12. Wrenley
TWELVE
WRENLEY
S aint trails a line of fire down my jaw, my throat.
“You feel good,” he rasps, his lips finding the frantic pulse at the base of my neck. “So fucking good.”
I arch against him, a whimper escaping as he slides higher up my thigh, pushing the soaked cotton of my nightgown with it.
His fingers are rough, firm, branding my skin.
“Oh, god,” I breathe, my head falling back against the warm stone of the mantelpiece.
The fire crackles, the storm rages, but all I feel is him, all I smell is rain and smoke and him. His arousal is a hard, insistent pressure against my core.
“You’re so wet for me,” he murmurs, his lips now at my collarbone, his voice a dark caress. He reaches the apex of my thighs, brushing against the curls there, then dips lower.
I choke on a breath as he finds my clit, swollen and aching .
“Is this what you want?”
He circles it once, twice, the pressure exquisite. My hips buck against his hand.
“Yes,” I manage. “Please.”
“Say my name again.”
His thumb presses down, a direct hit.
“Saint!”
He groans, his mouth finding mine again, swallowing my cries as he moves his fingers, a relentless rhythm that mirrors the storm’s fury.
The world narrows to this: to his touch, his taste, to the fire at my back and the inferno he’s building inside me.
My nails dig into his shoulders, not for balance, but to ground myself to the only solid thing in a universe that had tilted on its axis. He kisses me, deepening it and tangling his tongue with mine, the taste of him a drug I’m going to crave more of with each passing second.
“More?” he asks against my lips, his own breath coming in harsh pants that match mine.
I can only nod, a helpless gesture. His thumb finds that spot again, the epicenter of the earthquake, and presses.
Hard.
Arching off the mantelpiece, my body tenses, tighter and tighter. The pleasure is a sharp, sweet agony of unbearable velocity. The room spins, firelight blurring into streaks of orange and gold.
I’m unraveling, coming apart at his touch, and the only sound in the world is his name, torn from my throat as the first wave hits, a convulsive shudder that rocks me from head to toe.
Saint holds me through it, his mouth fused to mine, his fingers buried inside me until the aftershocks subside, leaving me boneless and heaving against him .
He lowers me slowly, his hands sliding from my hips, his gaze locked on mine. Firelight flickers across his face but isn’t able to chase away the harsh lines of his jaw or the shadows beneath his eyes.
For one dumb millisecond, I think he’s going to kiss me again and pull me back into that vortex of heat and sensation.
Instead, he retreats, taking one step back, then another, the growing space between us suddenly feeling vast and cold despite the roaring fire.
Saint’s hands clench at his sides. “Fuck.” He shakes his head. “This isn’t—we can’t. I can’t do this.”
His abruptness is like a physical blow. My body, still humming and pliant from his touch, registers the rejection before my mind does.
Saint notices. He turns away, running a hand through his hair, his back rigid. “This was a mistake.”
Each word is a perfectly aimed arrow. I wrap my arms around myself, the damp shirt inefficient armor. The heat in my cheeks turns to a burning shame.
“A mistake,” I echo.
Saint doesn’t look at me. “I shouldn’t have. I’m not…”
He trails off.
He’s not what? Not available? Not interested? Not capable of separating sex from the ghosts that clearly haunt him?
The storm outside seems to quiet as if holding its breath, leaving only the crackle of the fire and the thick silence of his regret.
And my dream, my beautiful, perfect dream, shatters into a million pieces.
“Right,” I say, my voice a fragile thread.
My skin still burns where he touched me, where his mouth had been. It now feels like a brand of humiliation.
Lowering, I pick up my discarded cardigan, a useless gesture. The cold seeping into the room isn’t just from the storm. But before I can pull the sodden cardigan around myself, Saint’s sharp question freezes me.
“What happened?”
My blood runs cold. I yank the cardigan around me, desperate to cover the puckered, angry skin he’d glimpsed on my shoulder because of my wide collar.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“Your shoulder.”
He advances, his eyes turning to flint as he targets my left shoulder. “Those marks. Don’t tell me it’s from falling into the fucking bushes.”
I can’t breathe. Shame, hot and brutal, swells my throat. “It’s nothing. It’s old.”
“Old how?” His voice lowers in warning. “Who did it, Wrenley?”
“No one,” I insist.
The implication that he thinks someone else had hurt me, that these scars were a testament to violence inflicted by another, is almost worse than the truth.
“It’s not what you think. Please, Saint, just drop it.”
He ignores my plea, his gaze unwavering and accusatory. “If someone laid a hand on you?—”
“It’s not like that!”
Tears prick my eyes, blurring the image of his rigid stance, the condemnation etched on his face. The weight of his scrutiny on top of the storm, the dream, his rejection, is too much.
“Then what is it?”
He crowds me again, but this time it’s not desire radiating from him. It’s cold, hard fury.
A sob escapes me. “I can’t … I can’t talk about it.”
I turn away, hugging myself tighter, the damp fabric cold and sticky against my body .
He spins me back to face him, the sudden movement sending a fresh wave of dizziness through me.
“Do you think I’m going to let you hide away until you tell me who put those marks on your skin? Is that why you came to this town? To escape someone?”
“It’s not?—”
“Don’t lie to me.” He gives my arm a small, impatient shake. “I’ve seen injuries, Wrenley. Those aren’t accidental. Did he hit you? Burn you?” His voice drops to a dangerous level. “Because if someone hurt you, I will find them.”
The possessive fury in his tone, the assumption that I’m a victim of someone else’s cruelty, is a fresh stab of humiliation.
He thinks I was broken by another. Not broken by myself.
“You don’t understand,” I whisper, the fight draining out of me and replaced by a bone-deep weariness.
Saint loosens his hold, but his gaze pins me in place. “Then make me understand. Who is he?”
He’s so sure. So utterly convinced. And the truth feels like a shard of glass lodged in my throat, impossible to speak but impossible to swallow.
“Please,” I choke out. “Leave me alone. Just show me a guest room where I can stay until Ivy wakes up.”
Saint doesn’t reply. The only sound is the dying crackle of the fire and the distant rumble of the retreating storm.
But nor does he move.
His eyes, those piercing blue jewels, are still fixed on my shoulder, as if he can burn through the thin fabric of the cardigan and see the truth I’m so desperate to hide.
Then he blinks.
“The room at the end of the hall,” he says finally, his voice flat. “There are spare clothes of Celeste’s in the drawers.”
Saint turns his back to me then, staring into the fire. The dismissal is as complete as his earlier rejection .
I nod, a jerky, puppet-like movement, and stumble toward the hallway, each step an agony. The plush runner beneath my bare feet feels like sandpaper. Tears finally fall, hot and silent.
And he doesn’t watch me go.