Chapter 46 #2
“No ...” the word batters my ear, his hand slipping from my neck and trailing around my back, where it settles atop the ladder of bones curled around my lung and heart. “I know too much .”
I freeze, all my fight dissipating as if one tiny movement could impale me with a deadly strike.
“These right here?” he rumbles, tapping my ribs with the tips of his fingers. “We’re both tucked beneath them. Stuck in this fragile cage together.”
“Then break out,” I plead. “Set me free , Rhordyn!”
His body seems to calcify around me, and for a moment I think the man might have finally turned to granite. Until his grip on my wrists becomes bone-bruising, his other hand spearing up to coil my hair around his arm and pull.
He tugs me taut like a loaded bow.
My mouth pops open, chin tipping to the ceiling, and Rhordyn’s forehead connects with mine.
The world around us stills, paling in significance to the mountain of man poured over me.
We’re nose to nose. Eye to eye. Lips so close, his chilled breath is spilling into me. “I’ll give you anything, Orlaith. Anything but that. Don’t ask again.”
The words are spoken hauntingly calm, as if his heart stopped beating a very long time ago.
Another stunted response.
Another dead end.
The back of my eyes sting, a lump swells in my throat, and all I want to do is cry. But I can’t afford to spend more tears on him.
Not now.
Not ever again.
“Why not?” I’m proud of myself when I manage to keep my voice steady. “Just answer me this one question, and don’t you dare answer with a grunt. After everything, I deserve a truth and you damn well fucking know it.”
Nothing. He says nothing. Just murders me with his silence again.
Which tells me everything —bleeding me in an entirely different way than the drops of blood I gift him nightly.
I close my eyes, severing myself in a way I can’t physically achieve. But then his grip slips from my hair, driving up to support the back of my head. His fingers spread, lacing through my thick locks and making me gasp.
He loosens a frosty breath that steals the fire from my cheeks. “Simple, Milaje. I refuse to live in a world where you don’t exist.”
My eyes pop open. “Wha—”
His lips bruise mine in an assault that steals my ability to speak.
Breathe.
Exist .
He melds me to his rampant will, my fire swelling to meet his ice as I give myself to the clash of teeth and tongues and lips.
We’re two oceans colliding in a battle for space. There are no winners; only chaos and desolation. Only blurred edges and the complete loss of one’s self. But at this moment ... I couldn’t care less .
He may be kissing me like he hates me, but I was forged by his acrimony. This is the only language I know .
He cleaves me apart with the spear of his tongue, spilling a heady rumble deep down into me, drugging me with his raw, hungry sounds.
I’m lost in a downward spiral of desperate, carnal need for the taste of him and the scrape of his teeth against my bottom lip, commanding me to surrender in a way that feels so basely primal.
He drops my wrists, and my fingers dive into his curls as his hands skate past the hem of my shirt, bunching it up around my hips and baring my behind.
Clawed fingers dig into the plump, prickled flesh, and he catches my bottom lip. Holds it between his teeth.
Growls.
I shiver from the base of my neck to the tips of my toes, hooked by his stare as I’m spread apart, his fingers skimming so close to that sensitive crease that’s immune to his lies. That remembers only the way his fingers swirled around my entrance, teasing ... coaxing ...
My lids flutter closed.
He snarls and takes my weight, wrapping my legs around his hips and slamming my back against the door.
Heat spikes at the apex between my thighs. Delicious, surging heat that makes me grind and grind and—
I groan, my mind a messy, instinctual thing that’s driven by one thing and one thing only ...
Him .
“You’re staying right the fuck here, do you hear me?”
His words pour between my lips like liquid chocolate, and I gobble them down, mind focused on my bare and exposed core flooding with another wave of hot want.
I can smell it—my desire for him to sate my body and unbridled mind. To take my pain and cleave it apart with a plunge of rampant pleasure. Because this world is cold and cruel and callous, and I just want to feel good for a bit. Feel close to somebody.
Close to him.
He carries me to the bed, his demanding mouth eating up my hungry moans, and I’m punched into the mattress, a motion which would have felt violent if he hadn’t fallen with me like a landslide.
I’m lost beneath him, entombed by his flexing might, drunk on his scent, his feel, his force ...
I jerk my hips in invitation for the steel-like bulge pressing against my inner thigh, aching for him to push at my entrance.
For him to dig into my body like he’s dug into my soul.
I weave my hands between the press of our bodies ...
Desperate.
Seeking .
My fingers barely brush his laces before he nips my lip and whips off the bed.
“Be good,” he states, making for the door without looking back. He’s pulled it open before I’ve even had a chance to blink or lick at the sore on my lip, slamming it shut behind him, leaving me sprawled on his bed with my legs spread and the cloying bouquet of my arousal thick in the air.
There’s the sound of a key sliding into place, and the clank that follows drops my heart into my stomach and rips me from the cloud he set me in.
No .
No, no, no ...
I scramble up, clamber toward the door on legs that barely remember how to work, then grip the handle and twist .
It doesn’t budge.
“Rhordyn!” I slam my hand against the wood, then my foot when he doesn’t answer. “ Rhordyn! If you leave me locked in here, I’ll never forgive you! Do you hear me? ”
No answer. Just the incriminating silence of an empty hallway. I can’t feel his presence near.
He’s gone.
It doesn’t stop me from screaming his name, over and over, until my throat is just as ruined as my pride. I punch the door until bone collides with wood and blood stains the grain.
But it’s not enough.
I keep going—fingernails gouging, foot swinging, hand slapping, shoulder barging until I’m empty and spent and the sutures of my sanity split.
You’re staying right the fuck here ...
Rhordyn’s haunting words ring like a bell in my ears, and my knees give out, colliding with the floor in a way that would probably hurt if I could feel.
But I’m lost. Numb and broken. My entire awareness tunneled down to the failure gnawing at my insides ...
He pillaged my weakness. Offered me a drink from his well and I gulped with greedy draws until I was intoxicated and mindless. Then, he tossed me down the hole and left me there with no way out.
Now all I can do is drown.