Chapter 9 #3
One after the other, all the other versions of her stepped out from the mirrored barks and walked toward her, accusation in their eyes.
The scared one.
The used one.
The silenced one.
And Daphne’s heart roared with fury. “I lived through you,” she spat. “I survived despite you. I owe you nothing. Nothing.”
The reflections didn’t even flinch while her anger pulsed and her hands curled up in fists. She’d burn it down. Burn it all to hell, and none of these versions of her would ever touch her, ever again.
She only had to find a way to make them go, once and for all, she only–
Daphne felt him, through the bond and in her heart, the moment he was with her, and she closed her eyes. “Hunter.”
He didn’t come to her from the trees, didn’t charge in with the intent of saving her–she needed no such thing. No. He came to her as fog, white and pure as first snow, and wrapped around her legs, curled himself on her hips and back, taking shape behind her.
When she turned, he was there.
The wretched figures surrounding her were still there, accusing and broken. He looked at them. And nodded, as if to salute them all. As if they were not a distorted, useless part of her that she despised. “You see them,” she stated.
“Of course.” His blue eyes locked on hers, and he tilted his head. “You hate them.”
“How can I not?”
His smile was as soft as the touch on where her heart beat fast. “They are you.”
Temper snapped. “No. Never again.”
Disappointment flickered in his eyes for a flash, and it was gone. It made no sense, but she didn’t care enough to delve deeper into it. “Why are you here?” she asked.
“Because you needed me.”
“I need no one.”
It was the truth.
It was a lie.
Pain clutched her throat, but she ground her teeth.
“Maybe,” he conceded, completely unbothered. “You wanted me here, though.”
And that was enough for him, wasn’t it? What she wanted, even what she needed and couldn’t voice. He would be there for it.
Hunter didn’t want to take power, to take control–of her or their relationship.
He didn’t want to hurt her, abuse her, make her feel small and useless and weak.
He was safe, whole, while her rage scorched the inside of her chest hollow until there was nothing but ashes.
And even keeping her back ramrod straight, she leaned into the feeling of him.
The figures surrounding them disappeared into the same nothing she felt inside.
Tired.
She was tired. So damn tired. Of surviving. Of telling herself she was great. Of holding the line with spite and rage. “I need–” she closed her eye, hating the word. “I want to feel something that’s not this.”
He didn’t even stop to think. “I’m here. Just tell me how.”
She drew a long breath, let it go slowly, her eyes still closed. Take control, she whispered through the bond. It was easier to ask if she didn’t have to say it out loud, as if hearing those words of surrender would make it too real for her to deal with. Take me, she added. Make me forget.
He brushed tender fingers on her cheek. “Look at me, sweetheart. I love you,” he said when she complied.
They lay on the moss that bloomed beneath them like a cradle, impossibly soft now and glowing faintly with dreamlight.
His hand traced her body, a slow caress from her lips down to her breasts, her hips, her thigh.
She couldn’t have said what they wore before, but now it was only skin.
He kissed her, his tongue sliding into her mouth with deliberate sweetness, dancing with her until she was soft as clouds.
Her leg wrapped around him, her hands running over the muscles of his back, down to his ass, gripping with a need that didn’t have time.
Hunger and pain mingled together, and she let them, sure he was strong enough to sustain both.
He ran his hand along her side and then, with a slow, fluid shift of his weight, he pushed her arms up and pinned them there, his body straddling her lower half while holding her steady.
She tried to move, but his hand was a vise on her wrists. Panic slithered in. He felt it, of course he did, but he didn’t let go. He dropped little kisses on her face that didn’t do much to quell her anxiety, her fear. She couldn’t move, not with him holding her wrist up and lying halfway on her.
“You’re safe,” he told her.
She hated the strain in her voice when she said, “What are you doing?”
“I’m showing you.”
“How weak I am? That you could do anything you want with me right now?”
“No, sweetheart.” Suddenly, she didn’t feel his body only where they touched just a moment earlier, but she was covered by him, or by something that was him, but was not.
Like he was made of nothing, and that nothing touched all of her at the same time.
“I’m showing you that you’re loved. That you’re safe. ”
“How?”
Thinking was getting harder, her brain hijacked by every brush of his impossible touch. That warm, all-over sensation bloomed lower now, pressing her hips to the ground.
“Because I have control,” he said, his voice rich with an authority made of velvet and thunder. “But you say the word, and I’ll stop. Trust yourself to feel safe. Trust me. Let me carry you for once, Daphne. There’s no shame in it.”
“You’re shackling me,” she managed, breathless.
“In a way,” he murmured.
It wasn’t rope or cuffs. It was power, his power, coiled around her wrists like silk and steel. Holding her in place, while his hands were free to roam, stroking her breasts with greed, massaging and teasing until her back arched without permission.
And the pressure on her clit, damn it, it didn’t stop.
A phantom touch driving her wild while he never moved faster, never gave more.
Just held her there. Suspended between pleasure, frustration, and fear.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered right before the moan slipped past her lips, uncontrollable.
“You don’t have to,” he said, and then his mouth was on her, taking a nipple between his teeth with a low, sinful sound. His lips closed around the swell of her breast, his tongue warm and wet and all ravenous indulgence. “Let go,” he growled against her skin. “Let me–”
“Fuck me?” she breathed, voice broken, raw.
“Ah, sweetheart,” he purred, dragging his mouth up her chest, “you always read me so well.” Then he nipped her again, his voice low and dangerous. “Just say the word, and I’ll stop. But if you don’t, then...”
She didn’t.
Because it was maddening.
Because it made no sense.
Because from the waist down, he was still fog.
Dense, tangible, living fog, pressing into her with impossible precision, slipping around and between her thighs like heat made sentient, teasing and coaxing and owning every inch of her, every point of pleasure, all at once, without mercy.
It circled her clit in a delicate suction, a soft vibration, while the mist stroked her inner thighs, wrapped around her hips, her wrists pinned overhead like translucent manacles, his mouth hot on hers.
She couldn’t move. She was at his mercy. Held open, breathless, helpless.
And his cock, damn it, she could feel it, thick, hard, pulsing at her entrance. Not fully flesh, not fully fog, but something in between. Heat and pressure. Promise. Threat. Feats. Famine.
He didn’t move as much as he hovered there, touching her in all those ways she couldn’t quite rationalize. Taunting her. She wanted to buck her hips or grind down. Do something, anything.
But she couldn’t.
Because she wasn’t in control.
She’d asked him for that, hadn’t she? Not to take her away from here, not to fix her. She’d asked him to hold the storm while she took a breath.
And he did.
So she stopped fighting, bracing, working, thinking.
And she gave in.
The moment she did, it all crashed into her like lightning through her bloodstream.
His phantom mouth sealed over her clit and sucked, slow and deep, flicking it with infuriating precision while his hands filled with her breasts and his mouth kissed her. The sensation built and built, but he didn’t let her go.
In one smooth, solid thrust, he entered her.
He was around her, on her, inside her, thick and hot and so goddamn real everywhere that she screamed. Her back arched, her thighs trembled, and every part of her went taut as she shattered apart in his hold.
The bond flared wide open, a full, blazing flood, and she felt him, his pleasure, his need, his shameless, soul-deep filth–not just lust, but the raw craving to consume her in all the ways that meant love to him.
It all echoed inside her as if it were her own.
The low, guttural groan that tore from his chest vibrated through her ribs.
Every stroke of his cock sent aftershocks into both their bodies, linked now, fused at some unseen level.
She came again, brutally, her orgasm punching through her like an earthquake, and she felt him come with her.
It was too much.
It was perfect.
His power held her still while he thrust through it, riding them both to the edge and over again and again, until she was spent and undone and powerless.
Every pulse of her pussy was met with his groan, every clench matched with another flood of hunger from the bond, the heat of his pleasure blooming inside her like it belonged there.
There was no boundary between her body and his. Between her mind and his.
Between anything at all.