CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed my hands until they bled. But no amount of my own blood was enough to wash away the stain of all the rest.
I lay panting and sprawled on Griffon’s chest, my body utterly spent but my mind unable to get enough of him. He was already lasting longer and had started taking his time as he worked me over that edge, again and again. I was sore—so blissfully, deliciously sore—and I never wanted it to stop.
“I’ve never seen your back,” I grumbled against his warm skin.
He tensed beneath me, so faintly I might have imagined it. Or perhaps it was the aftermath of his seemingly mind-blowing orgasm, if how loudly he’d cried my name was any indication.
“I realized that yesterday. I was going to say something this morning, but…” I shrugged against him. “There were more important demands.”
His silence jolted me out of my sex-addled stupor. I tilted my head to look at him. Something like fear, or at least apprehension, creased his brow.
I ran my fingers over the tightness. “What is it? I’m just curious about your tattoo. I first saw it peeking over your shoulder at Dray’s.” A wry smile twisted my lips. “Even then I thought it looked sexy as hell.”
But he didn’t smile, and mine slowly faded. “It isn’t a tattoo,” he finally said. “It’s a…brand. Marking me as Oath-less.” He paused and I suddenly knew I didn’t want to hear what he said next. “And a scar.”
I traced the tiny bit of a harsh swirl I could see, just over the top of his shoulder. A line of silver-white tracked around the edges, stark against his bronzed skin and the night-black ink. No—the black brand. The edge was slightly raised beneath my finger and I shuddered.
“I thought it was part of the design,” I whispered, horror dawning. “Please tell me this doesn’t cover your entire back.”
He gave me a sad smile and slid out from beneath me. I pushed myself up as he knelt in front of me, some remembered horror cavorting behind his tight gaze.
“I’d never shown anyone this,” he said softly, “until being whipped for the rounders. I negotiated with the Archon to keep it private. Fifteen lashes, instead of ten. Cade is a One C, like me. One century. He’s discreet and doesn’t give enough of a shit about me to ask questions.”
I held my breath, that horror deepening with every word he spoke.
He pivoted until his back was toward me, and I couldn’t stifle the cry that lunged up my throat.
Harsh lines and jagged points covered his entire back, like a bramble of twisted thorns.
The black was matte and hazy, as though his smoke had betrayed him in those first moments and burrowed beneath his skin.
It was somehow vile and brutal and captivating all at once.
I raised shaking fingers to trace his scars, the raised, silverly lines outlining every curl, corner, and point. “What hap—” My fingers curled into fists. “Tavin.”
His raven-black waves brushed against his neck with his nod, the uppermost tips of the brand disappearing beneath them. “The bastard rather enjoyed himself tracing it. Fancied himself a fucking artist, I imagine.”
“Why didn’t it heal?” The scars were thickest around the large swirls in the middle of his back, like Tavin had particularly relished digging the blade in there.
The deep gouges from the lashing hadn’t scarred, but lighter gray lines crisscrossed his back where the whip had flayed through the brand.
“He never let it,” he said slowly. The weight of those words stole my breath. “Sometimes he traced it himself. Sometimes he’d come in high on fable and have one of his lackeys do it while he…”
The image of pleasuring myself while he bled flashed through my head. Bile surged up my throat.
“He’d fuck himself, or one of his slaves, while he watched. Samira was his favorite. By the time she smuggled me out of that hellhole it had forgotten how to heal.”
His shoulders tensed, the hard lines of the brand drawing tight over his sculpted body. I sucked a breath through clenched teeth as rage flooded my veins.
“He kept me chained and drugged for weeks. His little pet to beat and torture as he pleased. It was payback for Cyprian. His daughter had lived there. He had no idea what the brand meant or that I was the one who killed her. He just wanted a corpse to send a message with.”
“How did he capture you?” My voice shook with my anger. I couldn’t stop imagining that knife, its razor-sharp tip carving into Griffon’s open wounds again and again.
“I was…struggling. After Cyprian. I inherited my father’s temper, but once it was over I was just…
horrified at what I’d done. My protections had been stripped and I was drowning in guilt.
I was barely cognizant, living in the Abing Forest and passed out on the ground as often as I was awake.
I didn’t realize how close I’d wandered to the fields.
” He snorted, the motion jerking his rigid shoulders.
“All but delivered myself to the front gate.”
“He’s dead,” I ground out. “He’s fucking dead.”
Griffon turned back to me. He picked up my hand and gently uncurled my clenched fingers, then worked on the other.
“You can’t. Just like I can’t. Brie will die without fable, and revenge isn’t worth risking something happening to the fields in the vacuum Tavin’s death would leave.
” He scoffed, the sound dripping derision.
“It isn’t like I didn’t deserve it, anyways. ”
“You didn’t—”
“Yes,” he said gently, his hands rising to my face, “I did.” He reached over me to a table on his side of the bed and dug something out of the top drawer.
He handed me a small box. “I had something to say this morning, too. But you had more important demands.” His lips twitched up and I huffed out a sharp breath, the tension flooding out of me.
“What is it?” I turned it over in my hands, the wood smooth and cool under my fingers.
“Your birthday present.”
I glanced up at him. “I think the dress, the party, all the pretty words, and the five orgasms were present enough.”
He kissed my brow. “Disagree. Open it.”
I eased the lid open and removed a small hairpin from a cushion of finest silk.
A fire-orange citrine, shaped into a flame, adorned its tip.
The gem was nestled against a base of gleaming silver, its branches waving like a dancing fire frozen in time.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, turning it over in my hands.
“A pretty package to hide its true purpose.” He plucked it off my palm and unscrewed the fire pendant, the craftsmanship so fine that the seam between the two pieces was all but invisible.
He tipped it over my palm and a few sprigs of annuleaf slid from the narrow cylinder.
“So you’re never trapped again, like you were at Dray’s.
And,” he added with a smile, unscrewing another hidden piece at the opposite end of the pin.
It fell away to reveal a sharpened tip. “It wouldn’t be a very good gift if you couldn’t stab someone with it while you waited on the annuleaf. ”
I took the pin from his hand, the metal warmed by his skin, and pressed my finger into the tip. The lightest pressure drew a drop of blood. “This is incredible, Griffon,” I breathed, emotion clogging my throat. “I was terrified, when I couldn’t fight free and that dagger was feet from my gut.”
“I know,” he said softly. His eyes fell to the blanket. “I could have intervened sooner. But I didn’t particularly care for you back then, so…” He gave me an apologetic shrug.
I chuckled. “Well, I almost killed you, so I suppose it makes us even.”
He grinned. “You didn’t come close.”
“Oh?” A smirk snaked across my face. “While you were sitting there being a sexy, smug, triumphant bastard, I was busy ripping annuleaf”—I waggled the sprigs in front of his face—“out of the ground and shoving it in my mouth, along with those stagberries you were laughing at me for.”
He paled and my mirth vanished, replaced by acid churning my gut.
“You dangled Solstice in front of my face about five seconds before the ironweb failed. If you hadn’t…” I swallowed. “I would have killed you. And been glad for it.” Tears stung my eyes. “Gods, I almost—and none of this would have—”
His lips crushed mine, his fingers tangling in my hair. He rose on his knees and used his weight to put me on my back for the fourth time in one night. “Shall we review all the ways we’re glad that didn’t happen?” he asked, a smile on his lips and the promise of ecstasy in his voice.
“Yes, please,” I gasped.
“Mmmmm,” he rumbled against my neck. “I could definitely get used to you begging.” But he was just as needy as I was, and I didn’t have to beg at all.