Chapter 49 #2
Zade froze. His mouth opened, then closed again.
“You don’t even know him. He’s a monster.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, reaching toward his injured wrist.
Soren stepped in, his arm sliding in front of me like a bar of ice and steel. “Don’t apologize.”
Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t get around him.
Whatever weakness Soren had displayed after saving my life had disappeared. He was immovable.
“Zade Bloomberg,” Soren cut through any sentimentality in the room with his frozen tone.
“This is the last time I will warn you to stay away from her. Even if she weren’t mine, she would never be yours.
I’m only letting you keep your secret because Eliana would be crushed if she knew what you did.
Next time, I don’t care how much she begs.
I won’t hold back. I’ll tear you limb from limb. ”
Zade’s eyes darkened, something in him dimming.
He gave me one last look of empty resignation and shameful regret before nodding once at Soren and walking out.
Wait.
Zade?
What did you do?
Whatever Soren was talking about was so bad that Zade would rather abandon me with someone he hated than fight for me.
The question sat on my tongue, but the weight of unveiled truths hanging in the room crushed the words back down and forced my attention toward the abomination whom I’d just bound myself to. He was a product of damnation, and I was well and truly damned.
When the door clicked shut behind Zade, I folded. I fell back to sit on the bed, my limbs hanging uselessly from my body.
“Soren,” I whimpered. It was all I could get out. My thoughts were a blender of heat and warning.
A steady hand pressed me back until I was lying down. He loomed above me, tilting his head like a predator studying its prey or a king his treasure.
His scent campaigned for all my attention as the icy citrus layers coasted atop a faint hint of the smoke that followed him, no matter the fact that I’d never seen him with anything that could leave that smell behind.
My eyes caught his, silver bands winding through the black until it was like staring into two moons over deep water.
My pulse skipped, then raced. This wasn’t just hormones. My chest felt tight, like my very soul was reaching for him. And yet my spine ached with the need to expand.
“What’s happening to me?” I whispered aloud my private thoughts.
“I’ve told you. You’re mine.”
I sighed and inhaled that truth.
“I’m not simply being possessive. It's written in the very fabric of space and time. It’s your destiny to be mine, just as I’m yours.
And if you ever let him kiss you again, I’ll cut his tongue out of his mouth.
” Soren’s voice was a calm that cut. “You’ll find it on a chain in a jewelry box addressed to you.
The bracelet will go great with the fingers that I’m still contemplating turning into a necklace. ”
His thumb traced my lower lip slowly, his touch mapping me. Then it slid down my chin, pausing in the hollow of my throat.
“Do you know how I knew what he was doing to you?”
I swallowed hard under his thumb. “How?”
I shouldn’t have taken the bait. Playing his games wouldn’t end well.
But.
I liked whatever he was making me feel.
I didn’t want it to stop.
I wanted more.
More.
“I wasn’t being cryptic before.” He smiled faintly. “I can feel every emotion you have. Right now, you want me to kiss you. You need it. You want me more than you ever wanted him. And you don’t even understand why. Sometimes I don’t either.” He mumbled the last bit.
Soren didn’t say he could see every emotion as if they were etched in my face. He said he could feel them.
My cheeks burned. I turned my face slightly, lips pressed together, trying to slow my breathing.
That means he can feel the heat pooling lower and lower…
“It’s been that way since the first time you looked me in the eye. Before your exam.”
“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
“When you’re sad, I feel sad. When you’re angry, happy, annoyed…horny.” He let out a strangled laugh. “I’m tied to you. I once thought it was by choice, but I'm beginning to question if I ever stood a chance otherwise.”
I couldn’t say anything, so I breathed and nodded. It was pretty much all I could manage as I tried to process it.
“Say it again,” he whispered.
“Say what?”
“What you told him. How you feel about me.”
I’m his. I love him.
I shook my head.
Soren’s hand moved down to my throat, wrapping around my neck.
Then he came for me.
He descended on me like a hawk for the little field mouse.
It was lips against mine. Then tongue and teeth. Tangled, we intertwined into each other with fervent hunger.
His weight pinned me, one arm scooping under my back to pull me up into him. My legs wrapped around his hips without my conscious permission.
I wanted to force him on me. Make him not stop. Make him keep going.
He crushed me with his body, taking everything he wanted with his tongue inside my mouth and a hand roaming down, cupping my breast through fabric. I gasped into him when his thumb brushed over my clothed nipple, already aching and tight.
The most pathetic moan escaped from my mouth into his, and his grip tightened as if I’d given him liquid gold.
His aggressive touch turned my blood violent as it rushed through my veins to my lower extremities.
My core clenched.
“Say it,” Soren growled in my ear, his hot breath invading every space his voice couldn’t reach.
I shook my head.
He pulled back to look down at me, but his hand kept moving lower and lower until it was sliding up under my tank top.
This time, when his fingers found my nipple, it was his rough skin against my puckered peak as he pinched.
Hard.
“Agh,” the sound tore from me.
“Words, Eliana,” he said, voice low and sharp.
I kept silent too long. His hands gripped both breasts now, pulling and teasing until my back bowed toward him, and my eyes fluttered shut.
“Soren…”
The heat roared higher, but my mind still stumbled in the space between I’m his and what am I doing?
One of his hands left my breast, trailing lower until his palm slid under the waistband of my pants and cupped me between the legs over my underwear. His weight kept me pinned, my thighs twitching in reflex as heat surged through me.
A sharp gasp left my mouth.
“Say it,” Soren said again, too calm for the way my whole body had gone ragged. “Say you’re mine. Tell me how you feel.”
I didn’t deny it, but I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t give him that part of me, no matter if he'd had it all along.
His hand pressed and rubbed, slow at first, testing and evaluating. I knew the wetness soaking my panties was giving him an answer my mouth refused to form.
“I can’t,” I whispered, hating how small I sounded. “Please…”
His eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t pull away. He pushed deeper against me through the thin fabric.
“You’re wet,” he said flatly. Then his mouth curved, not quite a smile. “Your soaked pussy tells me exactly what your voice won’t.”
My teeth sank into my lower lip as his fingers breached the edge of my underwear.
“Mmm—” I couldn’t stop the sound in time.
“Fuck, baby girl,” he murmured, fingers gliding through my slick folds, brushing my clit just enough to send shocks down my spine. “You need me as much as I need you.”
The confession tangled in my chest. I didn’t know if it was true or not, but it felt true in the moment.
“What…what are you going to do to me?” My words sounded scared, but even I could hear the husky flavor of want and desire in my voice. And if that wasn’t indicative, the fact that I was now grinding against his touch was an impossibly obvious tell of what I wanted.
More.
“I’m going to take care of you. I always will.”
His lips claimed mine again just as a finger slipped inside me. The invasion was startling and overwhelming, but it lit a fuse I didn’t know existed.
He was there to catch all my moans. That’s why he wanted to kiss me again. He wanted every part of me to belong to him, even down to the most intimate of sounds I could make.
When a second finger joined, stretching me open for him, my hips jerked against his hand, a strangled sound spilling from my throat. He pulled back from the kiss just enough to watch me, his eyes drinking in every twitch and gasp.
His thumb worked my clit, circling it slowly, deliberately, like he wanted to hypnotize me into finally saying those words out loud again.
I’m yours.
“Oh, Soren, it’s…” the words dissolved into breathless moans as my hips rolled to chase the rhythm.
I didn’t know the words to clarify what it was, so I wasn’t sure why I tried to start that sentence in the first place. And then all I could do was rock my hips to try and chase the incredible, mind-numbing sensation ripping through every cell in my body.
“You’re mine, Eliana,” he said, the words like an oath. “Your body. Your mind. Your very soul. You always have been mine, and you always will be.”
Whatever mountain I’d been climbing, thinning air suffocating me at that deadly altitude, it collapsed in a heap.
The mountain inside me shattered in a rush of heat and tension, my whole body straining toward release.
His hand clamped over my mouth to catch the cry, but his fingers didn’t stop.
They worked me through every pulse, every tremor, until I collapsed back into the mattress, boneless.
Oh. I was still on a mattress.
In my estranged father’s house.
Lying completely spent under someone who had been my enemy not too long ago. I’d imagined murdering this beast dozens of times.
When his hand finally withdrew, I felt empty in a way that scared me—like I’d been full of something more than just his touch.
The bed shifted, cool air rushing in where his heat had been. It was only now that I realized he'd pushed my shorts and underwear down mid-thigh, and my shirt rested above my breasts. I shut my eyes, trying to catch my breath, not quite able to move yet.
The sound of running water came from the attached bathroom.
“So,” Soren called over the noise, “Should I watch you from the chair tonight, or will you finally let me in your bed?”
When he returned, a damp cloth dangled from his hand. He knelt between my knees without asking, pushing them apart again when I tried to close them.
“What are you doing?” I snapped, heat prickling my cheeks.
The bastard actually laughed. “I’m taking care of you, Eliana. It’s my job.”
The rag was warm, and every pass between my thighs made my breath hitch—not from arousal now, but from the intimacy of it.
“Do you expect me to…to do that for you now?” I muttered, pulling my clothes back into place the second he gave me room, now that my bones had solidified once more.
He climbed back onto the bed, arms banding around me like steel. “Not yet, Little Shadow. Just let me take care of you.”
“Why?” I breathed and sank into him. “Why do you want to take care of me? Why do you want me?”
My voice shrank with every word, but Soren’s hold only tightened.
“You were made for me, Eliana.” Soren’s mouth nuzzled against the crease of my neck.
“All of you. Your determination, your intelligence, your stubbornness…even that adorable habit you have of rubbing your palm on your thigh when you’re nervous.
Your fears. Your dreams—especially the ones you’re afraid to admit even to yourself.
” His mouth moved to my ear, and he whispered the rest. “Everything you do, say, and even feel makes me want to be good enough for you. It’s been that way since the dawn of time.
You’re the very soul I don’t have. You were created just for me. ”
The words could have been a trap. They most likely were. I didn’t need him to take care of me. I wasn’t dependent on him. I knew that nothing about me was special enough for him to mean those sentiments.
But lying there, wrapped in him, I couldn’t do anything but stay and wish they were dipped in a fragment of truth.