Malin – The Past Comes Calling #2
Malin lingered in the water until it ran tepid, the oppressive quiet of the suite pressing down on her shoulders.
Staring at the empty doorway, she felt another fracture form in her breaking heart.
She did not care about the loss of physical intimacy; she only cared about Will.
He was still actively suffering, trapped in the nightmare of his torture.
It devastated her that even after finally confessing his horrors, he still would not let her comfort him.
Watching him walk away in silence struck her like a brutal, physical blow.
Completely drained, she sat in the tub, torn between screaming, crying, or finally giving up the exhausting fight to drag him out of his own darkness.
Her heart somersaulted when Will reappeared in the doorway with a thick, plush towel.
She stood up, the water cascading off her skin, completely devoid of embarrassment under his gaze.
Subconsciously, her wet hand flattened over her lower stomach.
At barely two months, it was still perfectly flat, but oh, how she wished she could see that bump, as it would be a tangible, undeniable proof of the life they created.
Will’s breath hitched. His eyes widened, darkening instantly, and that devastating, dimpled grin she loved so much finally broke across his lips. Stepping close, he carefully wrapped the heavy towel around her shivering shoulders.
“I love you,” she whispered, desperately hoping the words could shatter the barrier between them.
His smile softened, though a shadow still lingered in his hazel eyes. “I love you more than anything. That’s the problem.” He helped her step over the edge of the tub, pulling her flush against his side.
She let out a breathless, watery laugh, resting her hands cautiously on his waist. “You have a really weird way of showing it lately.”
He turned his face away, his jaw working with a desperate, raw honesty.
“I don’t want to lose you. Not to them, not to anyone.
I know the pirates are in the past, but I don’t know how to fix what they broke in my head.
” He tapped a frustrated finger against his temple.
“And then there is the rest of it. You are so powerful, Sparks. I’ve spent my entire life being the shield.
The one in charge that people come to for help.
The one with the skills to save everyone else, even without massive magic.
But you… You have this extraordinary, world-bending power.
And now with the baby on the way… I feel obsolete. I feel like I deserve you even less.”
“Will, look at me.” She reached up, cupping his cheek to gently force his gaze back to hers.
“When I fell in love with you, I was a completely powerless human. You know none of that matters to me. I love you for you. Magic has absolutely nothing to do with it.” She pressed a soft kiss to his jawline.
“What if we just start over? Tonight. We don’t have to fix the world or the past. We just have to be right here. With each other.”
He paused, his chest rising and falling heavily against hers. “Yeah. Okay. I’d like that. I…” He started a thought, then trailed off, his large hand sliding down to linger at the small of her bare back.
“What?” she asked. She desperately wished their mental connection were stronger, so she could just pull the thought from his mind the way she could weeks ago.
She studied the face she knew so intimately well. The worry lines were still etched around his mouth, but the fog in his eyes had cleared, replaced by a steady, unmistakable heat. “Tell me. Please.”
She wanted to press her naked body entirely against him. She might have been furious with him hours ago, but right now, all she could think of was the heavy, mounting need pooling low in her belly.
“There’s something I want to try. You can say no.”
The old, mischievous spark of their early days ignited in her chest. “Try me.”
He met her gaze, and for the first time in a month, there was zero hesitation. “I want you to let me take control.” His voice dropped into a gravelly vibration that hummed all the way to her toes. “Just for tonight. Total control. No arguments, no second-guessing, no overthinking. Can you do that?”
Malin’s immediate, knee-jerk instinct was to bristle. His suffocating control was the exact thing tearing them apart.
But looking up into the dark, predatory hunger in his eyes, the difference was stark.
This wasn’t him caging her out of fear; this was him claiming her out of love.
And the truth was, after weeks of carrying the weight of two volatile magics, a kingdom’s politics, and everyone else’s trauma...
surrendering the burden of control for just one night sounded like heaven.
She had been starving for this. She wanted him… wanted this… more than anything.
“Just for tonight. In this bedroom only… yeah,” she said, her voice coming out breathless. “I can do that.”
His eyes widened slightly.
She smiled, realizing he hadn’t expected her to agree.
He stepped back, gently guiding her by the shoulders toward the edge of the mattress. “I mean it, Sparks. If you want to stop at any point, you say so. But I need this. And I think you do, too.”
There was no teasing in his tone, no softening the moment with a joke. It was direct, almost clinical, and the absolute gravity of it sent a shiver straight down her spine.
“Okay,” she breathed. “I trust you.”
Will offered a slow, warm, predatory smile, and then he was all business. “Good. Kneel at the foot of the bed.” He reached out, his knuckles brushing her collarbone as he slowly unwound the heavy towel, letting it drop to the floor. “You won’t be needing this.”
As she knelt stripped bare in the cool air of the bedroom, her nerves pricked with electric anticipation.
She obeyed, kneeling on the plush rug and resting her hands on the edge of the mattress, keeping her eyes locked straight ahead.
Will moved purposefully around the room.
A drawer slid open, and glass clinked softly on the dresser.
Her heart hammered a frantic, deafening rhythm against her ribs, but she bit her lip, resisting the urge to look back.
He stepped up close behind her. A length of cool, heavy silk slid around her throat. He knotted it loosely at the nape of her neck.
“This stays on.” His voice was a low rumble right beside her ear. “No matter what. For tonight, you are mine to do with exactly as I please.”
She nodded. The silk rested against her skin like a collar. It wasn’t tight, but the psychological weight of it was staggering.
It was a physical reminder that right now, she belonged entirely to him.
Will moved to her wrists, binding them together with a second silk sash, then looped it securely around one of the carved wooden posts at the foot of the bed.
He was meticulous; every knot was deliberate and inescapable, but completely painless.
As the silk pulled taut, her shoulders dropped, releasing a massive, suffocating weight of tension she didn’t even know she carried.
The relief of truly surrendering was intoxicating.
Will circled to the front, crouching down to meet her gaze. His hazel eyes were hooded, dark with possession. “We are going to use colors. Green means you like it and want to continue. Yellow means you are concerned, and we slow down. Red means I stop immediately. Understood? Color right now?”
She offered a breathless, wicked grin. “Green.”
He nodded, his gaze dropping to her mouth. “Good girl.”
The praise came out as a gravelly growl, hitting her somewhere between a physical blow and a velvet caress. Her thighs instinctively clenched. She wanted his hands on her now, but instead, he stood up and walked out of her line of sight, deliberately making her wait.
The anticipation was maddening. She squirmed against the silk bindings, straining to guess what he was planning, but his movements were utterly unreadable.
When he returned, she caught a glimpse of a blindfold, a small glass vial, and a long, slender feather.
“You won’t be needing your eyes for this either,” he murmured.
She tipped her chin up, letting him slip the blindfold over her face. The world instantly vanished into blackness. Stripped of her sight, the air in the room grew heavier. Every sensation funneled violently into her skin and her ears.
“Still green?” he checked, his voice floating somewhere to her right.
She nodded eagerly. A second later, she gasped, arching her back as a sudden, icy drop of thick liquid drizzled directly onto her collarbone.
Before she could process the chilling shock of the oil, the feather followed.
It traced the icy path down her chest like tiny, agonizing jolts of electricity.
The contrast between the freezing oil and the soft, tickling heat of the feather sliding down the valley between her breasts was a sensory overload.
He traced torturously slow circles around her nipples until they peaked painfully against the cool air, sending a heavy, liquid heat pooling directly between her thighs.
Will laughed, a low, deeply satisfied sound in the dark. “Sensitive, love?”
She nodded blindly, completely unable to form a single word.
He took an excruciatingly long time. The feather danced in unpredictable patterns, skating over her ribs, dipping into the shallow pool of her navel, and trailing whisper-light down the sensitive inner line of her thighs.
It was a ghost of a touch. It was just enough to make her gasp and strain her wrists against the silk bindings, desperately chasing the friction.
Then, just as the teasing became unbearable, the feather vanished.