Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
Bloom
Scars and Sanctuary
We returned to Ravencrux Tower, Nero’s lake house in ruins behind us.
He brought me directly to his penthouse, while Orren and Dante assumed their posts at the tower’s entrance—a guard against anyone from the House of Kingsley who might be looking to stir shit. Morrigan was already waiting.
She directed Nero to a high-backed chair in the sitting room and set to work on his ravaged back. The room was grandly gothic: a massive fireplace dominated one wall, its fire burning low. Heavy velvet curtains framed tall windows overlooking the academy grounds.
I offered to brew healing herbs, mostly to occupy my shaking hands.
I wanted to be useful. Morrigan insisted her power was sufficient.
If she disliked my presence, she gave no sign; her expression remained focused.
Notably, she made no sensual sound as she worked this time.
I knew I would not have let it slide. I had grown territorial.
The healing took nearly an hour. I watched her hands move, glowing with a faint light as they passed over the ruined flesh, drawing torn edges together. It was not a pretty process. The scars would remain, thick and raised. But he would heal.
When it was done, Nero waited in silence for Morrigan to leave. She gathered her supplies, promised to return in a few hours, and departed.
The door clicked shut.
The ward sealed us in—just him and me, and our precious, hard-won privacy.
He extended a hand.
“Come to me, little pale flower,” he said, his voice rough.
I was a strong weaver, yet he still used that delicate name. I tried not to roll my eyes, given what he had just endured.
I walked toward him slowly, my hips swaying. His eyes tracked the movement, heat searing beneath the fatigue. I climbed onto his lap, careful of the fresh bandages.
It felt right to be this close to him. Like coming home.
I pressed against the solid warmth of his chest, my hands on his shoulders.
He lifted my chin, tilting my face up. Our gazes locked. Need and desire seared through his eyes, dark and consuming and utterly focused on me.
“Bloom,” he said, my name a rough prayer.
We probably shouldn’t do this. He was injured, freshly stitched, in pain. But we both needed this with desperate urgency. We needed to feel alive. To confirm we had survived. To claim each other. We no longer had to hide.
I leaned in and kissed him. Softly, then deeper. His mouth opened for me, and I invaded him with my tongue. He growled with pure male need.
His hands slid up my thighs, gathering my black Victorian gown. Heat flared between us instantly, as it always did.
“Don’t move,” I whispered against his lips. “You’re hurt. Let me.”
His eyes flared with unbridled lust. Control had always been his. Our last time had been rough, desperate, a clash of tormented souls who needed the edge of pain to remember themselves.
This would be different.
“Little flower—”
“Let me take care of you.” I settled more firmly over him, my hands pressing to the thunder of his heart. “Just sit tight. I’ll make it all better for you.”
A rough sound escaped his throat, half laugh, half groan. “You’ll be the death of me.”
“And you me,” I said. And then I was kissing him again and there was no more room for words.
I heaved my hips up, my fingers freeing his hard shaft from his trousers, my thumb smearing the precum on his crown.
I didn’t need to prepare myself, as I was already ready for him.
Holding his cock against my sleek entrance, I sank down onto him, and we both groaned.
The sensation of his hardness filling me was delicious.
He thrust upward, and I inserted my hand into his hair and twisted it.
“Stop moving,” I commanded.
He cursed softly but obeyed, his hands remaining tight on my hips, guiding without taking control. His jaw clenched as I began to move up and down his length, slow and measured.
I set the pace. A slow, rolling rhythm as I took him deep, then rising until he nearly slipped free before gliding down again. His breath came in harsh pants. His eyes never left mine, burning with possessive devotion, so fierce and savage it should have terrified me.
Perhaps it did, a little.
But I was just as obsessed.
Heat built between us with each movement as I glided along his hard cock. My hands braced on his shoulders, careful not to jar his back. His fingers dug into my hips, sure to leave marks I’d wear proudly.
“Bloom,” he hissed. “Fuck me harder.”
I leaned in, biting his lower lip before soothing it with my tongue. “Not yet. I want to savor this first.”
“You love to torture me.” He let out a ragged groan, his head falling back against the chair.
The tendons in his neck pulled taut, his entire body a study in restrained power. He was allowing me to take control even as every coiled muscle flexed, ready to flip our positions and fuck me the way he wanted.
He held still. For me.
I quickened my pace, showing him mercy, my hips rolling before I slammed down to his base, harder and faster. He hissed in pleasure. Heat within me tightened, a bright coil winding closer to its end with every lustful slide and lift.
I was close, so close now.
And then, without warning, the memory struck like lightning.
A lush garden of impossible botany. Flowers glowed with their own inner fire. The air tasted of wild spring and snow.
And there he was.
Younger and careless in aspect. His hair brushed his shoulders, longer than he wore it now. His smile held a devastating charm that made my heart race.
He offered a pomegranate, its skin dark as blood, seeds glistening like rubies through a split in the flesh.
“Just a taste, my love,” he said, his voice rich and silky on my skin. “To sustain you before I take you home. You must be hungry.”
Though I had such a crush on him, I was terrified of his dark realm. I was na?ve, not knowing anything of the world, as Demeter had shielded me all my life. I did not know the laws of the Underworld. I did not understand the binding power of food consumed in the land of the dead.
I ate six seeds. They burst upon my tongue, sweet and tart.
Six seeds to bind me to the Underworld.
He had tricked me. Deceived me. Bound me to his dark kingdom with fruit and ancient law.
I gasped, going still.
The memory slammed into me so hard that I could still taste the sharp sweetness of the pomegranate.
“Is this too much for you, baby girl?” Nero’s voice was a taunt.
“Worry about yourself, Professor,” I threw back, gliding up his length until only the tip of his cock nudged between my plump folds.
He had no idea of the past crashing through me. But I needed him, needed this anchor, needed his cock filling me.
Before I let out a shaky breath, another memory surged.
I was running in a lemon green silk gown, my flaming red hair that marked me across every lifetime cascading down to my ankles.
I raced through obsidian corridors, my bare feet silent on the cold stone, as I fled the dark realm that had become my gilded prison.
Hades caught me.
His hands closed around my wrists, yanking me back against his chest. His voice was dark, possessive, and desperate in my ear. “I will never allow you to leave. Never. You can run to the ends of the earth, and I will find you. You are mine, Persephone. Always mine.”
Many women desired him and coveted the title: companion to the darkly gorgeous king.
I only wanted to go home to the city of the gods. I missed brilliant sunlight and blooming flowers in my everlasting garden. Mom had always pampered me and maids attended me. A bright life without gritty truth, without darkness.
So Hades locked me in a cage.
The bars were black iron woven with gold, beautiful and terrible. The cage was furnished with silk cushions and soft blankets.
He wanted my acceptance. An end to what he called a futile fight.
“You’re my light,” he said, his hand wrapped around my neck, his eyes haunted and desperate. “My sunlight in this eternal dark. I have been alone for too long. I cannot return to that emptiness.”
He tried everything to make me stay. Gifts of jewels like captured stars. Gowns of silk and shadow. A garden cultivated for me, where flowers bloomed without sun. The promise of a throne at his side, feared and revered and loved.
None of it worked.
When kindness failed, he turned brutal.
He never struck me. That was a line he wouldn’t cross, no matter the provocation. But he threatened everything else. Everyone else.
“Stay,” he commanded, his voice cold as death, and he was Death.
“Stay, or I will slaughter everyone you love. Your mother. Your friends. Every seductive nymph who ever smiled at you. I’ll burn the fields you cherish to ash.
I’ll kill every flower, every growing thing, until the world above is as barren as you believe my realm to be. ”
I succumbed then. I stopped fighting. I played the obedient queen.
But only for a time.
I waited. I learned his patterns. I watched for his guard to lower. When he finally trusted me enough to grant me freedom within his realm, when his vigilance eased—
I set his palace ablaze, burned his throne room, and reduced his halls to ash and rubble.
Then I escaped through the gap I had carved in his wards, and I didn’t stop until I reached the surface.
For weeks, I waited for him to drag me back. He never came.
Weeks became months. Spring turned to autumn.
And I could not bear it.
I missed him. I missed the sound of his voice—rough, demanding, yet tender when it was for me alone. I missed the constant, powerful, dark awareness of his presence.
I was just as obsessed with him as he had ever been with me. All my complaints about his suffocating devotion—they were lies. I needed it. I craved its intensity like air, only I’d realized it too late.
Life without him was dull. Empty. And endless ache.