18 Imogen
Imogen
Theodore gazed down at me with fervent eyes. For a long moment, all I could do was marvel at him. The exquisite lines of his body, the possessive way the light reflected off the water and fluttered over the whole of him.
His head tilted to the side, a lock of dark hair tumbling over his brow as he did. “I needed to see that you were well.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t. And I was tired of striving to do what was right, only to have my heart continually shattered. “Come in with me.”
We both knew the danger waiting for us at the other end of this burning fuse. We both knew we shouldn’t. It was clear in the way we held still. Rain assailed the narrow windows. Another flash of lightning, another shattering boom of thunder.
When my vision cleared, I saw Theodore’s fingers working open the buttons of his shirt.
It whispered to the tile at his feet. His firm chest and stomach flexed as he stepped out of his boots and his gaze remained fused with mine as he undid his trousers.
When his clothes were in a heap beside his shirt, he strode toward me—devoid of any fear—and stepped into the pool.
He was wondrous. The way the muscles in his legs flexed, the smooth divot on the side of his buttock, the hard angles and planes, and the smattering of dark hair that ran down his lower stomach.
He settled himself onto the tiled ledge that rimmed the pool, water rising to his mid-chest. Tension crackled against my wet skin.
My hair rippled over the pool’s surface, and he reached out to take a wet lock of it between his fingers.
“I’m…” I stopped and pulled in a breath.
He twisted that lock of hair around his index finger. “You’re what?” The question was low and strained.
I couldn’t answer. I was too overcome with heartbreak and worry, terror and hopelessness, to even try. There was no doubt he saw the raw pain on my face, because in a beat, he slipped off the ledge, letting go of my hair, and coming in close. He stopped right before touching me.
A rough sound of frustration caught in my throat, making his full mouth tip to the side with heated amusement. “I’m going to touch you, Imogen.” His ragged voice mirrored the beat of my heart. “If you’ll let me.”
I could only give him the barest nod.
His hands gripped my waist then, hard fingers curling into my flesh. He wasn’t gentle as he pressed the full length of my body against his. “There,” he groaned.
The sensation of his chest against mine, of our stomachs touching one another, filled me with sharp need. “Theo,” I breathed, overcome. “I want—”
He nodded eagerly and rumbled a yes before he placed his leg between mine and pressed my body down against it, arms clamped firmly around my waist.
Our lips hovered close, but neither of us closed the small distance.
“It’s miserable…” He sounded almost angry as he slid my body away from his, across his hard thigh.
It sent a shock of pleasure though my belly.
“To see you and not be able to touch you. To hear pain in your voice and not be able to soothe you.” He drew me sharply back toward him, sloshing the water between us.
I dragged my fingers over his chest. “Don’t you dare…” A moan cut me off.
Again, he moved me across him, his guidance frustrated and strong. One of his hands dove into my wet hair and tipped my head back, baring my neck for him to kiss.
“Don’t talk to me about…” My inhale shook as his soft lips pressed to the underside of my jaw, over my racing pulse, behind my ear. “Misery.”
He gave a vexed growl. We both knew the deep ache of wanting and not having.
Between the searing wet kisses he set over my neck and shoulders, he mumbled words that I could only make out in bits. I need this… Feel incredible… Imogen, let me… He dropped his other hand to my backside and squeezed. “Fuck.”
If we’d clung to any restraint at all, it went to smoke then.
We lost ourselves to frantic, intoxicated desire.
Bodies writhing, teeth and lips scraping and pressing.
Each moan and movement seemed laced with our pain and fury, and even as he kept guiding me across his muscled leg, even as a hot curl of pleasure began to slowly wind its way up my spine, as he kept those low encouraging words in my ear, we did not kiss.
It seemed we both knew without having to speak it—that intimacy would shred us into scraps.
This. This was what we’d needed, I told myself, but in truth, this was all we could have. My hands coasted over his hard shoulders, up into his thick hair. My body began to tense from the way he pulled and pushed at my hips, leading me closer and closer to the edge. “Please. I want…”
“You can have it.” The words were dark and graveled. “Anything,” he breathed. His mouth was against my collarbone, his tongue making languid swipes across my skin.
“Theo.”
He pulled back abruptly, hold hard as he ground me against him. “I need to watch you.”
Gods damn him for looking at me like that. His dark eyes danced over my face, over my breasts, taking me in like it was the last time he’d get to. Like I was an unknown breath away from turning to water and slipping through his hold forever.
I took over then, keeping our eyes locked as I moved toward release.
“Good,” he breathed. His fingers that had been firm at my hips coasted up my sides as he watched me. “Like that.”
When I tipped back my head, he ran them down my neck, between my breasts. The water rippled and sloshed. I savored the salt on my tongue, the sounds of his heavy breaths.
Finally, I fought to trap my moan as that coiling heat inside me burst. Theodore groaned like the sight of me trembling and arching caused him pain. He took my face between his hands. “I—”
But he stopped himself. Shook his head. He set a kiss to my ear. Scraped his teeth across the lobe. We listened to the soft echo of our slowing breaths.
The quiet that fell between us was the strained kind. The kind that begged to be acknowledged, but neither of us could do it. Instead, Theodore quietly scooped me up into his arms and settled me on the edge of the pool. He placed himself on the tiled ledge before me.
Seawater ran over our bodies, pooling on the sparkling tile. “I’m not done with you,” he said as he traced at every curve and line of my wet body with brazen hunger in his eyes. “Open your legs, Imogen.”
The command made my whole body sparkle with molten anticipation.
I wanted him to take me, wanted him to drown out my every assailing thought with the force of his body.
I wanted to be close to him, as I might never get the chance to be again.
I obeyed him slowly, feeling safe and unrestrained and dazzling.
His gaze was fire and shadow as he took me in. His jaw tightened, his chest expanded with a slow breath. Sweet pain carved a line between his brows. “I don’t know how you do it,” he said as he lifted a dripping hand to skate up the inside of my thigh.
“Do what?”
“I don’t know how you make me feel like a starving supplicant. How you’ve made everything that is not you taste like ash. I’m certain nothing truly good existed before you.” His warm fingers met the middle of me with a soft, devastatingly slow caress.
I gasped. Let my head fall back. “Magic, I suppose.”
His warm laugh made my heart flutter, but a breath later the gentle moment turned torrid. He gripped my knee and pressed it wide as he pushed two fingers inside me. He rose up onto his knees and tugged me toward him across the tiles.
“Gods.” I tried to move against him, but I only slipped over the tile.
He gave me nothing else, even as I sought it. He used only his strong fingers, dragging them in and out, curling them inside me. Not enough. Despite my frustration, a long breathy moan escaped me. “Gods damn you.”
“What’s wrong, Immy?” He didn’t relent, filling me fuller, going deeper.
“You… know…”
He hummed his approval as a ripple of pleasure made my body tighten. “I do.” He pressed his other hand against my belly, and I let out a cry. “You have to do something for me first, darling.”
I was close to snapping, close to screaming. “What?”
He moved faster. “Since the bond you share with Eusia won’t let you perform a spell against her, you’re going to teach it to me.”
I gave an angry gasp, even as my body began to arch with the shattering pleasure he pulled from me.
“I—” I had to grip the edge of the pool as the overwhelming sensation crested.
I moaned, whimpered, until finally, the blistering tide began to ebb, and I was reduced to a heap of loose muscles and speeding breaths. “I’m… I’m not teaching you a spell.”
Theodore smiled smugly above me, his thumbs stroking the inside of my knees. “Oh, I think you will.”
I pushed myself up to my elbows, still gasping. “I would never let you do something so dangerous. And you despise magic. You’d be compromising your morals—”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Yes, I’m the picture of morality, aren’t I?” He settled himself between my legs, glowering down at me. “You think I’m far better than I am, Imogen. Stop it.”
I shook my head. “Spells are painful, Theodore. I won’t watch you suffer like that. I can’t.”
With a jerk, he towed me closer to him, until his hard length was pressed to the center of me. His voice was dangerous, his gaze grievous. “And yet you’ll let me watch you suffer and expect me to bear it.” He nudged me with a thrust of his hips. “Cruel.”
I couldn’t breathe between the feel of him against my pulsing body and my arrant outrage at what he was suggesting. When I managed to find my voice, it was embarrassingly weak. “We haven’t found Eusia. We may never.”
“We’ll find her,” he said firmly.
“And we don’t even know if you can perform a spell. Not everyone—”
“And we never will unless you teach me.”
I let out an aggravated snarl, my legs squeezing around his hips. “Theo, I won’t.”
He gripped the hair at the back of my head.
“You will.” This was the indomitable king.
The commanding voice, the steely gaze. But his touch was so gentle, so desperate.
“You will because you and I are both reaching the end of our tethers. It’s killing me—to have you in my palm but unable to grab ahold.
And I don’t know how much longer you’ll be you.
I can’t…” He swallowed hard. “Watching magic slowly steal you from me is a pain I cannot and will not shoulder.” He leaned closer, lips close.
“So instead of walking into hell alone, you will take me with you.”
Sickness swirled through my stomach at the thought, but with my hands resting on his hard chest, I focused on the thud of his heart. I focused on the undeserved fortune I’d found in being cared for this way.
His nose brushed mine. “Say yes,” he said, “and I’ll kiss you.”
I pushed against him. Furious. Terrified. Guilt started to creep in as my pulse began to slow. The thought of missing Agatha, and now the prospect of watching magic eat away at Theodore, would be more than I could take.
I opened my mouth to answer, when a terrifying wail echoed through the hall beyond the locked grotto door.
It bounced around the tile in a horrific reverberation that made both of us jolt.
Water splashed as we made for our discarded clothes, struggling to pull them over our still-wet skin, when the cry started anew.
The terror I saw in Theodore’s gaze only redoubled my own.
It was an inhuman sound, somehow unearthly and entirely too real.
Clothing half fastened, we raced from the grotto and stumbled into the pitch-black hallway. We raced toward the hidden door, where the wailing was louder, but still, I couldn’t place it. It sounded muffled and yet it rang through the center hall, up to the ceiling and back down.
I looked to Theodore.
“This way.” I ran toward the eastern stairway across from us.
There was no visible outline of a door on the curved wall beneath, but I pushed regardless, right where the hidden entrance to the grotto had been on the opposite stairs.
It gave just as easily as the other one had.
The cry stopped as we ducked inside. I smelled mildew and decay.
The stench of rotting, wet plants. It reminded me of the thick brown mist that had poured from Rohana’s ritual bowl. Theodore recoiled.
He grabbed my hand. “There’re stairs.”
I could just see the first step, and some faint light rising from below. Once more, that wail climbed up the dark treads, so we started down.
Down and down, until I knew we were deep within the earth. I thought of King Nemea’s ritual room, carved into the belly of his mountain, and a new sense of foreboding racked me.
Silence fell suddenly, replaced by a wet sloshing sound. A thick gurgle.
We descended faster, until they turned sharply and were lit by a few dying torches in their holders.
Through the little arched door at the base of the stairs stood Halla, kneeling beside a small round pool.
She had loosened the bodice of her rumpled wedding gown, and a thin line of blood ran down the middle of her bare, scarred torso.
Clasped in her hands was what looked to be a pale rope, but as I stared, I realized it was fleshy and irregular and firm. With bared teeth and shaking arms she heaved it up, until a dark, slimy head, its hair brutally shorn, broke the surface of the water.
I recognized the big, terror-wide eyes.
Agatha.
Her mouth was fully unhinged, and when her throat cleared with a wet choke, that horrific scream started anew.