Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
“It worked.” The words slip out as Ed and Annabel dissolve, the room suddenly feeling less crowded.
“What do you mean, it worked?” Valdemar snaps. “You say it like you had no idea what you were doing.”
“I didn’t. Not really,” I confess.
“Fuck.” Valdemar drops my hand and the knife along with it and leans back on his heels, squeezing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and finger.
“It worked,” I repeat with a little more force. “It released Ed, and now he’s found Annabel. You’re both free.”
Dropping his arm, he glares at me, and a strange feeling washes through me. Anger, distress—but these emotions aren’t mine. I’m relieved and overjoyed that my brother has found his true love and is now happy in the afterlife. The other emotions I feel are his—Valdemar’s. It has to be the bond already working its magic, filling me with… him.
“He is free, angel. Ed is free. But you are not.”
Gulping hard, I blink, trying to see past the temper that’s erupted on his face and now tingles beneath my skin.
“You’ve bound us, angel. Do you even know what that means?”
“Yes. Yes, I know what it means. I’m not a fucking child. But what was the alternative? If I’d done nothing, then Ed would still be tethered to you in eternal unhappiness, and if I’d chosen yours and Ed’s idea, then I would be sat here now, holding on to your dead fucking body.”
“Instead, you’re bound to my body for the rest of this life and the next,” he says.
Fear washes over me, pain, anguish—a hurricane of emotions, some my own and some Valdemar’s. He’s everywhere. He’s under my skin, behind my eyes, running through my veins, my heart pumping him around my body as if my life depends on him.
I stare into the wide eyes of the man who’s consumed me day and night for the past seven weeks. The man who I thought had killed my brother. The only man who knew what it was like to be inside my brother’s head.
“I am a twin. I already know what it’s like to be tethered to someone. Ed and I were made in the same womb with the same blood. His pain was my pain, his joy was my joy, his life was my life until it wasn’t anymore, and I had to survive on my own, something that doesn’t come naturally to a twin. So, if you’re asking me if I know how it feels to be bonded to someone, then I already know.”
Tearing his eyes from mine, he thrusts his hand through his hair. “You’ve sworn the Blood Oath to me.”
“Yes,” I confirm.
“For life,” he adds.
“I’m aware.”
“You and I will be….”
“One.”
“Is this what you wanted?” he asks.
The room swims.
Over the past few weeks, Valdemar has become a part of me whether I wanted it or not. In that time, things have changed, my perception of the past altered, and my feelings for him evolved into something unfamiliar.
“I didn’t want you to die. I didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being alone like I have for the past ten years,” I tell him.
A sigh wooshes from his mouth.
“You’re cross with me.” I read his thoughts so easily. Too easily. “This isn’t what you wanted, is it? I didn’t have time to ask you.”
His eyes narrow, and he grabs my hands.
“You didn’t need to ask me, angel. I’ve always been yours.”
My heart swells.
“Have you heard of the red string theory?” Valdemar asks.
I shake my head, unable to answer him, words getting lost amongst the blossoming in my chest.
“In Eastern philosophy, there’s a belief that when you’re born, there’s an invisible red thread connecting you to all the people you’re destined to meet and will be connected to throughout your life. That’s the only way I can explain how I feel—it’s like I’m tethered to you by an invisible force,” he tells me.
“When I met Ed, there was the pull, an unfathomable fascination with him, which is why we swore the Blood Oath. And I thought it was him. But the feeling never went away, this feeling that I was looking for someone and hadn’t found them yet.
“He never told any of us he had a sister, let alone a twin, but not long after we completed the Blood Oath, I could feel you through him, this presence, like a humming in my bones, a song in my head.
“I asked him about it, asked if he had a sibling, and he told me about you. I wanted to meet you, but Ed was reluctant to bring you into this world until, he said, the time was right. I wanted to push further, wanted to know everything about you, but I respected his wishes until he died and asked me to contact you. And the day you walked into the prison and I saw you for the first time, I knew it wasn’t Ed whom I was meant to be bonded with. It was you. It’s always been you.” He takes a breath, pondering something before he continues.
“I’ve often wondered if Ed knew your fate all along. After you’d visited me in the prison and I knew it was you who I was supposed to be bonded with and not Ed, I asked him if he’d always known, if he’d had a vision of things to come. But his reply was that sometimes you just have to let fate play out because there is no other way. As you know, he knew he could never change the future, never influence it enough to stop things from happening. Ed knew this. And that’s why I believe I’ve had to wait these last ten years to meet you. Because that’s the way it was always supposed to happen.”
My body trembles. Fate has a lot to answer for, and I’m awash with anger. Why did we have to walk this road to get here? Why did my mother have to die? Why did my father have to die? Why did my brother have to die? Why have Valdemar and I had to grieve for the last ten years to get here? Why has he had to spend the last ten years paying for a crime he didn’t commit?
But fighting my anger at fate’s cruel hand, there’s hope, an awakening at this new turn of events, of the love I feel for this man and the place we’re at now, and what lies before us.
The future.
I smile at Valdemar, knowing this is where I’m supposed to be, that at last, we’re together, but he doesn’t share my smile.
“Why are you so sad?” I place my hand on the open wound on his chest, our blood already starting to clot, as his sadness washes over me.
“You were supposed to take over the Raven Hands, to revolutionise them,” he says.
This thought takes hold. Like the big scoop I’ve been waiting for all these years, I know this is the moment my life is set to change. It feels right, warranted, as if Ed is here now, telling me that this was my destiny all along. Fate may have sent us down the rocky road, the one that makes you bleed, makes you cry, and brings nothing but pain. But it’s worth it to reach the end, to the place where you’re supposed to be, where you’ve been destined to be.
“And we still will. Together,” I tell him.
He puts his hand over mine, securing it to his heart.
“I hope you’re ready for this.” His lips don’t move, yet I hear his voice.
“What the fuck?” I pull back, searching his face for signs of trickery.
“The telepathy is part of the Blood Oath.”
“How are you doing that?” I ask.
“ You can do it too. Just relax and think of what you want to say to me, and I’ll hear you.”
I inhale deeply, clearing my mind before thinking of something to say to him.
“ Boo!”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Oh my God, can you turn it off?” I ask.
He smirks. “In time, you’ll learn to block me. But for now, hear me.”
“Was this what it was like with Ed?”
“When you swear the Blood Oath to a friend, it feels like a loyalty bond, a comradery that you’re united for a common purpose. This feels different,” he explains.
“Why?”
“Why? I think it’s because of the way I feel about you. It changes the bond to something deeper, something primal that I’m going to have a hard time getting used to.”
“How so?” There’s so much to learn, so much to take in. My heart races in my chest.
“Like if someone even looks at you in the wrong way, I’m going to want to rip their fucking throat out.”
“Better keep me locked away, then.”
“That’s not a bad idea.” His gaze intensifies.
I thump him on the side of his arm.
His lips quirk before his face settles back into a hard stare. “Are you sure this is what you want?” he repeats, this time speaking aloud as if to clarify it.
“You shouldn’t need to ask me that. You should be able to feel how I feel, know that this is what I want. You are what I want. I told you in my dreams, and I told you in the real world. I want you,” I tell him.
“I feel it, but I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep my thoughts from you. It was bad enough before we took the Oath, but now…. Now you’re my all, my everything, and it frightens me, as I’ll do anything for you, anything and everything, no matter the consequences. It’s you. You are mine. I am yours. Like a sunrise without the sun, like thunder without the lightning, without you, there is no me. And it scares me, angel, because you’re the light and I’m the dark. You’re the saviour, and I’m condemned.”
Stroking his face, I kneel on the bed and press my lips to his forehead.
“Stand,” I tell him.
He pulls back and regards me with uncertainty, but he does as I say, sliding from the bed and standing next to it.
“You asked me what I would do if you hadn’t killed my brother,” I remind him as I rise from the bed too. “There is no good without evil, no angels without a devil. And I would rather dance with the devil than float on a cloud playing a harp no one can hear.” I trail my hand down his chest before I fall at his feet.
Valdemar drops to his knees and takes my chin in his hand. “Never kneel before me unless I tell you to,” he says.
He kisses me, softly at first, as if his lips are testing the waters before his hands search my body, pushing my shirt up and grasping at my bra.
Helping him, I pull my shirt over my head, and then my bra joins it on the floor. Valdemar shrugs his shirt off, his skin brushing against mine. This feels different from the night in the library, and I’m not sure if it’s because of the Blood Oath, but it’s closer, deeper, like a ritual we’ve performed over centuries, practised, and perfected, our bodies in tune with each other.When he pulls me into him, I wrap my arms around his neck and thrust my tongue into his mouth, the taste of him making me hum.
“I’ve dreamt of this moment,” he tells me, taking a break from my mouth, his lips travelling down my neck.
“So have I.”
“I don’t mean in the dreams; I mean in my waking hours. I have dreamt of you fitting perfectly in my arms, happy to be here,” he says.
“It’s where I belong. I know that now.” I knew it that day in the prison, the first time he touched me, as my body sang for him and my heart pounded.
“I’ve always known it.”
I tug down my trousers and underwear, and Valdemar helps to pull them over my feet.
Taking his face in my hands, I press my chest against his, a buzz erupting at the contact. Our bodies bind together, arms entwined until I can’t tell where I begin and he ends.
“Then you better fuck me like you own me,” I demand.
I swear he growls, fucking growls in my ear before leading me back to the bed, pushing me down, and clasping my wrists in one hand above my head.
“I do own you, angel, and you own me.” His mouth travels down my neck and onto my breasts, momentarily pausing on my nipple, pulling at the swollen bud and nipping with his teeth.
By the time his mouth reaches my waist, the need has grown between my legs, a feral wanting flirting at the edges of my sanity. If he doesn’t do something about this, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands, but I shouldn’t doubt him. There’s no need. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
Just as I’m about to grab his head and push it between my legs, he looks up at me and smirks. “You’re about to learn the first advantage of the Blood Oath.”
The roguish grin is back before he dips his head and flicks his tongue over my hardened clit, the buzz of it arching my back and making me gasp.
“ You see, angel, I can talk to you with my mouth full, so you can hear all the dirty things that are going through my brain as my tongue fucks you inside and out. How does that sound?”
Through the shiver of pleasure, I manage to reply, “Like fucking heaven.”
His tongue dips inside me, leaving my clit bereft and pulsing with need.
“ I could spend an eternity tasting you, and I would remain hungry for more.”
His tongue slides back to my clit, flicking it, circling it, lapping up my arousal.
Fisting his hair, I moan through the waves of euphoria. Flattening his hands on the insides of my thighs, he pushes my legs further apart, spreading me wide as his tongue goes back inside me deeper, and he fucks me with his mouth.
“Valdemar.” My voice scrapes the back of my throat as I try to contain the building orgasm.
“ Not yet, angel. I’ve only just started.”
His voice in my head only drives me into more of a frenzy, his tongue everywhere.
“ You want me to fill you everywhere, to own every part of you, and I will. You are mine. All of you, and I’ll take every bit of you just as you have taken every bit of me.”
With one long lick, his tongue travels up my centre, landing on my swollen clit as my orgasm breaks through my body like a crack in the ground during an earthquake.
“Fuck!” I cry as I pull at his hair, thrusting in his face as the throes of ecstasy rack my body. Valdemar grips my hips, pushing his tongue ruthlessly inside me as I come.
I’m shaking, the aftershock of such a powerful orgasm still flaring over my skin as he pulls away and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
I press my thighs together to try and steady the pulsing between my legs.
“Are you okay, angel?”
“Yes,” I pant through ragged breaths.
Without taking his eyes off me, he unfastens his belt and pulls his trousers down.
“You’re so fucking wet, angel,” he tells me. “You’re ready to take me. Now spread your legs and get ready to come again.”
I hook my hands under my legs and pull them apart.
“Look at you—you’re fucking glowing.”
I salivate as he pulls his cock from his boxers and fists his length while sliding three fingers inside me.
“Fuck.” I bite my lip as he thrusts his fingers until they’re soaked.
He removes them, then slides his cock in, slowly at first, spreading me with just the tip before plunging his full length deep into me.
The room blurs. He doesn’t take his eyes off mine as he pulls his cock out and switches back to his fingers. He pumps them fast and hard before replacing them with his cock, his movements now slow and deep.
It’s fucking torture—delectable, addictive, and fucking moreish torture.
“I want your cock,” I tell him as he swaps again and fucks me with his fingers.
“I know you do, and you’ll get it. All of it. You just need to be a good girl.”
His fingers linger before his cock goes back in, and I raise myself onto my elbows to get a better view of him. “Please, just fuck me.”
He rubs at my clit, and I let myself fall back onto the bed, the pleasure too much for me to be able to hold myself up. His movements are deliberate, drawing out each thrust, each dip of his cock so that I’m snowballing into a frenzy, clawing at the bedsheets and trying to thrust my hips against him. I feel like a cat in heat, a feral rage consuming me.
“I want it hard. I want it fast. I want you to pin me to the fucking bed with your cock,” I demand, holding him with a stone-cold stare.
He just grins at me. “Be careful what you wish for,” he tells me, his fingers brushing against my clit so gently, it makes me shudder.
His cock is inside me but barely moving, his rigid length pushing against my inner walls, spreading me, filling me. He kneels forward slightly, stops halfway inside me, and looks down between my legs before spitting onto my clit and then rubbing it in with his fingers.
Black spots dance before my eyes. Rolls of pleasure crash over my entire body as my orgasm swells.
“Hold on, angel,” he says as he grabs my hips and lifts them off the bed before thrusting into me with such force, I swear I feel it against my back teeth.
And I get my wish.
Hard and fast.
My eyes water.
“Oh my God!” I barely get the words out as I’m pinned to the bed, my body consumed by him and his cock, his relentless fucking filling me, claiming me, and breaking me until I come undone, my body limp, my resolve gone, my world altered forever.