22. Chapter Twenty-Two - Returning Storm #2
The words sliced through whatever fragile hope I guarded, prying into the part of me that dared to imagine softness with her.
The part that believed restraint could spare her from the worst of what I was, a calculated faith weighed against the inexorable truths of my predatory lineage, where tenderness had often been the prelude to inevitable ruin.
Before I even knew I’d moved, my hand had fisted his vest and shoved him against the stone wall with a growl that ripped through me like thunder. It was primal and unrestrained, an eruption from depths coiled tighter than the serpents guarding forgotten tombs.
The stone groaned beneath his weight as I forced him down, my strength a testament to the fury boiling in my veins. I could have shattered the wall with his spine if I’d let instinct reign for half a breath longer.
The desire to do so hummed beneath my skin like static.
“Erase her from that filth you call imagination.”
“What?” he grinned, breathless. “Can’t handle me getting a little creative, brother?”
I slammed him harder, a brick cracking behind his spine. “Gods, you exist just to piss me off, to drag me into the abyss with you.”
“That may as well be true.”
I held him there for a second longer, the stone biting into his back, my grip ironclad. The urge to end it—to crush him, to silence the venom he kept sharpening against my restraint—flared bright and hot before I forced it down.
I stepped back at last, teeth grinding as I released him.
“I hate to ask this, especially right after you have royally irked me,” I muttered, the words dragged from me through clenched control.
I pressed my knuckles against my mouth until flesh split and blood bloomed, the taste grounding and familiar.
“But I feel it... a tightness deep in my gut. Something is wrong. Something that threatens her pulls at the bond I’ve yet to fully forge. ”
Rupert’s expression shifted. The mockery thinned, leaving something raw beneath it, something too close to recognition.
“Trust it,” he said quietly, the weight in his voice unmistakable. “Every time I’ve had that feeling, something happened to my Sun.” His mouth tightened, the name itself a wound. “Never anything good.”
That was enough.
The decision snapped into place with brutal clarity.
I surged away from him, the room dissolving into little more than scent and sound as I moved.
Bodies blurred past, their pleasures suddenly meaningless, their blood dull and uninviting.
They were pale imitations of the vital essence that alone stirred the depths of my singular devotion.
Nothing mattered beyond the pull tightening inside me, drawing me inexorably toward her.
“Culver,” my mother’s voice rang out, smooth and indulgent, laced with silk. “You should stay at least another day. Drink whilst you can. Indulge in the thirst that calls to you.”
I turned mid-stride.
She reclined like a sovereign among her chosen, her pale skin glowing under the low gold light, her presence commanding without effort.
Eight men surrounded her, touching her with reverence.
Their hands slid over her skin in careful, devoted worship, fingers dipping into the slick heat between her thighs, mouths trailing along the curve of her throat, her breasts, and her belly.
They moved as though they existed solely to please her, attuned to her breath, her rhythm, her endless pulse. Between her thighs, one knelt. My father.
His mouth worked with unhurried precision, his tongue pressing deep into her cunt.
It was searching, worshipful, lapping at her folds until she glistened with the evidence of his devotion.
Her fingers twisted in his hair, her expression fractured between ecstasy and something darker, something endless.
She gasped, hips rolling against his face, and I caught the wet, obscene sounds of his sucking and her slickness. It was intimate and primal. Obscene in its intimacy and achingly beautiful.
This was devotion stripped bare, love twisted into ritual and hunger fused with eternity. No one understood her the way he did. Not even her other lovers. He did not claim her as a possession. He worshiped her as doctrine, as faith, as something beyond mortality.
She gave herself to him without hesitation, without reserve, her moans threading through the air like incense.
That was why I was leaving.
Because I would know Ira the way he knew my mother.
Not as an object to be consumed, but as a soul to be mapped in darkness, curve by curve, breath by breath.
I would learn her in the quiet moments, in the pauses between heartbeats, until my presence became something she leaned into rather than feared.
Until her body opened for me the way my mother’s opened for my father: wet, willing, and shameless.
“I will be leaving now,” I said, my voice flat and unyielding.
My mother did not open her eyes fully. She only lifted a hand in dismissal, indulgent even in the throes of pleasure.
“Next time,” she murmured as one of her lovers kissed her throat, his mouth brushing her blood-filled veins before biting down. A soft groan escaped her as she arched. “Stay longer. Remember your thirst, my son.”
I stepped close enough to take her hand, careful not to disrupt the rhythm of those surrounding her. The wet sounds of my father’s mouth between her thighs, the slick slide of fingers inside her, and the low murmurs of pleasure from the men who held her filled the room.
Her skin was cool beneath my lips as I pressed a kiss to her knuckles, tasting the faint echo of her power.
“I promise, Mother.”
She shuddered softly and let herself fall back into the moment, a breathy moan escaping as my father’s tongue found her clit again, the obscene suck of his mouth pulling a cry from her throat.
My father looked up as I turned away, his beard wet, devotion etched into every line of him, his lips glistening with her arousal.
“She seems ablaze with youth,” he said quietly. “I am sure you will provide her what she seeks. The darkness that completes her light.”
The words struck deeper than Rupert’s cruelty. Faith carried weight. Expectation carved deeper than doubt. I would not fail.
I nodded once, unable to answer, and left before the fracture widened.
The flight home was punishment.
Time stretched into something viscous and hostile, each second clinging to the next as if it resented my urgency.
The cabin felt too small, the air too thin, my body locked in a constant state of restraint bordering on agony.
Instinct screamed at me to tear free, to abandon metal and sky alike and simply go to her, but discipline held me in place like a blade pressed against my spine.
She filled my mind without mercy.
Not memory exactly, but sensation. The warmth of her skin. The cadence of her breath when she slept. The way her voice dipped when she tried to sound casual about something that mattered too much.
Still, the void scraped against something vital inside me, widening with every mile that separated us.
I pushed the flight beyond reason. Regulations were irrelevant.
Time itself bent beneath the weight of my need.
Storms meant nothing. Altitude meant nothing.
I had endured centuries of war, famine, collapse, and endless monotony without flinching, but this…
This waiting felt like being slowly flayed from the inside out.
Nothing could end me. Not blades. Not fire. Not the quiet erosion of centuries. Only her.
The car barely slowed before I was out, the engine’s hum still vibrating through the night as my feet hit the pavement. My senses flared instantly, snapping open with predatory precision.
Her scent wrapped around the house, warm and unmistakable, threaded through wood and stone as though she had unknowingly claimed the space. It grounded me. Nearly softened me. The knowledge that she was here—alive, breathing, existing—settled something violent inside my chest.
For half a heartbeat, I allowed myself that relief, indulging in the fragile equilibrium of her nearness.
Then it vanished.
A wrongness crept beneath the sweetness, subtle but unmistakable, like a single thread pulled loose from a familiar pattern.
It was masculine. It wasn’t hers, and it sure as hell wasn’t mine.
Fury iced through my veins, sharp and absolute, stripping away anything that even resembled mercy. My body moved before thought could catch up, instinct taking over with lethal clarity.
The stairs blurred beneath my feet.
The door gave way beneath my hand with a splintering crack, hinges screaming as the wood bowed and surrendered. I didn’t remember crossing the threshold.
I didn’t care.
All that mattered was the pressure building in my chest, the singular, feral certainty burning through me as I stepped inside, territorial instinct etched deep into my bones.
Someone had tried to claim her.
And whoever it was had just made the worst mistake of their life.