26. Briar #2
Instead, he lowers his face until his damp hair drips water droplets onto my shoulder. His breath ghosts against my lips when he whispers, “Maybe I’m just bored. Maybe I’ve got nothing better to do than pick a fight with a princess.”
The word princess lashes through me and I wrench my hand free, stepping back and feeling the broken glass cut into my feet.
There are many things that I could handle him calling me, but choosing the one that sets me up to seem like a pampered, spoiled woman who has never faced anything hard in her life is one that hits too close to home.
It reminds me just how much my world and life have changed. I’m not a princess any longer. I’m a survivor.
So why doesn’t him saying that rile me up further? Why does it tear me apart to think that that’s the word that came to his mind for me?
“If that’s how you see me after everything, then get the fuck out.”
I spin away, but I don’t get far. His hand clamps around my arm, tight and unyielding as he invades my space once more.
Every instinct screams to hand myself over to the anger at him not letting me disengage, to let it burn me alive so I don’t have to feel anything else.
The option to do that is scorched as he stares down at me and whispers, “Or maybe I care because I see the same sadness and anger in you that I’ve been fighting since I was a kid with two dead parents and a little brother who I had to protect, wondering why the world could be so fucking cruel.”
The truth slips out of him like a crack in his carefully constructed mask, and it snags at something broken inside of me before I can stop it. My breath stutters, my body still taut in his grip, but my mind clings to that glimpse of him.
It’s like he reached into my chest and pulled the truth of me into the open by naming his own feelings.
I’ve asked myself over and over why the world is so cruel, but every time I come to the same thought, that my mother wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for me. She would be home with us right now if I had just done my duty and followed the path laid out for me as the princess.
My mother’s face flickers in my mind, swallowed by mist and dragged to her knees, her eyes closing because of me. Because I wasn’t strong enough, because I was foolish enough to think I could choose my own path. The guilt wraps around my ribs until I can’t draw breath.
A strangled gasp wrenches out of me, my chest heaving as the storm inside rises again.
It claws at my throat, threatening to drown me in the same helplessness that’s been eating me alive since the portal snapped shut.
My body curls toward him before I can think better of it, fingers digging into the hard muscle of his arms like he’s the only buoy left to hold me above the tide.
Breath rushes from me too fast and shallow as I gasp, the edges of the room blurring as panic overtakes me. My voice rips out of me broken, gasping between sobs. “Please.” My grip tightens, nails biting through cloth and into his skin. “Please, make the pain go away.”
Tears blur my vision before I can stop them, gathering at the corners of my eyes until they overflow, spilling down my cheeks. For a heartbeat, something shifts in his face, be it surprise or shock with seeing me break in a way he isn’t built to handle.
His voice drops low, barely a whisper as he gazes down at me with an openness that would steal my breath if I had control of it. “I only have two coping mechanisms for that, Briar. Neither of which include soft words and comfort.”
The dam inside me fractures at the thought of drowning in this despair forever. Tears spill freely now as the pain wells sharper, twisting me in half with the image of my mom writhing in the same torture chamber I was held in, chained and suffering because of me.
My knees almost buckle beneath the weight.
“Please, Elias,” I sob as my forehead falls to press against his chest. “I need it to stop. I need to feel something besides this and I can’t hold onto rage for anyone but myself for long enough.”
His body goes completely rigid, his hesitation radiating from him even without words. For a moment I think he’ll tear himself away and leave me clawing at the silence alone.
I pull back to look up at him at the same moment his hand rises, and his rough palm brushes a streak of wetness from my cheek.
“You don’t want the alternative,” he murmurs, the words hushed but heavy, warning edged into every syllable. His gaze pins me, sharp and unflinching even as his thumb ghosts another tear away. “Not with me. Not like this.”
It takes me a moment to catch my breath and to understand his words through the haze of my grief.
He isn’t talking about comfort. He’s talking about the only outlets he knows being fighting or fucking.
Coping mechanisms that burn brightly enough to keep the unwanted emotions at bay, but never long enough to extinguish it.
The knowledge should make me recoil, but a desperate part of me rises up sharp and undeniable, because this is exactly what I want at this moment. Anything to stop the memories from replaying, anything to drown out the thought of her screams tearing through me until I feel them in my bones.
I don’t care if it’s toxic. I don’t care if it’s only a temporary reprieve that leaves me hollow after.
“I need this, Eli,” I breathe out, voice hoarse but threaded with certainty as I clutch at the front of his shirt. “I need to feel something besides pain. I need my brain to be forced into silence.”
The hand that had been cradling my cheek shifts in an instant, his fingers sliding into my hair until they tangle deep, the grip firm enough to sting against my scalp.
He doesn’t let me stand free another second, tugging me up onto his body as his boots crunch against the broken belongings scattered along the floor.
The breath is knocked from me as the wall meets my back. He crowds the space between us, broad shoulders cutting off the room, the heat of his body searing against mine until I can’t tell if I’m shivering from the chill of the stone against my back or from the proximity of him.
His palms are wide as they grip my ass fully, and the memory of his hard length beneath me as I fed him my blood comes hurtling back.
His head dips, the scrape of his jaw brushing my temple as he leans down until his mouth hovers just above my ear.
“It’s only a bandage,” he rasps out, voice edged with a desire I’ve never heard in him.
The words are as much a warning as they are a promise, and it lights my body up, flooding my mind with the exact distraction I need.
“The pain you want to forget will still be there in the end,” he warns. “It might even feel worse.”
My hands lift to tangle in his damp hair, pulling him back enough to stare into his eyes.
“So make the temporary relief worth it,” I whisper before sealing my lips to his.