CHAPTER THIRTY-SIXHowls
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Howls
I didn’t remember the drive.
Or the mansion.
Or the way the front door slammed shut like thunder behind us.
All I knew was the wall against my spine and Zagreus.
He hit me like gravity. Hot, heavy, and inevitable.
My gasp echoed down the marble hallway breathlessly, swallowed by the crash of his body into mine.
His hands gripped my thighs as if he owned me, spreading me open like the space between us bothered him to the core.
My legs wrapped around his hips out of instinct, not grace, and the moment I locked my ankles behind his back, he moved.
I cried out his name, shame and sanity lost somewhere in the storm of his mouth on my neck, his scent thick and wild choking me like smoke, rain, and something primal. Like a man who’d been waiting too long to sin and had finally been handed permission.
“Zagreus…” I gasped, nails clawing uselessly at the velvet wallpaper behind me as my body buckled forward.
“Say it again,” he growled into my skin, voice gravel and flame. “Moan it, sweetheart.”
His hips snapped up again, harder and deeper this time, his cock driving into me furiously. My back arched off the wall with a strangled sound I didn’t recognise coming from me.
I didn’t know where the control went.
Maybe I never had it to begin with.
His fingers were bruising at my waist, grounding me, holding me steady, but it was he who trembled. I felt it beneath his strength. There was something breaking in him, and something forming in me. Something unholy burning through him.
“You’re my wife,” he said, pressing his forehead to mine, voice dark and reverent and shaking with desire. “My name is carved into you, into every place, every fucking sound you make. I don’t need a bed to claim you, I just need you, Dolcezza. I just fucking need you.”
“I am,” I whispered, nearly sobbing. I was fucking drugged, that’s all I could say. “I am. I’m yours… just don’t stop.”
It was the moment of vulnerability. Of dependence. Of him. Of us. Of me.
He didn’t stop.
He drove into me against, and my head knocked gently against the wall. His mouth caught the sound I made. Kissing me roughly and deeply, and tangled with want.
His hands came to cradle the back of my head. He knew he was breaking me open, piece by piece, and needed to soften the fall.
“I dreamt of this,” he breathed into my mouth. “Every second I was away from you, this was what haunted me. You… not wanting me, not desiring me like I do. Not loving me…” I didn’t know what he was saying. “You’re the only thing keeping me from falling apart.”
“Yes!” I moaned as he thrust animalistically.
He groaned, and it wasn’t a sound of lust. It was something else. Something raw and primal.
A pain made of love too big for one body.
His pace turned frantic. He could no longer be soft, no longer wait. His hands left bruises in their wake, his mouth worshiped and devoured in the same breath.
I didn’t know who I was anymore, only that I was shaking and raw and split wide open for this man who kissed my ribs, and whispered things that broke me.
“I’d burn this whole fucking world if it meant you’d keep looking at me like that,” he said, trailing his lips against my jaw. “I’d kneel before God and carve my own name out of his book if he tried to take you from me ever again.”
A cry escaped me.
The chandelier above us flickered. And I realised I was close to coming undone. Not just from what he was doing, but how.
He wasn’t just inside me.
He was inside everything, my bones, my breath and my breaking.
He held me like a man on the verge of collapse, like I was the first and last thing he’d ever worship, and he didn’t give a damn who saw us because we were still in the hallway. Doors down both sides. Wide open world behind the glass panels.
But Zagreus didn’t care.
He gripped me tighter and thrust harder, and I swear, I left my body. My nails scraped down his back, desperate to anchor myself in something, but he was already everything.
He was the prayer I never said right. The punishment that tasted like mercy. The sin that made me feel alive today.
And just as the tension inside me snapped, he kissed my temple. “Come for me, wife.”
And I did.
Trembling, broken, singing his name like it was the only thing I ever learned how to say.
The sheets smelled like him.
Still.
Warm. Bitter salt and storm and whatever sin made me unravel against that hallway wall like a girl with no name, no shame, and no future.
I stared at the ceiling for what could’ve been seconds. Could’ve been hours. My thighs ached, and my ribs ached. My mouth tasted like regret and roses.
Still, when I shifted my legs and felt the slick sting of where he’d once been, something inside me pulsed. Throbbed.
God.
I hated myself.
He married me without asking.
He killed Adrian.
He used me.
He took what I didn’t offer, and then last night, I asked him for more. Moaned for it. Whispered his name like I’d die without it. How do you hate a man properly… when your body doesn’t seem to want to?
I sat up. The bed was cold on his side.
Of course, he wasn’t here.
Coward.
I slipped out of bed, knees weak, balance unstable, and the bruises between my thighs hummed shamefully.
The curtains were draped, and there was no sign of Elena anywhere.
I brushed my teeth, took a bath, and went to the closet and found another dress like the ones he’d filled it with.
All soft and revealing and sexy. He dressed me like a doll. Or a wife. Or someone he wanted to pretend had chosen this.
This one was blush pink. A two-piece co-ord set, high-waisted skirt, and cropped blouse with small pearl buttons down the front. It looked like something out of someone else’s life.
I wore it anyway.
My hands shook as I buckled the ankle strap of my nude heels. And then, without meaning to, my fingers brushed the anklet.
That anklet.
A diamond-studded chain with a small, pale, opal that shimmered when the light hit just right. His gift for me. His mark.
I stared at it for too long. Swallowed the bile and the ache.
What the fuck was I doing?
I should’ve burned everything he gave me. I should’ve screamed and fought, and demanded answers.
But instead, I stood in his clothes. In his house. In the prison, he called marriage.
And my body still wanted him.
I pressed my palm to the mirror and closed my eyes.
This isn’t me.
I’m not this girl.
I won’t become her.
He said I’d see my mother last night. But last night… last night changed something. I could see it in his eyes just before he buried himself inside me like a man too far gone. Like he didn’t expect that to happen. Like he didn’t mean for it to mean anything.
Liar.
Manipulator.
God, I hated him.
I left the room to look for him. He’d have to give me answers. If not, I’d starve myself.