Chapter 15 #2
I don’t smack him, instead peeling out of the jacket, heavier now with the cold water it’s taken on. I hang it on a bare hook near the door. Together, we track down the water shut-off and get that running.
“Same rules apply here as in Toronto,” Curse tells me as we mount a staircase to the second floor. “You are not to be out of my sight. Until we know where Messina is, I can’t give you the free reign over this place that you had over my house in Montreal.”
“Understood,” I reply. He leads me to a large bathroom on the second floor. As the lights come to life, white marble and golden accents are illuminated.
“Get in the shower.” When I try to make eye contact with him after the clipped command, I can’t, because he’s taking off his wet shirt and it’s currently covering his face.
With his eyes hidden, I let my own trail down the magnificent brutality of his body.
The ink, the scars, the untamed energy of the muscles beneath them.
But soon, his shirt will be all the way off, and he’ll catch me staring at him.
So I hustle away. This bathroom has no shower curtain, but a shower enclosed in all glass walls.
I won’t have the same privacy I had showering this morning.
But Curse doesn’t seem keen on watching me.
At least, not the way that I was watching him.
He’s got his wet jeans off now, and is folding everything neatly.
Once that’s done, he leans back against the counter in his black underwear with his arms crossed over his bare chest, eyes locked on the door.
“Aren’t you at least going to wrap a warm towel around yourself or something?” I fret aloud, picking at my nails instead of undressing. He hasn’t even dried his hair. “You’re going to catch a cold.”
“I never catch colds.”
“OK, well, you’re making me nervous just standing there with your bare feet on the cold marble floor after coming in from the freezing rain.”
“You keep talking like that,” he replies, “and I’m going to assume you’re inviting me into the shower with you.”
Despite my own chill from being outside, despite my wet hair and the goosebumps spangling my skin, heat comes like a bolt down my spine. That heat spreads to the place between my legs, and before I can let fear stop me, I stammer, “Well, maybe I am.”
Finally, he looks at me instead of the door.
And, crap, maybe I’ve gone too far. Annoyed him, irritated him, pushed him beyond the boundaries of whatever the hell this is between us.
Because when his eyes fall on me, they’re not empty, not cold, but flaming with some terrible raw energy that I can’t name. They bore into me, make me want to run.
But there’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to retreat except for the shower behind me, with its transparent walls, its lack of lock.
Heart in my throat, I fumble behind me, opening the shower door and stepping inside.
Before the door can shut, Curse is suddenly there, moving with the liquid elegance of a panther in my midst. His hand catches on the shower door.
I can see the glass edge of it pressing into that solitary A on his palm.
“You’re going to run from me now, angel?” he says, his tone nearly mocking. “You’re going to try to hide?”
“Why do you call me that?” I whisper.
“Why do you say shit that you don’t mean?” Curse shoots back. “Stop worrying about how cold I am. Stop telling me I’d be welcome in this fucking shower with you. Because we both know that it’s not true.”
And now, I’m fucking pissed. Because he doesn’t get to decide what I do and do not mean.
My jaw working, I let the rage harden in me, turn to courage.
I rip off my sweater and throw it over his shoulder.
Then, I do the same with my bra, leggings, panties, and socks.
Until I’m completely naked, hot and cold and terrified and so angry I want to hurt him, hurt myself, make somebody fucking pay.
For everything I’ve been through. For everything that’s ruined us.
And maybe I’ve succeeded, at least a little.
Curse’s body contracts as if I’ve struck him, stabbed him.
As if my nakedness is a weapon. His eyes are so dark, and the only word I can use to describe the expression in them now is agony.
He drags them from my face to the pebbled points of my nipples, then lower, over my belly before they come to a stop, as if trapped somehow, at the place between my legs.
“Aurora,” he groans. Again, like he’s in pain. The glass door is pressing into his palm so hard that it’s created a bloodless strip of white flesh there. The A stands out even more now, like black paint on pale paper.
“What?” I ask. “I’m getting in the shower.
Just like you asked.” When I shiver, it detracts from my bold act.
Curse swears under his breath, then steps all the way in with me, turning on the water until an exquisitely hot spray rains down.
I can’t help but let my eyes fall shut in pleasure, sighing.
When I open them again, Curse is still here with me, no longer looking angry but fevered, his dark irises scraping over my exposed skin.
“Why did you kiss me?” I ask him, no longer able to hold the question back. And yeah, maybe the reply will hurt me. Maybe he really will tell me it was just about making our marriage vows convincing.
But I think I need that hurt. I need to remind myself, over and over again, that Curse doesn’t love me.
But if I was hoping for bitterness, for derision, for something to send me spiralling away from him, I don’t get it.
He drags a hand roughly down his face, as if trying to recalibrate somehow.
And then, he says, “Because for the past two decades, I thought that killing people was the only thing left in this world that could make me feel alive.” His hand drops.
So do his eyes – to my mouth. “But it’s not. ”
“So you’re saying that kissing me is like killing?”
“No,” he replies on a low rasp. “I’m saying that it’s even more potent than that. Fucking devastating. Dangerous.”
“How is kissing me dangerous?” My fingers find his jaw. Brush his cheeks. Just the same way I did that day in Montreal, when he told me never to let it happen again.
He doesn’t say anything now. Just closes his eyes and stiffens.
Stiffens everywhere. His cock is hard beneath the now-soaked fabric of his underwear.
That unfamiliar feeling of desire, the need that only he can pull from me, quickens in my veins, clenches between my legs.
I want to touch him so fucking badly. Feel the needy swell of him there. Even to put my mouth on him.
But for now, I put my mouth somewhere else. Rising up on the balls of my feet, I brush my lips over his.
And though it is featherlight, tentative, barely even there at all, he reacts like I’ve touched a live wire to his spine. Muscles bunch, and his hands slam to my hips, forcing me backwards until my back hits the steamed glass of the wall.
And then his tongue is in my mouth, plunging, devouring, his fingers digging in deep.
I open my mouth wide for him, silently begging him not to stop, not to go, not to leave me again.
It’s so stupid, and I know this neediness is coming from that little girl in my head. The one behind the glass walls.
But the adult Aurora is behind the glass walls right now, too. Literally.
And I’m not in here alone.
Curse shoves the hot rod of his cock against my belly.
Will we consummate the marriage now? I know we need to have sex at least once more.
My pussy throbs, still sore from last time.
And still desperate for him. I feel slick and inflamed down there, and I want him in me, even though I know it’s going to hurt.
“Please,” I pant the word against his lips, his teeth, rubbing myself on him. “Please-”
“Stop fucking saying that word,” he hisses against my ear, my hair.
“Don’t say, ‘please’ to me. And don’t say, ‘sorry,’ either.
” His hand plunges between us, tugging at the waistband of his underwear until his cock, hard and reddened, is freed.
The tip of it swirls over my belly as he rocks.
Moaning, I stand on my tippy toes, desperately angling my hips forward, trying to get friction where I need it.
To feel him against my clit. And then all the way inside.
But his merciless hand stamps itself across my pelvis, shoving until my ass is pressed against the wall once more.
“I’m not going to fuck you right now,” he grits out. “Not without a condom. There will be no more pharmacy runs in our future. No more Plan B.”
The whimper of complaint that I let loose in response to that should shame me, but I’m too far gone for that.
Curse groans at the sound, keeping one hand splayed at my pelvis, the other rising to my throat, gripping just hard enough to make my next gasp feel choked and tight.
He presses with both his hands now, forcing the back of my head and my ass harder against the wall.
“Do not make that fucking sound again.”
“I…I can’t help it.” It’s hard to speak with his fingers caging in my throat, my very voice. “It’s your fault! I’ve never…With anyone else…Never felt so…so…”
After a final, threatening squeeze, he releases my throat without warning, using that hand to grip his cock. His other hand remains on me, unyielding on my pelvis. Holding me with bruising force, he begins to violently jerk himself off.
“Yeah,” he rasps. “That makes fucking two of us.”
Two of us?
No way. He might be hard right now. He might give into lust he never expected with me. But there’s no way he feels like I do. No way he could understand this toxic longing, this desire that I know will one day doom me.
“Touch yourself,” he growls. He fists his cock harder.
“I don’t know how!” It’s true. I’ve tried in the past. Tried to reclaim that part of myself. Tried to wring some pleasure out of my own flesh instead of sinking into old memories. But it never worked. It never made me feel anything besides a numb sort of nausea.
“Yes you do.” His teeth are at my throat. “Stroke yourself. Nice and hard. The same places that I licked you yesterday.”
His words make my clit pulse so hard that I don’t even need to listen to the meaning in them.
My own body is demanding pressure, screaming for it.
When I succumb to need, to his command, and find my clit with trembling fingers, my entire being lights up in response.
This is nothing like trying to touch myself when I’m alone. Nothing.
“There you are,” Curse says, his voice throaty with a sneering sort of satisfaction. “There’s my angel. My only fucking angel.”
My touches feel clumsy and strange against my own flesh, but with Curse with me in here, I’m already close to coming. I’m right there, banging on the door of that release. But for some reason, I can’t quite get through it on my own. I whimper again, loud and needy, even though he told me not to.
“Christ.” His fist falters as hot and viscous white surges from his tip, coating my stomach. Branding me. The hard lines of his abdomen contract, his hips driving forward, his eyes rolling back.
And that’s what does it. That’s what throws me over that edge. It’s not my own fingers doing it. It’s him. His pleasure. Seeing him come undone.
My orgasm is so intense it borders on pain. It doesn’t give me things, but demands them of me. Just like he does. My jaw drops in a soundless scream as I come, clenching, throbbing, feeling him drag his own tip through the mess he’s made of me.
When I come down, barely breathing, I realize that Curse has already moved away. Without him looming over me, the water cascades down my front. It washes away everything.
“You warm enough now?” he asks.
Words failing me, I bob my head in a jerky nod.
“Good.”
He opens the shower door, then leaves.