Chapter Thirteen #2
He jerked and hissed, his voice nothing but black. “And you’re on fire because you probably have a fever.” He grabbed my shoulders, his thumbs finding sore bruises. “Get off me. I’m not doing this tonight. You don’t want me. You’re high and—”
“No, I do want you. I’ve never wanted anyone more.”
His fingers squeezed, hurting me.
I sucked in a breath, hating that pain threaded with pleasure.
That pain only added to my pleasure.
That pain and pleasure somehow became a delightful, dirty thrill.
Memories of him calling me that nasty little M word clotted my mind.
Masochist.
After today, I didn’t think that was right.
I’d hated every moment. I’d panicked the moment Kyle started cutting me. I’d almost passed out from the agony as he shot me with those horrible paintballs.
I didn’t like pain.
In fact, I could safely say I loathed it and had had enough to last me a lifetime.
But...I liked him.
Oh God...
Memories from earlier tonight flooded me.
The way the drug made me swell with fondness and burn with friendship.
I didn’t just like him.
I love—
Whoa!
I couldn’t. Not possible. I could accept I lusted for him. I could tolerate appreciating him when he defended me, but love?
Nuh-uh. No way.
How could I love the man responsible for this tragedy?
I couldn’t.
Ever.
But...you can like him.
I paused, sinking back into need.
Yes, it was tolerable to like him.
I liked his particular brand of pain. Delivered with feelings and fears—his feelings and fears. I liked that each time he touched me, he left little souvenirs of his lust, bruises of his desire, and scars of his affection.
A tidal wave of want flowed far too swift and savage.
I trembled on his lap.
My skin burned with the need to be marked, gripped, squeezed, and autographed. Facets of myself unlocked in the dark, unfurling and embracing without scorn or worries.
Who cared about right and wrong, love or hate?
Right now, I wanted him.
I wanted him to deliver bliss as well as brutality.
I wanted him to kiss me, then bite me, caress me, then fuck me.
No, I wasn’t a masochist.
I was a Mercerchist...or a Wardchist... whichever surname he now went by.
I laughed under my breath.
I’m a Mercerchist.
It could be a new catch-phrase.
I could put it on a t-shirt.
He could tear that t-shirt off with his teeth—
Oh God.
Rolling my shoulders, I sat heavier on his straining erection. “It’s not a fever.” My vision became hazy, my eyelashes heavy. “I’m on fire.”
“You need antibiotics.”
“My blood is burning, Hen.”
“Stop that—”
“No, you stop it.” I moaned and fell onto him, burrowing my face into his strong neck.
With another bed-shaking growl, his hands slipped off my shoulders and landed on my hips. He went to shove me off—
“I had a dream,” I blurted.
He broke out in goosebumps as I kissed his hot skin.
“I had a dream you were inside me.”
His cock lurched in my hands. Words strangled from his self-imposed silence. “I-I’m not going to fuck you.”
“Why?” I nipped his jaw.
He choked. “I’ve already told you. You’re hurt.”
“That never stopped you before.”
He stiffened into stone.
He shut down.
Every connection between us sucked into a black void, and...I took matters into my own hands...literally.
Rising on my knees, I grabbed his erection and angled him up. Without second-guessing, I positioned myself over his crown and sank down.
“Putain!” (Fuck!) Henri snarled as I sheathed him completely.
I cried out as his long, thick length penetrated me in one slick glide.
The thick invasion of him felt so threatening, so comforting, so familiar.
Glimpses of my dream reappeared.
Henri thrusting into me in a meadow full of bluebells. Kissing me in a thicket of purple pansies. Fucking me in a field of red, red roses.
Every glade was the colour of a bruise. Every flower stained with pain.
We might’ve been surrounded by crushed and wounded things, but each pump inside me was pure pleasure, pure happiness, pure bliss.
My thighs stuck to his as I sank down the final inch.
My core pinched a little, not quite ready—despite my erotic dream—to fully welcome such an invasion.
Faint echoes of what my body had endured hinted maybe Henri was right, and I shouldn’t do this. The needling in my ribs was back. My bruises growing hot. But then his cock twitched inside me, and...I stopped thinking.
Folding onto his chest, I found his mouth blindly in the dark.
And I kissed him.
Rode him.
He snapped.
I moaned as he surged upward. Seated himself deep, deep, deep.
Pain transformed into fire.
I became that fire.
He was fire.
We transformed into twin flames as he pierced my body and claimed me.
Twin flames.
Twin flames...
Those two words pushed over a domino of memories—
“He’s a mystic as well as a Vedic astrologer, Khushi. Be prepared for him to scare you as well as enlighten you.”
My heart fluttered as my darling brother called me by my nickname.
Khushi ...it meant happiness. He’d named me Ily thanks to a mistake when he was six years old.
My mother and father had extended that name by googling what Ily could be short for and had chosen a pretty Arabic one for sunshine, which matched my eyes.
I loved my name, but I loved it more when he called me Khushi.
“I’ll be fine.” I wanted to hug him, but that would be too much. He’d come into society despite all its noisy smells, sounds, and people. He’d come to support me. He’d come because today, I’d find out my destiny thanks to the stars.
“Ilyana Sharma?” An old Indian woman with white hair and a hundred beautiful bangles on her wrists beckoned us from her desk. “He’s ready for you now.”
Krish sucked in a breath, fortifying himself to step into a room with a stranger.
I knew better than to offer comfort or touch him. Instead, I let him sink into his way of coping.
Opening the door to a small office with heavy scents of sage and bright yellow calendula flowers hanging in a drying bunch by the window, my eyes fell onto an elderly Indian man sitting primly at a desk scattered with astrological charts, notebooks, and Post-its.
The moment our gazes met, he shot to his feet and frowned.
Krish stiffened. I went to ask if he was okay, but my fear for my brother’s wellbeing was utterly overshadowed as the Vedic astrologer, who was said to converse with celestial energies and far off planets, planted his weathered hands on his desk and said, “You are blessed with soulmates, child. In fact, you have one standing beside you. He found you in this life and recognised you as kin.”
My heart warmed.
I’d heard this tale before. My mother often told Krish and me that we all had multiple soulmates. A clan of them. An astral tribe that could manifest as our siblings, parents, and friends throughout our lifetime.
I smiled but then that smile fell away as the astrologer sat back down and studied my star charts that couldn’t be completely accurate, seeing as I couldn’t provide him with my exact date or time of birth.
Scowling, he said, “You are blessed, but it seems as if you requested to endure adversity. Your karma is worthy of an abundant life, but you will soon have a choice to make.”
I glanced at Krish as we each took a seat on the opposite side of the mystic.
“A choice?”
The astrologer grabbed my hand over my planetary charts and uttered a warning that haunted my dreams for weeks afterward.
“One day, you will meet your twin flame. This is different to a soulmate as soulmates are individual spirits drawn together by past lives and love. A twin flame is two souls from one source. One spirit split into two bodies. When you meet them, you will know. You will recognise them just as surely as they will recognise you. You are the same. You are one. But karmically, you are destined to destroy each other. The moment you meet, your choice is already made. This match will not last. The intensity will destroy both of you. If you accept this union, you will both burn—”
My eyes flew open as Henri bit my throat and thrust harder, yanking me back from the past.
Burn.
God, yes.
Everything was burning.
Every nerve ending, every heartbeat.
But I burned the hottest where we were joined.
Letting my hair go, Henri tipped forward and sought my mouth again.
The moment our lips touched, I forgot about wizened old mystics and detonated with brighter flames.
He cindered me to ash as his tongue dived into my mouth.
Our lips parted wide, colliding with force and violence.
Just like our other kiss, this one transcended the act of sex and made it something more.
It felt as if we merged, melded, fused, and blended.
Tingles spread from my heart and into every cell.
My clit throbbed. My insides clenched around him.
His large hands swooped up my body and cupped my cheeks, cradling me so tenderly, so ruthlessly, all while his mouth plundered mine and his body stabbed deliciously deep.
He thrust hard.
Viciously hard.
He fucked me from below all while I rode him from above.
We turned wild.
Grunting and panting, we struggled to get a proper breath, breathing each other in, sucking each other down, all while the pain in my side hinted medically this wasn’t advised.
Screw commonsense.
If I had any brain cells, I would’ve run from this man back at the bar in Paris.
If I’d listened to the Vedic astrologer, I might never have stumbled into Henri’s orbit.
He sucked my bottom lip into his mouth as I threw my arms around his neck and pressed my chest to his.
“You are the same. You are one. You are destined to destroy each other.”
Pinpricks of bruised agony blazed down my front.
A whimper of discomfort even as bliss coiled and spindled in my lower belly.
I couldn’t see him.
The lack of sight only made our kiss that much richer, that much deeper, that much more terrifying.
Our tongues spoke for us, silently feeding each other our truths.
Our lips made promises, weaving our faults into one.
“This match will not last. The intensity will destroy both of you. You will both burn.”
His every thrust forced me to gyrate and arch over him, riding him harder, faster, rushing toward the finish line that blazed like a comet in the dark.