Chapter 35 Be My Redemption
BE MY REDEMPTION
Despite my constant worry that the truth could be seen written on my face, Albert’s death was attributed to nothing but a freak accident.
His remains were sparse and so badly charred that they were only identified by the powers of deduction; since he went missing and was not in the pile of infected bodies that we had burned the day after conquering Bonifacio, it was everyone’s logical conclusion that the carbonised corpse must have been his. I alone knew for certain.
We all drove back to Vizzavona to bury his and Lena’s remains underneath the serene Pierre Castel birches.
The warm air smelled of freshly dug earth as the melancholy trees whispered above our heads.
The sheet in which Albert’s corpse was wrapped was stained brown, the essence of the burnt flesh seeping through the fabric.
I made a loud choking noise at the sight of it being lowered into the ground.
Einar shot a suspicious glance in my direction. The first of many.
Not a night went by that I wouldn’t wake up screaming because of a nightmare.
My clothes hung loose on my diminished frame, the result of my complete lack of appetite for food.
My other appetites dwindled too, much to Einar’s frustration and my own.
Even if he had no suspicions of my involvement right after Albert’s death, he was sure to have gained them as I gradually fell into pieces while giving him vague and wholly implausible justifications for my lack of composure.
I knew that confrontation was coming, that it was inevitable, and that knowledge only drove me further over the edge.
“Right,” Einar finally said one day, with the unmistakable air of readying himself, and I understood that the dreaded moment had come.
We lay wrapped in blue silk sheets in the affluent Bonifacio townhouse we temporarily resided in.
It had a freestanding bar with various cocktail glasses, a marble fireplace, and tiles made to strongly resemble the same material.
On the mantelpiece, there were photos of a couple in their late forties, each holding a groomed miniature poodle.
The skin in the woman’s face was taut with Botox.
“I’m sorry,” I said as Einar rolled away from me after yet another frustrated attempt at intimacy.
“I just can’t stay in the moment,” I tried to explain in a last-ditch effort to save us from being broken apart by what I had done.
“I guess I’m thinking too much about the swarm and what we’ll have to do,” I lied.
“I don’t care.” Einar hoisted himself up on his elbow and looked at me coldly over the crooked bridge of his nose. “You need to snap out of whatever this is.”
He leaned away from me and was already collecting his clothes off the ground. He yanked his trousers on, the tendons and muscles in his arms and back straining against his skin. Under more favourable circumstances, that sight alone would have made me burn.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry!” He whipped around.
There were bags under his eyes, and his jaw seemed permanently clenched in those days. Losing a second close friend in the space of a year must have been hard on him, much as he tried not to show it.
“It doesn’t help to say you’re sorry, does it?! I don’t need you apologetic, I need you back to normal!”
His face was flushed with anger. I shifted my weight uncomfortably and gulped.
“And just what do you expect me to do, Renata, pretend I haven’t noticed anything? Act as if you weren’t behaving like someone with a severe case of black conscience? Eh?”
Wrath contorted his features as the volume of his voice rose higher. I bit my lower lip to stop pressure from building behind my eyes.
“I’m so—”
His eyes flashed darkly and threateningly at me, and the words froze on my lips.
“I don’t like secrets, Ren. Not from you.
And do you know why?” He grabbed my shoulders, his fingers digging grooves into my skin, his teeth bared in a ferocious sneer.
“It’s not because you share my bed. Not because you invade my thoughts constantly without a moment’s respite.
Not even because you’ve let me adore you through my words, worship you with my body, and punish you by my hand.
But because inch by inch, you have fought your way into the darkest part of my heart.
And instead of fleeing from what you saw there, you invited me into yours.
And for that I’d sooner have us both die than ever let you go.
Everything that you are is mine, Ren. Everything. ”
Tears rolled down my face, and I lowered my gaze, but Einar’s fingers wound themselves around my hair, and he jerked my head up rudely to force me to keep looking at him.
“When will you finally understand? Whatever it is you’re keeping from me,” he looked into the depths of my soul, and I could no longer tell myself that he didn’t know the truth, “no matter what you have done, no matter what you might do in the future, it doesn’t change a thing.
There’s no going back for me, Ren. Because the way you are mine, I am yours.
I won’t let anything come between us,” he told me, his voice softening and the lines of his face letting up.
“Not even you. And how dare you even try?”
He then pushed me on my back and, towering over me, he proceeded to slide the pale blue sheet off my naked form.
Sunlight fell on us from the high window overlooking the sea, and Einar’s hair glinted with metal like a crown.
Grabbing me by my ankles, he dragged me unresisting to the foot of the bed.
“I promised not to raise my hand to you in anger,” he drawled without a trace of humour, “which is why I’ll have to find another way to make you pay for what you do to me. Now, will you be a good girl and hold still, or do I need to tie you up?”
“I’ll be good,” I whimpered, my breath catching in my throat and cold excitement creeping up my body.
He knelt. Wedging his hands between my knees, he parted my legs and leaned forward. I whimpered and squirmed despite my promise. His lips were rough against my skin, and he let out a pained groan as his languid trail of kisses led him further up.
An ornate faux gold chandelier hung from the high ceiling above our heads. Its flower-etched arms were joined delicately by spider webs, thin and soft like a baby’s hair. I traced them with my eyes as Einar’s voice rasped against my inner thighs.
“God, the delicious smell of when your body yearns for me, Ren. Even if I wanted to refuse you, I wouldn’t have it in me to resist.”
Then his teeth grazed the most sensitive part of me, his lips closed around my clit, and he sucked on it hard and without mercy.
“Mas—”
“No. He’s not here today. This is too personal for him.”
“Einar ...” I gasped as a powerful arctic tremor slashed through me.
“That’s it, call my name,” he told me before assaulting me anew with his tongue, delving into me like a man starved.
I convulsed with a cat yowl tearing at my throat, my fingers closing around the sheets, and my whole world tilting on its axis.
But the high I chased was elusive, always just around the corner, just beyond the horizon, so close and yet so far, the combination of a perfect touch and a perfect angle an enigma I was unable to solve.
“I can’t. I can’t come. I can’t do it,” I cried. “Please stop, this is torture.”
“You can and you will,” he growled with harsh confidence, barely lifting his head, his breath hot on my skin.
His mouth was back where it could best torment me, and his fingers entered me with no-frills efficiency, rubbing my front wall, as his other hand pressed my lower abdomen, aiding generously the friction inside.
And suddenly I knew the answer to what lay beyond the horizon, because I was there.
I threw my legs over his shoulders, lifting my hips, pressing myself closer to his face. I whimpered and moaned and cried, begging him to stop in one moment and urging him to carry on with the next.
And then, finally, I lost the gift of coherent speech altogether, and I half laughed and half howled as I arched my back in euphoria.
“That’s my good girl. But don’t get up.” I heard Einar as if from afar. “I’m nowhere near done with you yet. If I can’t let myself give you ten licks of my belt, I’ll have to settle for ten of these instead. Just as well ...”
He traced his tongue up my inner thigh, and I whined feebly, the after-effects of one culmination already building foundations of the next one.
“It doesn’t matter to me whether you scream with pain or pleasure.
I get off on it all the same,” Einar droned on in a tone of voice that was as mercilessly cold as it was aflame with emotion.
“Both are music to my ears because they both belong to me. You understand what I’m saying, babydoll?
You’re never to feel pain or pleasure by anyone else’s hand but mine.
And those who’d be insolent enough to try and steal what’s mine?
An eternity in purgatory would sound like a nice holiday to them by the time I’d finally send them to hell. ”
His teeth sank into my flesh, and I yelped with lustful surprise. The bite wasn’t hard enough to break the skin, but sufficiently so to leave an angry red mark. He kissed it tenderly before turning his head to the other side and proceeding to inflict the same gentle injury on it.
“Einar ...”
“Ren, you must learn. Just as I know you love the darkness within me because it sets you free, I adore the darkness in you. It is because of it that with you alone, I can be my true self. Don’t you ever try to hide it from me again, you understand?”
I raised my head from the pillows to glance at him, his eyes gleaming with sin and his face rugged with passion.
“I won’t,” I promised.
“Good girl.” He patted my hip. “Now tell me what you did.”
My bulging eyes met his icy ones. His hands were wrapped around my thighs, and he broke eye contact to plant a lingering kiss close to each of my knees before looking straight at me again.
“Say it.”
“No.” My voice was but a horrified gasp. “No. Please don’t make me.”
A potent bout of nausea crashed through me as my heart hammered in my chest. Blood drained from my face and extremities, and I felt clammy, as if about to pass out.
“You still think that’s why I’m angry?” Einar didn’t relent in his line of questioning, but noting its physical effects on me, he allowed for a benevolent note to lace his otherwise steely timbre.
“How could it not be?” I whispered.
“Because you were so smart about it.” To my utter shock, he gave me a proud smile. “I’m simply too impressed, my darling.”
Unable to form any words, I only let out a choked noise in reaction.
“You don’t fully understand yet, but it’s good that you’re starting to.” Breaking eye contact, he traced my entrance reverently with his tongue, and my head lolled back. “We have become gods together, you and I. Lives of mortals are ours to take as we please.”
His fingers sank into me and parted me for better access to my clit. Einar gave it a brief, perilous kiss, and I shuddered, chills running through me.
“I’m only cross with you because of your secrecy. Because you keep denying yourself and me our right to be who we are together.”
He ran his finger along the rim of my core, teasing me with the promise of penetration without granting it. I moaned.
“There’s not a thing you could do that I wouldn’t forgive. But still, I’m not a man who forgives easily, and I’m not going to forgive you until you beg me with all you have.” He lowered his head until his breath caressed me, and I shivered. “Now let me hear how sorry you are.”
And then his lips and teeth were clasped tight around my swollen arousal, and I cried neither with pain nor pleasure, but with nothing short of a complete, unadulterated abandon.