Chapter Thirteen
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Ily
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I WOKE WITH A START.
I felt as if I’d lost something but couldn’t remember what.
Echoes of Krish.
Of Peter.
Henri.
God, Henri...
I groaned as sleepiness switched into pure fire. Fire in my blood, my heart, my core.
Every part of me hummed.
Fragments of my dream taunted me and the wetness between my thighs hinted it hadn’t been a platonic kind of fantasy. I felt empty after being full. Cold after being hugged. Lost and confused and lonely and—
Just a dream.
Kicking my legs beneath the suffocating blankets, I rolled onto my other side.
I hated that even the cotton acted like an aphrodisiac. I’d grown well acquainted with achy desperation since meeting Henri, but this was far, far worse.
This felt insidious...growing hotter and hotter—
Ignore it.
Burrowing onto my side, I winced at the slightest flares of discomfort. The softest twinges of pain as I did my best to ignore the heat in my lower belly and tingles in my breasts.
I made the mistake of opening my eyes.
I froze.
Him.
The smallest halo of white light bled over the sweet-smelling cream pages of a book. The nightlight, jammed into the thick story, gave just enough glow to read by—a tiny puddle in the dark.
In the shadows cast by the booklight, my gaze drifted over strong masculine hands holding the binding spread. Veins popped over bruised knuckles, tendons threaded under tanned skin. Both marvels of the human form worked their way up powerful forearms.
I stopped breathing as my eyes locked on his bare chest.
Chiselled with darkness and sculpted by the monster housed within, his pecs twitched as I studied him. The flinch dragged my eyes to his stubble-decorated jaw, over the hollows of his stern cheeks, and up, up, up to his burning, blazing grey eyes.
Even in the pitch darkness, even in this fortress of blackness, he was beautiful.
So wonderfully, horribly beautiful.
The fire in my blood broke into an inferno.
Not thinking. Not feeling. Merely existing in this present, fragile moment, I pushed upright and let the blankets fall away.
I’m burning...
His sharp inhale as his gaze fell to my bruise-colourful breasts made my entire body shiver. He froze where he sat upright, supported by folded pillows, his chin tipped down and face cold.
The room switched from calm rest to savage awareness as we stared at each other.
Goosebumps coated me as he sucked in his bottom lip and bit down.
I couldn’t stop looking at him.
How gorgeous he was holding a book. Reading. How stunning he was strangling a book that wasn’t just a prop but a lifeline.
He’d been reading a while, judging by how many pages existed beneath his thumb.
He held the tale as if it would save him from himself and cursed me for dragging him out of it. This was his meditation. Words were his salvation, and I felt absolutely humbled to know it.
To know him.
I swayed closer.
He stiffened.
A plate covered in crumbs on the bedside table hinted he’d eaten something while I’d been asleep. A sandwich waited on another plate...for me?
How long had I been asleep?
Did it matter?
All that mattered was this.
This man.
This tortured, terrible man who liked to read.
An avenger who’d defended me. A monster who’d mauled me. A ghost, a nightmare, a lonely boy...
I shivered again, flames licking all over my body.
I’d always been drawn to intelligence. Always loved to debate books on history, gemmology, and faith. My parents had given me an entire library on my sixteenth birthday. Titles full of the truths about living and dying and finding a balanced middle way.
The trick to existing was accepting that every facet of life and death was impermanent.
I’d forgotten that in my fight to survive here.
The only law in this world was the law of change. Nothing was permanent. Everything began, endured, and ended.
Eventually, this stolen silent moment of sharing a bed with this terribly gorgeous bookworm would end, and...I mourned it.
I grieved every other moment I’d lived and cursed, valued and unappreciated.
The memory of the caves still haunted me.
The nightmare of dragging Peter still ached in my limbs.
It’d been one of the worst days of my life.
Yet...it was over.
It no longer existed.
But he existed.
I existed.
And we would never have this moment again.
I trembled as I reached out and plucked the book from his frozen fingers.
I didn’t bother looking at the title.
I merely closed it reverently, turned off the booklight, and placed both on my abandoned pillow.
“W-What are you doing?” He croaked in the darkness.
I could barely make out his face. The glow of his uncertain eyes.
The flashing red dots of cameras watched us.
Could they record in pitch blackness?
I hoped not.
Because what I was about to do probably hadn’t been done by any other jewel in the two decades this place had existed.
“Seeing you reading?” My voice came out sultry, husky. Coals simmered in my heart. Embers kindled in my blood. Flames grew hotter, greedier.
Pulling the blanket off his thighs, the faint gleam of his skin appeared. His stomach flexed as I uncovered him. The dark patch of trimmed hair between his legs. And the rapidly swelling erection crawling up his belly. “It’s one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen.”
He coughed and reached for the blankets.
I ripped them to his knees, leaving him as bare as me.
A growl rumbled in his chest. “Nightmare, stop it.”
I shuddered at his nickname for me.
I smirked as I remembered mine for him.
“I need you, Hen.”
“Don’t.” He shook his head. “Don’t call me that.”
With a pounding heart and racing desire, I crawled over him and sat on his lap.
He jerked and looked at the ceiling. “For the love of God, get off me.”
“Nope.” Nuzzling his throat, I sucked in his scent.
He smelled off.
Antiseptic with the faintest whiff of stone.
The white slash of a bandage on his arm hinted he’d returned to the doctor. Had he also patrolled the stronghold on his own? I sniffed again, dragging in the softer smells of soap and the wilder notes of sea and stars.
“Nightmare—”
“It’s Ily.” I giggled, the soft, giddy feeling of before tangled with the debilitating arousal pumping through my blood. “You know that. You know what it means. I love you—”
“Don’t,” he hissed.
“Don’t what? Say I love you?”
He groaned.
I grew drunk on his torment.
I revelled in my power.
“You’ve told me ‘I love you’, oh, I don’t know...two hundred times since you met me. Each of those three little letters. I.L—”
“Enough.” He tried to toss me off, but his touch was too careful, too kind.
My body warned that just because I couldn’t feel my bruises, they were still there...hurting.
I don’t care.
I gripped him with my thighs and pressed us tighter together.
Cock to core.
Heart to heart.
His answering growl made my hunger become starvation.
I needed him.
I needed to rock and thrust and come and detonate.
Whatever this drug was, I liked it.
I’d been afraid before.
Fearful of yearning and wanting and need.
But now...I gave myself over to it.
I quivered and craved and rocked my hips, pressing myself deeper onto Henri’s hardness.
“Fuck.” His hands clamped on the top of my thighs, stilling me. “Stop it.”
“No.”
“You’re hurt.”
“I don’t feel it.”
“I’m not doing this. Not while you’re injured—”
“You’re injured too.” I nipped at his sharp cheekbone.
He drew his head back.
He fell into silent darkness—tumbling into a place I couldn’t follow.
No...
Come back.
“Kiss me.” Pressing my hands against his slightly clammy cheeks, I pulled him close.
I wanted a repeat of that kiss back in our room.
I wanted to see him shatter as badly as he had the moment our tongues touched.
“No—”
“Yes.” I pressed my lips to his.
He froze.
His hands spasmed on my thighs as if I’d deleted all his keen intelligence and replaced it with staticky-white noise.
“Kiss me, Hen,” I breathed against his mouth, licking his plump, slightly too-hot lower lip.
I wanted him to snap.
I needed him to take control.
But a guttural groan rose from the depths of him, and with an almost pitiful whimper, he pushed me away.
He didn’t speak, but I felt him.
Felt his need.
Felt so drawn to him, bound to him, stitched to him.
After living in fear for so long, this stolen moment felt infinitely precious and wonderful.
Falling on him again, I kissed my way along his jaw. I gave him truth and vulnerability because in that moment, both were needed. Both were lifelines to keep him present. “I need you inside me. I need you.”
“Jesus Christ.” He let loose a string of filthy French. “The doctor will castrate me if she finds out I touched you while you’re like this.”
“I told you, I’m not in any pain.”
He groaned, but it came out more like a sob. “Fuck, I am.”
“Where? This pain?” I smeared my wetness over his cock, making both of us shudder and shiver.
He lost his ability to speak.
My blood turned to light as every molecule hummed for more.
The tease of a release poured yet more fuel on my fire.
I stopped fighting it.
Stopped fighting feelings and needs and knowings.
My hand dropped below and found him in the darkness.
“Ah fuck.” He grunted as I fisted him hard. “Stop—”
“No.” I grasped his length and squeezed.
He exhaled in a rush. “Don’t—ughhh.”
That noise.
That groan and growl and grunt.
It made my very spirit quiver as I stroked him, up and down, sharing my fire, making him burn with me.
Another groan fell from him, slashing at his self-control.
The timbre of his growl; the echoing, earthquaking tone. It vibrated through me, rearranging my pieces and sending me higher than the sun.
I squeezed the base of him, teasing us both as I rode his length, coating him in my desire.
His head tipped back. His lips pulled away as he snarled at the ceiling.
“I’m on fire, Hen.” I stroked his erection with tight little twists.
He snarled. Loudly. “Stop saying that—merde.”
I pressed my thumb into his crown.