Chapter Sixty-Two
Feralyn
The bed dipped.
I immediately woke, and an instant, frenetic energy started thrumming in my veins. Then it struck me all at once. Everything was different. Like mind altered, body chemistry forever changed, every single thing I thought I knew about life, different.
It was as if I’d scaled an infinitely tall wall.
A six-foot-six warfighter’s wall.
Then I’d hovered at the top of his apex, in his cloudless sunrise sky, right before plunging to the other side and landing in Helios’s world.
The door to my old life kicked shut, and now, here I was.
Naked in bed with Helios, knowing exactly how his touch made fire and ice trail across my flesh as he ignited a rush of pleasure so intense, my body became a shuddering mess by his ruthlessly dominant design.
Now there were two versions of myself.
The pre-Helios-induced orgasm version, and post.
There was no in-between and no going back. I didn’t want to.
Despite being exhausted, my nerves were humming with anticipation, and I was already rolling toward that dip in the bed and opening my eyes.
His intense gaze met mine, and a new level of shyness made my heart smile.
Unwrapping one of the protein bars he religiously kept a stock of, a military brand he had to order online because you couldn’t buy them in stores, he studied my face as he handed it to me. “Eat,” he ordered.
Accepting the offering, then following his command and taking a bite, I chewed as I stared at my warrior, but he didn’t look different—not in the way every molecule of my body felt different.
But he did look… more. More muscled, more angular, more dominant.
So, so much more dominant. Especially as he lounged next to me in nothing but a fresh, dry pair of his formfitting boxers.
He looked lethal and intensely masculine like he always did, but now he also looked like unadulterated sexual dominance.
It was almost predatory, like the slightest provocation would turn him into a lunging beast with my body as the target.
“Woman,” he stated, staring back as he ate half of the bar he’d unwrapped for himself in one bite.
Everything so new, so real, so very heated and raw, I didn’t know how to decipher any of the shades of meaning behind his term of endearment, or if it was one at all.
So I focused on swallowing past the sudden lump of too-sweet chocolate-flavored mealiness when all I wanted was something else entirely filling my mouth.
“You sore?” he demanded.
Heat flushed my face. “No.”
“You’re gonna be tomorrow.”
I didn’t know if he meant between my legs, my body, or my temperament. I didn’t care. I just wanted more of his… hunger. “Okay.”
He jerked his chin at my bar. “Eat all of that. Then we’ll talk.” He finished his bar with a second bite and unwrapped another.
Watching his jaw flex, his throat move, and the veins on his hands and forearms dance, I slowly chewed. And rapidly fell into a desperate, pulsing mess of need.
Watching me watch him, he finished his second bar and smirked.
“Am I being that obvious?” I asked, but it wasn’t a question I wanted the answer to. I already knew what he was probably seeing. And while I had zero experience past our shower, I saw the same storm in his eyes, and I was wondering even more now what sex with Helios would feel like.
Seeing the huge erection straining against his boxers, I couldn’t imagine him being able to fit inside my body. But God, did I want to try.
I shivered at the thought.
Missing nothing, his gaze cut to my body for a split second before his eyes met mine, and he gave me his brazen, unashamed version of deliberate but intentional communication.
“I told you I wasn’t gonna fuck you in that shower.
I had no intention of fucking you tonight, period.
But, woman, I see your need. I can smell that sweet cunt.
I know if I put my hands on you right now, spread those thighs, you’d be fucking soaked.
If I gave you my mouth, you’d beg. And trust me, I want nothing more than to sink inside you.
I want to fucking claim what’s mine. But you need to know what you’re getting into. ”
He didn’t give me so much as a heartbeat to stretch the truth and tell him I did know what I was getting into.
“I’m not fucking gentle, Feralyn. I’m one goddamn way, and it’s not tender. I’m not gonna ease you into this. I fuck hard, fight harder, and I will absolutely push every goddamn one of your boundaries. I’m also not taking a single backwards step. I touch you now, you’re mine. You fucking feel me?”
I felt him everywhere. “Yes.”
“You say that now while you’re high on endorphins after coming all over my fingers, but you need to fucking think this through. Be one hundred percent certain. Because, woman, I will hurt you.”
I sobered. “Physically or emotionally?”
“Both.”
The first chink in the armor he’d surrounded us in showed. Wanting a moment, I glanced past him because I needed to truly process everything that’d happened, everything he’d done. But the second I thought about it, I realized we were so far past that.
This wasn’t about him crashing that plane.
It wasn’t even about danger, fear, or loss of control.
It was about us—me and him, always me and him—being stuck.
He couldn’t move us forward emotionally, so he’d done it physically.
Which was the part of his comment I understood.
Looking back at him, I met his fierce gaze.
“Physically, I understand. I’ve never done…
this.” Shoring up my emotions, reminding myself I’d survived torture at the hands of terrorists, I told myself I could handle this.
I could handle Helios. Because the alternative was not having him, and that wasn’t a road I wanted to travel.
“But when you say you’ll emotionally hurt me, I hope you don’t mean intentionally. ”
“You’re missing the point. My number one priority is protecting you.
But, woman, I’m Delta. I’m aggressive, controlling, and dominant.
I’m switched the fuck on, especially when it comes to you.
Any threat aimed your way, including your own choices, I’m taking them out.
But that’s not a fucking panacea for keeping us locked in.
We’re gonna fight, Feralyn.” He gestured between us with two fingers, touching first my chest, then his.
“You and me? We’re solid. But trust is like a block of ice.
Every shit thing said chips at it. And believe me, we’ll both say shit.
Those hits can’t be undone.” His intense stare held. “That’s how I’m gonna hurt you.”
Inhaling, reasoning, I slowly nodded. “I understand what you’re saying.”
“I need you to understand me, woman. Apologies don’t make that block of ice whole.
No one can unsay shit any more than they can fix death, and that’s my point.
Neither of us can stop every incoming hit.
But if you trust me, really goddamn trust me, then our block of ice can be fucking decimated by a fifty cal, and I’ll blowtorch it back together. ”
My heart melted. “Okay.”
He didn’t hesitate in asking his next question. “You gonna give me that level of trust?”
He already had it. “Yes.”
“You giving me your virginity?”
It was already his. “Yes.”
“You understand I own your agency?”
“Only for the past eight years.” He’d owned my voice and most all of my decisions because I’d let him.
It was easier. He’d made it easy. He’d made me feel safe when the rest of the world had felt unsafe.
But he’d never owned my fears. Those, I’d harbored.
Except now, I was done. He’d awakened a sexual beast inside me in that shower, and I wanted more.
“Woman,” he stated, eyes darkening as if he knew every scandalous thought in my mind.
“Helios,” I whispered, shy, but never more sure. “I’m one hundred percent certain.”
“Good.” He tipped his chin at my protein bar. “Finish that.” Then he rolled off the bed, our discarded wrappers in hand, and headed toward the bedroom door. “Dumping the trash and brushing my teeth.”
Stunned speechless, I stared after him.
I’d just agreed to—no, offered him my everything, and he was just going to… brush his teeth?
I was off the bed and following him before I remembered I was completely naked, but it was too late. I was already down the hall, through this bedroom, and walking into his bathroom right as he put his toothbrush in his mouth.
His eyes unerringly met mine in the mirror.
Refusing to look at my reflection, but seeing every inch of his hardened muscles and the obscenely thick length straining his boxers, I fired my insecurity at him. “You’re brushing your teeth. Now.” Neither was a question. They were confusion camouflaged as indignity.
He continued to do exactly that. While holding my gaze.
Then he leaned over and spit.
The force, the sound, the crudeness—dear God. It was sexually charged and fucking magnetic. The act was so suggestive, my traitorous core clenched, and I sucked in a breath.
With his eyes locked on mine, he rinsed his brush, then tossed it into a cup on the counter and dipped his head down to the faucet.
His tongue came out, slow and calculating, as he drew water into his mouth once, twice, three times.
I almost had an orgasm.
He shut off the faucet, then dragged his thumb across his lips to wipe them.
My lips parted.
He turned to face me.
I dripped desire onto my inner thighs.
He issued an order. “On me, front and center.”
I stepped forward.
Staring down at me, his expression hardened. “Yes, I was brushing my teeth. Yes, I was doing it now. Do you know what an apadravya is?”
The scent of mint and soap washed over me, and I became the pulse between my legs. “No.”
“Kneel,” he demanded.
Shocked, taken aback, but also suddenly floating, my mind checked out, and I dropped to my knees.
“Apadravya is a type of piercing. I have hardware.”