Chapter Twenty
Avelina
Avelina made it back to the cabin by the time the moon was high in the sky.
Callum made quick work of talking to Rat and Grahm, but she was headed for the shower on the side of the porch.
Stripping down to her underwear and the undershirt, she cranked the faucet on and stood like an ostrich in the rain.
Head back, mouth open, ready to drown; she didn’t care if it was cold or tasted of metal.
The mud permeated everything and she had to gargle to get it out from behind her teeth.
Thankfully, their meal did a lot to change the flavor in her mouth. The food was filling, albeit sticky.
What was one more horrible sensation on top of everything else?
Callum joined her, rinsing off the caked-on grime as she finally got the clumps out from between her toes.
He helped untangle her hair with his claws.
It was a quiet eternity where she was just a hollow creature running on pure automation.
Her body moved around solely because it knew what to do.
Her head was empty. Tired. Empty. Spent. She was ready to sleep and never wake.
Callum pushed a palm against the small of her spine. “Run us a bath, why don’t ya, little viper?”
She stepped out of the rinse without question, chucking all her dirty clothes and the sack she stole from Dan onto the table.
The floorboards groaned under her, step after step, as she skulked to the bathroom.
A few days ago, she would be apprehensive of that room.
Worried Callum or Catalysta or some other horror was behind it.
In that moment, it was just a room. The world was just the world.
And she was a warlock with a hefty death toll.
Avelina wasn’t sure she was void of all fear.
If someone jumped out of a dark shadow or a cockroach crawled across her toes, she’d probably still scream.
But it was funny how broken in she was, like a stallion—but instead of rebellion it was her incessant fearfulness.
Anxiety didn’t know her anymore. She stood over the large tub, filling it with steaming water, and thinking of all the ways she could escape.
Callum said they were headed to the tavern tomorrow. She’d have a small window to slip out of his grasp. He’d likely want her to cast that dark cloud over the vault again. While she wasn’t sure how he saw through it, or if he didn’t need to, she knew no one else would be able to see.
She could use her seeing stone to escape into the city.
She’d spent too many months wandering the Stronghold, desperate to evade her father, she knew it like the back of her hand.
It would be easy to slip down a corridor and disappear into the crowd.
She’d learned all his tricks. Don’t run, blend in, don’t cause a stink, go everywhere with confidence; she was sure she could waltz right out of Parandor.
In her musing, she stripped off the last bit of her clothing and filled the basin with the bathing salts that sat in a jar beside the tub.
The room filled with steam and a clean, fresh linen scent that felt too fancy for such a place.
Gloomsdale wasn’t a place for crisp laundry or starched whites.
Stepping into the water stung, all those aches and pains melting away steadily.
Her body turned to mush as she spread out in the basin.
Callum entered after she’d completely lost all her bones.
She was a pliable pulp floating in the water as he slipped down into the tub.
He pulled her back to his chest, the pair soaking in the scent.
His hair was rinsed but in desperate need of washing.
Hers too, but Callum was focused on washing her.
Using the same net sponge he had the first time they met, he started at her neck and worked his way down.
He lathered up her hair then left it in a soapy bun on her head as he washed her back.
Unlike the first time they met, his hands didn’t stay professional.
When he came around to wash her front, he cupped her breasts.
His thumbs circled her nipples. Avelina leaned back against his chest, her head falling off the side of his shoulder.
Callum twirled her sensitive buds then soothed them with tender brushes. Her toes curled at the base of the tub.
“I dunno about you, little viper,” he murmured against her ear. “But I’ve got a few frustrations to work out.”
She nodded vigorously as that net full of soap dove beneath the water to her stomach.
He ensured every inch was scrubbed. A steady back and forth over her skin all the way down to the apex of her thighs.
She pulled her knees up, sitting higher on his tail.
In one hand, he continued to wash down her thighs to the inside of her calves.
He spread out the net in order to get every inch.
His other hand, however, stroked through her curls and started up the same torment he’d done to her nipples on her clit. Avelina’s eyes fluttered shut.
This is a bad idea.
Bad-bad-bad idea.
Tomorrow was the big day. Come death or what may, she was getting out from his crew. Sleeping with Callum was a terrible idea. She’d gotten mixed up with him, and every time they did this, it got worse. The feelings, the want, she was only making it harder on herself.
If Avelina ever wanted to see Tala again, to talk to her best friend in person, to start over fresh—whatever that would look like for a warlock, be damned—she couldn’t do so from under his thumb. Callum was king of his kingdom. Why would he ever give it up to run off into the sunset with her?
Her imagination ran wild with it, though.
Images of them rolling around in the sheets of her old bed in the glittering, capital city.
While he sank two long fingers into her, pumping in and out of her slow, she let her mind play dolls with him.
Him wandering the library while she pointed out everything she’d already read.
His thumb traced circles against her clit and elicited a breathy moan from her.
In her mind, Callum and Avelina sat in a coffee shop, explaining to Tala everything that happened.
His cocks pushed up against her back. She imagined him in a sleep shirt, holding her to his chest. Her legs trembled.
Callum in a fancy vest, crisp linen shirt, and wearing cuff links as he met her at the end of an aisle.
Her walls snapped down around his fingers and relief flooded her.
“That’s it, little viper, show me how much you like it,” he breathed against her neck before his fangs traced angry little lines into her skin.
Avelina hated that she could see him with her, mean and snarky but happy the whole way.
The way he’d smirk so cruelly as he scared the train attendant into letting them on without saying a word.
Tala and Callum would never get along but he’d love picking fights with her.
He’d say something cruel just to rile her up like he did with Avelina, and they’d go toe to toe, rogue to monk.
What she wouldn’t give to see Tala deck him good. Just once.
Because I don’t want to leave, and that’s why I have to…because I think I’ve fallen in love with him.
She gulped down air. Her stomach was in knots.
It was the whole reason she whipped around in his lap, quick as a water snake.
He sat still, eyebrows up in his hair. Avelina dunked her soapy head back into the water, rinsing it away.
She hoped when she finished scrubbing her scalp she wouldn’t want anything to do with him.
Just be done. Be cruel. Cut him off. Tell him thanks for the orgasm and get out of there.
But she sat up, dripping wet, shivers running wild through her body and wanted nothing other than him.
Avelina crawled up his tail to his belly again, bringing herself back to his ‘lap’. His gaze burned through her. She was captured by him to the bone. Even her marrow belonged to him as she looped her arms around his shoulders.
“Sorry, darlin, didn’t mean to leave the soap in too long.”
“It wasn’t that,” she breathed. A confession could ruin the moment.
She should have told him the truth. I’m in love with you and I want to be with you but there’s no future for us.
We’re a poisoned apple. One bite should be enough to kill me.
However, greedy and rotten—something she was pretty sure he’d influenced in her—she leaned in closer to his lips.
“I wanted to kiss you without eating bubbles.”
“Mmm, remember when you went runnin’ scared over a little kiss?
” he teased, voice curling around her ears.
His palms cupped her backside and brought her over his cocks.
The tip of both brushed through her folds as he dragged her back and forth.
Water sloshed over the side of the basin.
Suds foamed up around the floor, slowly draining out the back of the room through the rusty grate.
She wondered if he intended to fuck her like he did against those docks.
The memory of it burning what other sense she had rattling around in her skull.
If she thought reading it was thrilling, being the heroine being taken hard and fast by the vicious Outlaw was something altogether better.
Her lips parted to suggest it when she saw the idea form on his face.
Or, more likely, both his tips pressed against her cunt at once and the tremble it caused sold him.
He pressed both against her at the same time and she stammered, “Speaking of running scared.”
“I know yer not.” He chased her lips. Avelina fell into one of Cottonmouth’s many traps, kissing him hard.
He kept coming back for more, distracting her, pleasing her, luring her until she realized the intense pressure building in her core.
It was only after he was buried halfway in her with both that she even realized where he was.