Chapter 26
Is this Hell?
I roll the question over in my mind, preoccupying myself with the possibility that we were wrong. That there was never a chance to reunite after death. That lingering beyond the veil wasn’t a choice everyone gets to make.
Expecting this to be a slight variation of life—confined, sure, but similar enough—was foolish. To think that Ivan wouldn’t have something deranged planned for me was shortsighted. But what other choice did I have?
Hawthorne choosing between me and Jayden was never an option. I already know he would have offered himself up for possession. I would sooner kill him than allow Ivan to freely use his body. The thought alone is a violation.
This is the only way it was ever going to end.
Everyone makes terrible decisions as kids.
The difference is that mine eventually cost me my future.
I’ve regretted it every day. But choosing his life over mine?
That’s a choice I’d make again, and again, no matter how many chances I had.
He’s the only person who ever really understood me, the only one who genuinely tried to.
And because of that, he saved me more times than he’ll ever know.
Sacrificing my life for his is the easiest decision I’ve ever made.
But the reality is unlike anything I imagined.
“Are you ready to apologize, Little Dove?” Ivan’s eyes are full of disappointment. I don’t understand.
“For what?”
“For robbing me of what’s mine?” he says matter-of-factly. “For stealing the sweet satisfaction of finality from me.” His finger drags up the side of my arm, leaving a trail of repulsion behind it.
Remaining silent, I refuse to take the bait.
“So long I waited to feel the last breath leave your lungs, to swallow it between my own lips, and finally collect what I was promised. Ivan shifts so he’s leaning over me, his mouth just a hair away from mine.
“Selfish, as I’ve always said.” He clasps my cheeks.
“That’s always been your problem, Solaneen.
Your self-importance. Always have to have the final say, don’t you?
” He tsks. “Women like you need a strong guiding hand, not to be enabled as Hawthorne did with you.”
“Don’t you dare speak of him,” I hiss, venom coming from stores I didn’t even know I still had.
“Hawthorne? He is irrelevant to you now. You are mine.” His other hand clutches my hip.
I laugh at the absurdity of it.
“Refusing to submit will only be his downfall.”
“Are you so intimidated by him that you can’t even be happy with what you have?”
“Don’t insult my fucking intelligence. I know the hold he has on you. Owning something and having it are two completely different things. I will have you, Little Dove, make no mistake. You will open yourself to me as you do him.”
“You’re out of your goddamned mind if you think that.” The delirium of my deprivation is stronger by the minute. It’s impossible to tell how much time has passed down here in the pitch black with only him to break up the infinite darkness.
“Maybe, but I am a patient man. I chose you for a reason, and I intend to find that satisfaction, to reap the rewards of the hunt, in due time.”
My stomach churns, and I assume it’s the manifestation of my disgust at his words, but then it happens again, an internal lurching. A sense of urgency overcomes me, and I’m pulled free from that hidden, claustrophobic place and out into the open.
The low lamp lighting and orange flicker of candlelight is almost too much for me after being trapped in the dark.
Squinting against it, I find Hawthorne sitting on the rug at the center, head thrown back as he repeats the words, ‘Come to me, Sol’, over and over again.
Concentration furrows his brow, his eyes squint shut, so he doesn’t see me as I approach.
Moving silently, I cut through the circle of candles and crawl into his lap. As soon as we touch, his eyes snap open, and a thousand things pass between us in that fraction of a second.
Where have you been?
I’ve missed you.
How could you?
I’m happy to see you.
Don’t you dare leave me again.
At the same time, I’m lost for words, simply reveling in the solidity of his existence. Feeling the hard truth of his body beneath mine, the heat of his palms, the fan of his breath, it rights me, anchors me in this in-between space, the untetherable time I’ve been slipping through.
This is real.
“You summoned me?” I ask uncertainly.
“You came,” he says like it’s an answer to a prayer before wrapping his arms around my back and crushing me against him as he devours my mouth. Consuming. Desperate. Heartbreaking. “How could you leave me?” he mumbles against me, without giving me a chance to answer him.
Matching his need, my tongue chases his, twisting and tangling, claiming and yearning. Fisting his shirt, digging my nails into his skin, I cling to him like a lifeline. If I could crawl inside him and become one entity, I would, if only to never be separated from him again.
Wordlessly, we tear at each other’s clothes, rustling and panting a chorus of need. When we’re naked and there’s no more distance between us, that quaking panic that’s been drumming inside me finally rolls to a stop. For a moment, at least, I’m going to be okay.
“You woke me up from a very bad dream,” I whisper against his neck as I kiss every inch of skin I can reach.
He’s heavenly, resplendent as the flickering candles take their turns illuminating his perfect features.
I never understood religion until this moment.
The devotion of it always evaded me. But I see now that I could easily offer my soul in service to his if only he’d look at me lovingly like this for all eternity and hold me in the glorious salvation of his arms.
“Where the fuck have you been?” The bite in his words is what I need, drawing blood that shouldn’t run through my veins but seemingly does in his presence.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m here now.”
As if testing the validity of the claim, he grips me tighter, his fingers sinking deeper into my hip, the other curling around the back of my neck, like he can keep me here if he just holds on hard enough.
“I’ve missed you,” he finally says, resting his head on my chest a moment before his lips seek out my nipple.
The moment his mouth clamps around me, I’m lost to the demanding, unfiltered desire of it.
Taking my breast in my hand, I push more of myself into his mouth.
He takes it greedily, punishingly as his teeth nip.
My hips roll of their own volition, chasing more of him.
“I need you to make me feel alive again. Because right now, this world is lacking reasons for me to stay. Make me feel something, I can’t stand another second of being numb.
Convince me to keep going; convince me to take one breath, then another with this perfect fucking pussy. ”
“Mourn me like this. Make love to me in eulogy,” I beg, moved by his words, as one hand slips beneath my thighs and drags wetness over my clit, slicking some of it over the weeping head of his cock that’s hard and twitching between us.
Placing my palms on the carpet, I lean back, baring more of myself to him as I drag the center of my aching cunt up and down his shaft, simply enjoying the solid length of him.
Between us, moonlight bathes the union of our bodies in silver light, illuminating every scar, every dip and curve that his hands explore reverently, like he’s seeing me naked for the first time.
Palms following the rolling landscape of my sides, touching lower and lower as he adds fuel to the inferno of desire inside me that nearly combusts when his fingers fan across the expanse of my soft thighs and he spreads me wider, giving himself a front-row view to my dripping pussy that begs for every inch of him.
“If this is mourning, I can’t get enough of grieving you,” he groans as he strokes his thumbs along my labia, the tease of it forcing my back to arch as my body eagerly opens for him. Slipping both fingers along my center, he watches me pulse and writhe. “How can anything be so goddamned divine?”
Hawthorne wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me close, holding my jaw in a firm grip with his other hand. “Give me your tongue.” The command urges me into immediate compliance. “Tip your head back.” His blunt nails skate along my scalp as he pulls my hair to angle me just so. “Yeah, like that.”
He spits onto my waiting tongue, and I curl it into my mouth without question, moaning at the delicious taste of him. His hand captures my throat, as if he could claim my moan, and tilts my head even further back to invade my mouth to take back what he’s just bestowed on me.
Releasing me, he eases me back until my arms are outstretched and my hips are forced forward just so, tilting upward to present my pussy to him like a meal.
Finally, he releases the stolen saliva. We both watch, transfixed, as it runs down the roll of my lower stomach, rushing downstream as it coats my throbbing clit and drips down my center.
I clamp on nothing, a shudder coursing through me.
A deep groan that I can feel all the way down to my own toes reverberates through him as he spreads it over my cunt.
Every sweep of his thumb has me squirming.
Gripped by my own depravity, I grind my hips against him, hungry for friction after being left starved and empty. I’m resurrected by my lust.
“Fuck me,” I plead, rolling my nipple between my fingers to take the edge off as I wind tighter and tighter with each meeting of his hard dick against my throbbing pussy.
“You’re going to come like this.”
I whimper in protest.
“And then, I’ll fuck you,” he reassures me. “But first, you’re going to drench every inch of me from top to bottom.”
“I need you inside me now.”
“Then you better make yourself come.”