Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
My giggles echoed throughout the cottage as I stared up at the man I loved more than the moon loved the tide.
His fingers dug into my side, his smile just as wide as mine as he tickled me until I could hardly breathe.
The smell of wood smoke from the fireplace, alongside the warmth of his favorite cookies I baked fresh this morning, filled my senses as I gasped for air
“Silas, stop! You’re going to make me wet myself!”
“Oh, Mrs. Godwin, when you get wet, it won’t be because I’m tickling you.” He waggled his eyebrows before winking and planting a kiss on my cheek.
I took his face into my hands and touched our noses together. “You are such a primitive beast sometimes, did you know that?”
“Can I not tell my wife how much her pussy means to me?”
“Silas!” I gasped and smacked him on the shoulder. “Language! You know that—”
“Makes the prettiest blush fall over your cheeks? Yes, I did know and I love it…” he trailed off, the cheeky smile falling as he twisted one of the sea glass beads woven through my hair. “Almost as much as I love you, Stellaviva. My living star.”
I swallowed past the thickness building in my throat, my hands tightening on his face as I pressed myself closer to him where we lay in bed.
When we kissed again, it was slow and languid, our tongues mingling and breathy moans lingering between us.
“Say it again,” I whispered between kisses.
He took my bottom lip between his teeth and I groaned into the sharp tease.
“I love you,” he repeated, pouring every ounce of longing into his words as his hands wrapped around my ass and pulled me on top of him.
We were still naked, bathing in the morning light and reveling in the honeymoon glow washing over us.
He was hard beneath me and I couldn’t stop my hips from rolling, finding every sweet spot of pressure and grinding into it.
“Again,” I moaned as I rose onto my knees and sank down onto his cock.
“I love you,” Silas panted, lifting his hips to thrust into every roll. “With every breath, every sunrise, and every falling star… I love you.”
My vision turned.
Glass went flying across the kitchen of our cottage, crashing against the white stone walls and shattering onto the floor.
“Don’t you fucking dare throw things,” I spat. “Do you think I’m scared of you, Silas Godwin?” I stomped to where he stood, toe-to-toe with him, his ragged breaths teased the strands of hair hanging around my face. “Act a beast all you want, but you will not chase me away. Do you hear me?”
“Fuck!” he shouted. “Fuck you and your rules! I need to be free, Corynne! Don’t you understand that?”
“Free? Free from what? Our home? Our future children? From me?”
“From everything!” he sputtered, his hands flying up in exasperation before they hovered around my neck. “Gods, what don’t you understand about it? Sometimes I just want to, to—”
“What? Choke me? Do it then, you godsdamned beast! Do it!” I grabbed his hands and forced them around my throat, pushing them inward with my grip until the veins twitched in my neck. “Choke me. Shut me up. If you leave, you’d be killing me anyway, so you might as well do it here and now.”
“Stop this,” he growled as he tried and failed to remove my grip.
“Do it, you pussy!”
He shouted, his feet carrying us backward until my back hit the counter with bruising pressure, “Is this what you want, woman?”
“Y—yes,” I gasped defiantly. I didn’t fight. If he was going to do this, he was going to fucking own it.
Silas squeezed harder, his teeth bared as black spots danced in my vision. “Why do you do this to me?” he asked as he held me. “I need freedom, Corynne, to do this for us. To bring home gold and prosperity for us, our children. Why can’t you see that?”
“All I did was love you.” Tears slid down my cheeks as my consciousness wavered, my voice cracked and broken. “Why has it never been enough for you?”
“That's the fucking problem. You drive me crazy and I can never get enough of you.”
His lips crashed down over mine, teeth gnashing and biting with rage with every breath.
I gasped as he let go of my throat, the oxygen rushing back in a dizzying wave as he grabbed my waist and shoved me onto the countertop.
He tore into my powder-blue skirts, leaving them as scraps of fabric littering the floor.
Roving hands clenched my thighs and wrenched them open.
Silas stepped between my open legs, shoved his trousers down, and entered me in one brutal thrust.
I cried out, swimming with pain and sensational pleasure while he wrecked me. Skin gathered under my nails as I clawed at him, my tears streaming down my cheeks and onto his shoulders as he fucked me with a passion that left me raw.
“I hate you,” I cried. “I hate you so fucking much.”
My memory shifted again.
My toes gripped the edge of the cliff, rain engulfing me as I screamed, “Don’t go!”
Black sails unfurled on a merchant ship that sailed like hell through the storm. Men moved aboard, their silhouettes the size of ants as they doubled down on the roping.
All except for one.
It was a shadow I’d be able to identify anywhere, through any lifetime.
“Silas, please! Don’t leave me!” I sank down to my knees. Mud sloshing beneath me, but I didn’t feel it. My heart ripped in two, a great chasm spreading my ribs apart until I could do nothing but squeeze my arms around myself in the hope of keeping them together.
He’d finally done it.
Silas was sailing toward fame and glory while I sat begging for him to stay. We were supposed to build a life together. There was to be a house full of children running through our green pastures, digging for sea glass from the shores below and listening to the tales of our love.
Instead, I watched him sail away.
The roiling tempest inside quieted as the one above raged on. If he didn’t want me, if he preferred glory above all… Then I’ll give him a glory he could never escape.
I stood, stepping toward the very edge of the crumbling cliff face.
“I hope you find it, Silas Godwin.” I spat, my tone hushed, but dripping with venomous conviction.
“I hope you sail to the ends of the Earth and find pain waiting in every triumph. I hope you live a hundred lifetimes uncovering the secrets your heart has buried, only to have the truth torn from you again. You will find a love so deep you cannot live without it….” My toes hung off the edge, the jagged rock biting into the pads of my feet.
“And will be forced to watch it die knowing there is nothing you can do to save it. The stars will guide you, and I will become your death; your Stella Mortis.”
As the words left my lips, I took my last step forward.