up, grabbing the bedpost with both hands.
Instantly, he moved again, and I wanted to scream at him for asking me to do anything that required a modicum of strength, because all of my muscles either seized or melted into tiny pinpricks of hot static.
More. “Kodhan,” I whimpered, “I need…”
“I know.”
He reached down to where we were joined.
And that was when the edge slammed forward. Wave after wave of heat blasted me over the crest of it. His name poured from my lips with a cry, along with a slew of half-incorrigible curses and moans as he did not stop his relentless pace, not for a second.
Only when another gust of heat swept me up in its embrace, this one sharp and soul-shattering, did he falter, riding that same heat with a groan that sent my toes curling, that had goosebumps lifting along the length of my spine.
I let go of the post just when a crackle of blinding fire soared through the air.
Porcelain shattered. Burning wood and smoke permeated the air. But I didn’t care.
I would have let it all burn, I realized, fingers curling into the sheets, if it meant that I could have this very moment.