Chapter 13
ELIVANDER
Kelter’s presence finally pulls away, leaving only shades of anger, a shadow sulking in my mind.
Never’s heart races, but no longer from nerves. She wants this.
I reach inside myself for that piece of her I stole, and like I made her say those words that night in the woods, like I walked her off that broken bridge and into my arms, I take control and slide her hand out from under her head, without even touching her.
It’s no different from how I hold up that wall around her heart day after day, keeping her from loving me.
Surprise ripples across her face. “How are you doing that?”
“Did you ever doubt that you’re mine, so much so that I keep a part of you inside me, that I control you?” I ask.
“How?”
“Something happened when I blocked your mother’s magic through your body. I took some of you.”
“You took some of me,” she repeats. “And now you can control me?”
“It wasn’t on purpose. She was using her gift on you, hurting you, so I blocked her magic.
But my hands were on you, not her. You were caught in the middle.
I’ve never blocked magic indirectly like that before, and I think your essence made it behave differently.
It let me take a part of you, and now it’s inside me, under my control. ”
I glance at her, expecting fury, but her wide eyes scream for more, the intensity in them louder than words. “Then control my magic so I don’t hurt you.”
“I tried. I can’t, just like I can’t block it. Your magic misbehaves as much as you do.” Disappointment tugs at her face, pulling her lips into a pout. I’ll fix that. “You want to see what else I can make you do?”
That slow nod is all I need.
Matching the hesitancy weighing down her heart, I float her hand toward her heated center. She tilts her hips upward, seeking contact, even as she fights to keep them flat.
I hover her hand there and watch her shake in anticipation. “If I could touch you, I’d have you on your belly in a heartbeat, panties around your knees. And I’d take those hips and raise them up in the air… and you know what I’d do next?”
She whimpers, her body rolling with need and flooding me with enough urgency to snap my restraint. “It better involve your mouth or cock, or I’ll—”
“Shh.” I drop her hand onto her panties, over the wet spot, the swelling I remember so well. She trembles. “I’d start by running my fingers up and down your pussy until you’re so wet you’re dripping on the bed. Then I’d take that wetness and make tiny circles over your tight ass.”
Her desire comes out in a half moan, half whine. Then, without moving a godsdamn muscle of my own, I make her shove her hand inside her panties.
A gasp passes her soft lips.
I’m doused with every feeling of hers. I wish I knew her thoughts that go along with them.
“Eli,” she whispers. Her urgency pounds through me.
“More?” She has zero desire to pull her hand away, but fear underlies her longing. Fear of what I’ll think, I suspect.
“Yes,” she admits shyly, and I’m entranced by this foreign, vulnerable side of her. A glimpse behind the swears and screams, past the anger and mistrust. It’s so godsdamn beautiful.
“I like how your hand looks inside your panties,” I offer, proud of myself. I told her I was a gentleman.
She laughs nervously. “No surprise there.”
I lie on my side, one hand pulling spare panties from my pocket and slipping them under my waistband, the other holding up my head.
I like the way the fabric feels around me.
And that it belongs to her. I make her trace her fingers along her slit and over her clit, wishing it were my hand soaked in her wetness. Her scent intoxicates me.
“Know what I’d do once you were nice and wet?” I pretend the image is real, that I can feel her slickness. “I’d press the tip of my finger against your ass and slowly work it inside.”
Her hips shift, her heart trying to beat mine up with the way it fights in her chest. “Would I like that?”
“I wouldn’t know. Being with you wiped my mind clean of every woman from my past lives, remember?”
She glares at me. “Liar.”
“But I think you would, and you’d want my tongue on you at the same time.”
She moans in response, looking about ready to explode with desire, her eyes round and begging.
“You want your pussy fucked, don’t you?” I ask.
Her chin bobs slightly in silent permission.
I make her glide her pointer finger into herself, and I don’t even have to spread her legs wide. She does that all on her own. “Good girl.” I reward her with a swirl of her finger.
“I-I don’t…” Heavy breaths move her tits up and down, her newfound timidness fighting with undeniable lust and forcing it upon me.
She never fails to take my emotions beyond the realm of calculated composure, even before I accidentally stole a part of her.
Now I feel her emotions, her physical pain, her pleasure…
her everything. The night I rescued her and Milo was the first time I knew how she felt about me because of that piece of her.
And I couldn’t stay away. But I was still mastering my control over her, or I would have stopped her from running away from me.
I move her finger out and back in with a wet slap. Then again. And again, building rhythm. “Look how sexy you are fucking that tight hole. Imagine it’s my hand.”
She lifts her head to take in the view, her legs open, hand moving inside her wet panties.
Her mouth parts, and I’m afraid she might pass out when her eyes roll to the back of her head.
She lets out high, breathy moans, closer and closer together the more her finger curls and burrows, knuckles hitting wet flesh.
Such torment, to be able to control her movements and feel how much she wants me—but not touch her. I slide two of her fingers in with the next entrance and spread them apart. A groan escapes her from the stretch. Her hips ram the air, seeking collision, body with body.
It should be mine.
“I hate that you can’t touch me right now,” she hisses.
Me too. “It’s probably for the best. At least for you. I’d flip you over and take you so hard that the only thing louder than your screams would be the smack of my hips against your ass.”
She whines, and I take control of her other hand, make it slip under that slick, black waistband and move it right down on top of her clit, stroking to the rhythm of her pumping fingers.
“I’ve never done this,” she chokes out through broken breaths, her fingers still moving frantically under my control.
“In front of someone?”
“No.” She whimpers. “Ever.”
Well, damn. “Why not?”
“I don’t know.” She opens her legs even wider and adjusts her hips for a better angle.
I grip myself to the point of pain, only to keep myself from straddling her hips and replacing her fingers with every inch of me.
“Other men haven’t made any of this appealing.
And I’ve always had death to keep me company when I’m alone. It’s not all that arousing,” she adds.
The thought of her with other men makes me want to claim her in one position after another until she forgets they ever touched her. I watch her busy hands. It’s killing me. I want to hold her down and slam into her with the force of every man in me combined. “But bloody balls are arousing?”
“Ugh, go away. It was the thoughtfulness that made me want you, not the balls.” She moans and tosses her head back and forth, her face contorted with pleasure, eyes closed.
“You want to kick me out of your room?” I ask.
A stab of her panic hits me. “No, don’t leave me alone.”
“Look at me.” She turns her head at my rough voice, her eyes cracking open to study me, then my bare chest and finally following the motion of my fist inside my pants. “I’m never leaving you.”
Her pleasure courses through me along with my own building tension, the shivering starting at my core, the throbbing and mounting pressure stealing my mind from any other part of my body. I can barely breathe. “Now you take over.”
“No,” she pleads.
“Show me how you come on those fingers.”
Her groan is raw and unhindered, taking full possession of the moment.
I release my control of her, and she lowers her panties and speeds up her hands, one jutting in and out, the other rubbing her clit in furious strokes.
I sit up for a better view as her shaking knees fall nearly flat to the bed.
The way her soaked finger disappears inside of her over and over has me losing my mind.
What kind of cruel punishment is this, that I can’t put my hands on the curve of her hips, my mouth on that wet pussy?
Or that I can’t slide myself deep and hard inside her?
“Tell me what you’re thinking.” I want to know every thought and desire, every fear and failure.
I want to hold her heart through every beat and never let go.
But that’s all I can do. It will always be me wanting her, and her heart safe under my control…
keeping me out. I’ll do anything to prevent triggering the second half of the curse, as much as it hurts to keep her from loving me.
She only gasps and moans, not answering, so I pull it out of her.
“That I wish you were inside me,” she cries.
I can’t get a response out. It seems all blood and thought has abandoned my brain for my cock. Godsdamn greedy bastard of an organ.
The intensity takes me, my hand pounding me as hard as our beating hearts combined.
Everything spirals inward, life-threatening tightness in my center, waiting to detonate.
With one last look as she lets go, at her knees rising into the air, her thighs clamping around her hands, her rolling hips and slamming chest, I lose it.
The world could collapse, and I couldn’t be pulled from this moment.
I scramble up onto my knees next to her and free myself from my pants just in time, tossing her panties aside.
Everything I was holding in, so tight and close, explodes outward in burst after burst—all over her stomach.
Her endless waves of ecstasy roll through me, her cries so damn consuming.
Feeling her release inside me, with my own…
it’s different. Longer. Tied up with so much emotion.
But another blast of feelings tears into me as if they broke through a barricade—longing, rage, jealousy.
Fucking Kelter.
“Get out of my head!” I yell aloud.