Chapter 41 Eliana
ELIANA
rough cut: /r?f k?t/: noun
I get in the car.
What else am I going to do? The man with the black eyes and bloodied knuckles isn’t asking. He’s commanding, and some primal part of my brain understands that arguing right now would be a very, very bad idea.
Bastian slams the door shut and careens away from the curb before I’ve even buckled my seatbelt.
The sirens are closer now, maybe a block away.
He takes a hard right, then another, then a rapid U-turn, weaving through residential streets with a steely-eyed calm that suggests he’s done this before, too.
I steal glances at him as he drives. His jaw is locked tight, a muscle ticking beneath the skin. His hands are choking the life out of the steering wheel.
He doesn’t look at me. The silence is suffocating.
We reach my building in minutes that feel like hours. Bastian parks in a loading zone and kills the engine. He jumps out, rounds the hood, and hauls me out of the car the same way he threw me in it—not rough, just shy of bruising, but there is no mistaking where he wants me to go.
“Hurry.”
He half-leads, half-drags me up the steps to my building. I fumble with my keys, but when they nearly slip through my shaking fingers, he snatches them from me with an impatient grunt. He unlocks the door himself, then pulls me inside and up the stairs to my apartment.
Once we’re through my door, Bastian locks it behind us. He slides the chain and deadbolt into place. Then he drags my kitchen chair over and wedges it under the doorknob.
He doesn’t stop there. I stand frozen in the middle of my tiny studio and watch him move through my space like a man possessed.
He yanks down the blinds on my windows, blocking out the gray February light.
He checks the bathroom, the closet, even under my bed.
I hear the rip and rasp of the shower curtain as he makes sure no one is hiding in my bathtub.
Then he goes to my kitchen counter and pulls a chef’s knife from the butcher block.
He tests the edge against his thumb, grimaces, and tosses it into the sink with a goosebump-inducing rattle before he selects another one.
After that one passes his test, he sets it on my coffee table, within easy reach.
Finally—finally—he stops moving.
He stands in the center of my apartment. But that dangerous energy still slakes off him in torrents. His eyes find mine, and they’re still that bottomless black.
“Bastian,” I whisper, “what the hell is going on?”
He shows no intention of answering my question.
Instead, he takes a step forward.
Then another.
Then one more.
I back up instinctively until my spine hits the kitchen counter. There’s nowhere else to go. My tiny little hovel offers no escape routes. It’s just me, him, and about three feet of boiling air between us that’s shrinking by the second.
“Bastian,” I try again, “you need to tell me what’s happening.”
He keeps coming. Three steps away. Two steps. One.
When he reaches me, his hands slam down on either side of my hips. I’m caged in place. Couldn’t run if I wanted to. Problem is…
I don’t want to.
That’s the thing that terrifies me most. Not the blood on his shirt or the feral look in his eyes or the fact that he just beat a man unconscious in a public park. It’s that some twisted part of me is thrilled by all of it.
It was a lifetime ago when I first made those stupid caveman jokes in my head. Big man say go eat oysters. Me go eat oysters with big man. It was cute then. Funny, even.
This isn’t cute. Not by a long shot.
This is barbaric, bloodthirsty danger.
He leans in close enough that I can smell the wintergreen on his breath mixed with the acrid tang of dried blood. “You’re not leaving this apartment,” he intones. “Not today. Not until I say it’s safe.”
“Safe from what?”
“From people who want to hurt you.”
“Like the guy in the park?”
“Yes.”
“Who was he?”
Bastian’s eyes darken even more. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me!”
His laugh is ugly and caustic. “Of course it does. Because you can’t just do what you’re told, can you? You have to push and question and dig until you get yourself fucking killed.”
“I’m not the one who just beat a man unconscious in broad daylight!”
“No, you’re the one who almost got shoved into a fucking trunk!” He smacks his hand against the counter beside my hip hard enough to make me jump. “Do you have any idea what they would’ve done to you? Do you want me to paint you a picture?”
“Who’s ‘they’? Who are you so scared of that you’re acting like a freaking psychopath?”
His scowl hardens. “I’m not scared for me.”
“Then who?”
“For you!” he bellows. His hand shoots up and grabs my face. “I’m terrified for you, you infuriating woman! Because you keep broadcasting to the world that you’re vulnerable and you have no fucking idea who’s watching!”
“Bastian, I— I—” I try to smack his hand away, but he doesn’t let go; if anything, he holds on harder. “I’m not fucking helpless!”
“Tell that to the man in the fucking park,” he growls.
“Stop! You don’t get to do this!” Tears are streaming down my face now. “You don’t get to lock me in here and decide what’s safe for me without explaining a single thing!”
“Says who?” he scoffs.
“Says me! You don’t— You don’t get to act like you own me, goddammit!”
“I don’t act like I own you.” His thumb passes roughly over my bottom lip. “I know I do. I’ve known it since the moment you put your hands on my chest.”
My face pales. “Bastian—”
He presses his hips against mine, thrusting his face closer so those black, angry eyes are all I can see. “But you want answers? You want the truth? Fine. That man in the park works for my brother. My real brother—the one I’ve spent sixteen years running from.”
I’m so confused that I don’t even know where to start unpacking that one. “But your brother is… He’s…”
Bastian laughs hollowly and shakes his head. “Not that one. Sage is innocent. But Aleksei… Aleksei is a cold-blooded fuck who would have no problem gutting you like a fish if he thought it would make his day one percent easier.”
My breath catches in my throat like a shard of glass. “Why would he—”
“He’ll take you apart piece by piece until there’s nothing left but screaming, and I’ll have to watch, and I’ll know it’s my fault. Just like Sage. Just like everyone I’ve ever—”
“Stop,” I beg. “Just stop.”
But he can’t. I can see it in his face—all the fear and rage and self-loathing he’s been bottling up is pouring out, and there’s no stopping it now.
“I should’ve stayed away from you.” His hands are shaking where they still cling to my throat. “I should’ve kept my distance. But I couldn’t, because you—fuck—you look at me like that, and it makes me want things I have no right to want.”
“What things?”
His eyes lock on mine, more black and bottomless than ever before. “You. All of you. Every fucking piece.”
The air between us is electric. Suffocating. We’re not talking about scary men in parks anymore.
“I can’t give you that,” I whisper.
“I know.” His hand slides from my jaw to the back of my neck. “But I’m going to take it anyway.”
One arm bands around my waist. He lifts me up and drops me roughly onto the counter. The other hand grabs the waistband of my leggings and drags them down my thighs. I can hear seams tearing, but he doesn’t stop or slow. Not until he’s ripped them all the way down and cast them aside.
“Bastian, what the hell are you—”
“Hush now, Eliana.” His hand tightens on my neck again. “Don’t say my name like that. And don’t look at me like you’re scared, because we both know you’re not.”
I gulp. “I should be.”
“Yeah,” he agrees somberly. “You really should be.”
My breath comes in short gasps. “What are you doing?”
“What I should’ve done the second I saw that man put his hands on you.” His thumb hooks into the waistband of my underwear. “I’m reminding you who you belong to.”
He yanks my underwear down my legs in one brutal motion. The fabric catches on my sneaker, and he rips it free without hesitation, tossing it somewhere behind him.
I’m bare from the waist down, spread open on my own kitchen counter, and Bastian is looking at me with a black-eyed hunger that belongs on a grizzly bear, not a man.
His hands clamp around the insides of my thighs and force them wider.
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” He presses his mouth to the inside of my knee and nips at the skin there.
“I’m going to make you come on my tongue until you’re fucking drooling on the counter.
And then I’m going to do it again. And again.
Until the only thing you remember is that you’re mine. ”
“Bastian—”
“And when I’m done,” he continues, his breath hot against my skin as he trails kisses higher, “you’re going to thank me for it.”
“You’re insane.”
His eyes meet mine, and the hunger in them steals whatever breath I have left. “You have no fucking idea.”
Then he buries his face between my thighs and proves it.
I’ve spent my whole life being told what I can’t have. Can’t afford this. Can’t reach that. Can’t be her. Can’t want him. But nobody ever told me I couldn’t want this—whatever the hell you call the thing that Bastian Hale does with his mouth.
His tongue drags through me, slow and deliberate, like he’s got all the time in the world and I’m the only meal that matters. I gasp and my hips jerk forward, but his hands are iron bands around my thighs, holding me exactly where he wants me.
“Stay still,” he orders against my center. The vibration of his lips makes me shudder from head to toe.
But it’s an impossible command, because I can’t stay still. Not when he’s doing that with his tongue. Certainly not when his stubble scrapes the inside of my thighs hard enough to leave burns.
He pulls back just enough to look up at me. Those black eyes are pure sin. “I said. Stay. Fucking. Still.”
Then he seals his mouth around my clit and sucks.