Chapter 32
EVER
Never!”
I can’t respond. Not with my lungs nearly crushed and a mask of black dirt plastered over my face. But my heart speaks for itself, calling to him with pounding beats.
“I hear your heart,” Eli says. “I followed it all the way here.”
Please Eli, please. Air barely passes through my nostrils. Stale, used air that won’t last long. I don’t know how long it’s been since I fell. The buzz in my ears is constant, the pain permanent. The urges—out of control.
“They’re talking, yours and mine. Complaining about how far apart they are,” he says, clearly trying to distract me.
Liar… tell me more.
“Keep breathing.” His voice is closer, but I’m so tired. My brain clouds, my head weightless enough to float away.
Sleep. I could sleep here. Maybe forever.
Cold air hits my foot. Then my leg. And I’m dragged out from beneath the mound. I suck in the rush of air and choke on dirt, coughing endlessly, hacking up painful, breath-stealing bits.
Eli lifts me into a sitting position. My body is fragile and droopy, caked in dried blood, marred with fresh wounds.
He whacks my back, and even that touch in my current state has my blood racing.
Once I’m breathing properly again, I shake, blinded and disoriented.
His thumb rubs the dirt from my eyes, and I force them open.
And there he is, a knee on either side of my thighs, one arm holding me up and the fingers of his other hand already on my ear.
His face is splattered with mud, his legs and torso soiled, his arms coated up to his shoulders.
I search for his darkness, expecting the earthy scent, the fingers on my neck, the urge to run, but it’s tucked out of reach.
His lightness too. No warm breeze or morning rain drawing me toward him.
I only see the gray in between, the unknown. And the highly questionable.
A smirk finds his cheek. The irresistible kind. He leans in and pulls me the rest of the way up to his face by my ear. Then kisses my dirt-smeared lips, long and hard. “Found you.”
“You can touch me,” I rasp, awareness returning with a gush of emotion and even more pain.
“You let your darkness out.”
I take a shuddering breath. “I tried to kill my mother.”
“You’ll get another chance,” he says, as if my concern lay in my lack of success.
“That’s not—”
“Shh. It’s over now.”
I throw my arms around his neck and bawl.
My skin touches his, even colder than the damp earth below us, but the contact feels unreal.
Like grasping for a memory just out of reach.
When I pull back to make sure it’s really him, he balances a teva roll with his thumb and pointer, his hold impossibly gentle considering the strength he harbors.
I part my lips, and he slips it between them as smoothly as if they were his own.
Next comes the fire stone from his pocket.
Then the blaze of red. I inhale. And layers of despair burn away.
Purple smoke rises between us. He doesn’t take a single toke. It’s only my lungs that trap the calming smoke inside, that let it loose in long, slow puffs. I cough once and go back for more. He lifts that roll to my lips until it’s no more than a speck pinched between his fingernails.
When my brain is tinted purple and every thought lands on a cloud before hitting my consciousness, he pulls me against his chest. Those strong arms unwavering, he lifts me up and proceeds down the mound of dirt, a lightness in his step. I bury my face in his neck.
Please don’t let me go. Never let me go.
Every movement is like a fresh attack, each wound reopened. I don’t have the energy to cry or writhe in pain. My interior shrivels breath after breath, punishing me for resisting the urges. And on top of it all, I might still be unconscious under a heap of dirt.
How do I know what’s real? I squeeze my necklace in my fist, but it does nothing. Ametrine is gone.
Eli carries me across the room and through winding passages leading down and down until he slips into a cave much larger than where Zandrite kept the tunnel runners.
Around the entire perimeter, water streams down from a crevice where the ceiling meets the uneven walls and disappears into gutters on the floor.
I try not to think of the waterfall where I killed a piece of myself, where I strayed so far from sanity that I didn’t know I’d lost it. But I can’t make the thoughts stop. Ametrine’s voice echoes in my head. You betrayed yourself.
Steam billows up around us, the air moist and thick with the scent of minerals. My eyes dart from one light stone scattered on the floor to the next. He sits me beside a pool of water and plops down next to me, untying his boots.
He notices my eyes set on his hands. “I came back down here for my boots after the arena collapsed.”
Came back? When was he here? He must have his pack somewhere nearby too, because he’s wearing a shirt now.
I nod and stare blankly at the hot springs around me, four of them.
Each rivals the size of my tub in Caldera, brimming with sparkling blue water and lit by light stones that sit at the bottom of the gray holes.
The edges are worn smooth from the constant gurgle of water.
Eli sets his boots aside, lining them up evenly, one next to the other, then peels off his black socks. “The water will heal you. They’re hot springs.”
“How did you know about this place?”
“I’ve been staying down here in the lower levels listening to what’s happening above. I can hear everything a few floors up or down if I focus on it. It took a few nights to get the flow of things and make a plan.”
“You’ve been here for multiple nights?!”
“Yes.”
I give him a moment to elaborate and no longer, instantly impatient. “Why didn’t you come for me?”
“I checked in on you. Constantly,” he adds, as though his ability to listen in on every conversation or the frequency with which he hacked into Kelter’s brain makes a difference.
It doesn’t. Not when it’s his touch I crave, not when I’m about to implode with arousal so powerful it’s toxic. “I needed you!”
He finishes stuffing his socks inside his boots and turns to me, one brow rising. “Because you didn’t want to fuck him?”
I huff. “Not only because of that.”
Eli stands up and lifts his shirt over his head, revealing ripples of abs and endless amber brown skin, his fresh bruises barely visible in the faint light. “He wanted you. The jerk could only think of that no matter how hard he tried not to.”
“He didn’t really want me.”
“No. He would have settled for anything with legs.” He sighs. “But I heard every thought he had of you.”
“I don’t—”
“And I could feel your heart go crazy when he got close, like it is now.” He tucks his thumbs under his waistband and shoves his pants down.
I set sight on his crotch, the bulge tenting his black boxers.
“I can’t help that my body wants to fuck everything in sight.
” I seal my lips, trying to stop myself from saying more.
I don’t have to explain myself to him. He doesn’t want anything more than my body.
I say it anyway. “But the rest of me only wants you.”
Those boxers land at his feet. He kicks them aside. I blink. I’ve never seen him completely naked. It’s debilitating. And intimate to the point of discomfort.
So I make it worse, my breaths unstable. My mind too. “You’re naked.”
Like instinct, he grabs himself and runs his hand down his length. “You could link with every godsdamn Vaile in the realm, and you’ll still only be mine.”
“You know.”
“Of course.” He slides into the water, lost beneath the crystal surface from his waist down. “I feel everything he feels.” Brown clouds form around him, the mud washing away. He dips underwater and scrubs his head before popping back up, curls flattened to his face.
I hadn’t considered how Kelter linking would affect Eli. Did he give in with the first woman he saw when he felt the urges? Why does the thought make me want to chain him up and carve my name into his forehead?
“Your turn.” He walks through the water to the side of the spring and reaches for my shirt.
I shiver, not from his cold touch in the heated room, but from the scrape of his fingers up my back as he lifts my shirt over my head. Then he stares.
I reach for my chest, but I can’t hide the impression covering half of it. His hand arrives first, landing on the broken loops down my center.
“It’s only half an impression,” he says, dragging his fingers over the black marks, following the circles. “Kelter hid this from me too.”
His touch feels forbidden, as if that part of me wasn’t meant for him. I put my hand over his, over my chest, moving with my nervous breaths. “Maybe the other side will show up soon.”
“Maybe.” He slips free and wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me closer. And closer. Until I’m sitting on the edge. I freeze, desire terrorizing my insides.
Then, as if he knows I’m too stubborn to make the final move, he grabs my ear and pulls me off the ledge and into his arms. I toss my necklace onto my discarded clothes on the off chance Ametrine can actually feel my arousal through it.
My thumbs dig into the solid muscles of his biceps, and I want to hold on forever.
The hot water is strangely slippery. It envelopes me, darkening ten shades as I shed my layers of dirt.
But the filth isn’t the only thing that falls away.
The minerals cling to my skin, invisible, but I feel them aggregating.
And vibrating. They seek out my damaged flesh and mend every inch of my body that touches the water.
The pain is ushered away as fast as it started—not eliminated, but reduced to a more tolerable level. Even the hunger pangs lessen.
Looking at me as though he might combust, Eli reaches behind my back and unclasps my bra without a struggle, and I recall it’s not the first time he’s seen—or removed—a Calderan bra.
He moves unreasonably fast to catch my treasures as my bra falls into the bubbling water, leaving my breasts exposed.
He holds the cork up between two fingers, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “I know where to put this.”
I snatch it and smash it down next to our clothes, then rescue my bra, my cheeks heating.
He smiles at my reaction and places the guitar pick next to the cork with an intentional mildness that cracks my composure.
Softness is excruciating when it comes from him.
It only lasts so long before he succumbs to his own strength. And it gets me every time.
He holds the coin up between us, inspecting both sides, then rolls the edge down the center of my chest along the line of my impression, straight through my birthmark.
The targeted touch diffuses outward, affecting far more of me than I expect.
His cold fingers brush over my skin, his breathing rough, eyes stuck on me.
I search for words, something to dissipate the heaviness between us, but nothing comes to mind except things I shouldn’t think, much less say.
He pulls the coin away with no warning and sets it aside. “Do you need to eat?” His question is awkward and forced, as if he’s not sure he said the right thing. Or never wanted to say it to begin with.
I try to calm my firing nerves, failing with every cell in my body. “I only need you.”
He shoots me a playful smile and lowers his head beneath the surface. And down. To my belly button. He kisses it before he surfaces, then wiggles my pants and underwear down my legs, pulling each pant leg off my feet with ease under the slick water.
“Eli.” I don’t know how to exist within this moment. I’m not sure I even can.
“Never.” His tone is a tease as he takes me in his arms. Then forces me below the surface. I fight immediately, panicking at the memory of being held underwater by a guard. He puts a firm arm around me, tucking it tight under my breasts, and lifts me up again.
My hair hangs in my face, water raining down. I shove it aside and look up at him. “What the fuck was that?”
He kisses the top of my head and dunks me again, rubbing his hands through my hair while I’m under, then smoothing them over my shoulders and chest. His touch is electrifying.
I stop fighting. A little farther down, please.
I don’t need to breathe. But instead of the continued downward path of his hands, caressing my ribs and stomach, and lower, he inserts his fingers in my ears and twists.
I shout at the sensation, releasing a jet of bubbles as I try to escape.
He pulls me up and out of the water, setting me on the side of the spring and soaking our discarded clothes. I succumb to goosebumps, the air like ice. I suck it in and smack my hands over my ears.
He pries them away, tugging at my wrists and smiling. “Just getting the dirt out so they’re ready for my tongue.”
I rip my arms out of his grasp. “I’m stark naked, and your focus is on my ears?”
He laughs as he climbs out next to me, a thigh-clenching sight of darkness and muscles in places I didn’t know were possible.
With his height, I can’t even tell that I’ve grown taller.
And it’s impossible not to look at his cock sticking straight up, even more impossible not to imagine climbing onto his lap and lowering myself over him, how he’d fill me until I ached.
He slings an arm around my back and the other under my legs and scoops me up. “We’re moving. It’ll take at least an hour for the dirt to filter out of the spring.”
I snuggle against his frosty skin, shivers climbing up and down my spine.
It only lasts seconds, then he crouches at the edge of another spring, nearly identical, and glides me into the water.
I gasp at the sudden return of heat, inside and out.
He follows with a splash, then pulls me into him.
Our bodies meld together, fitting like two halves of a torn map reunited, all the lines and shapes connecting. My head rests against his chest.
But without the distraction of pain, I’m left wide open to feelings… and urges. But wanting to be taken so deep and hard that the world crumbles around me doesn’t quite align with the unchecked emotions that slap me around, the doubt.
He leans his back against the spring wall, still holding me firm in his grasp, water up to his hip, up to my ribs. Time falls into an unknown rhythm.
Without lifting my head or even a finger from his body, I form a weak fist on his chest and speak into his skin, my nose flattened against him. “You let me go.”