Chapter 25 #2
“I don’t—” My words choke off as he curls his fingers hard against that spot inside me. My knees buckle.
He holds me up with his body, chest plastered to my back, cock grinding against my ass while he finger-fucks me mercilessly. Hot, stinging water pounds down on us both now. My nipples pebble painfully against the shower wall.
“Kain…please!”
“Please what?” His voice is wrecked. “Please stop? Or please don’t?”
I don’t even know anymore.
He pulls his fingers out and turns me toward him. Then, he’s lifting me. Effortlessly. Like I weigh nothing.
My legs hook over the crooks of his elbows. He spreads me wide and pins me against the wall with his hips. The head of his cock presses against my entrance. Cold tile bites into my shoulder blades as hot water streams over my face, into my mouth, and down my chest.
“Look at me,” he orders.
I do. His eyes are blazing gold—wolf and man both staring back at me, raw and desperate.
“I’m sorry,” he says hoarsely. “For everything.”
Then, he slams inside me in one brutal thrust.
I let out a loud moan. He’s so deep that it almost hurts, stretching me to the edge of too much. My walls flutter and clamp around him like they’re trying to pull him deeper. He starts fucking me hard, hips snapping, holding me open and helpless against the wall.
Every thrust drives the air from my lungs. The wet slap of our bodies is obscene under the pounding water. My breasts bounce with each stroke. His mouth finds my throat, biting, sucking, no doubt causing red welts on me like he’s trying to leave proof that he was here.
“You feel so fucking good,” he groans. “Always so tight for me. Even when you want to kill me.”
“I still might,” I gasp, but my hips roll to meet him anyway.
He laughs, the sound dark and a little broken. “Yeah. You might.”
He adjusts his hands, spreading my knees even more, pulling me impossibly wider. The new angle lets him grind against my clit with every stroke. Pleasure coils viciously and quickly inside me.
Suddenly his mouth is on my breast—teeth grazing and tongue flicking until I’m shaking.
“Kain! Fuck, I’m—”
“Come,” he growls against my skin. “Come on my cock while you’re still mad at me. Let me feel how much you hate that you need this.”
These words push me over the edge. I shatter, screaming his name, nails scoring bloody lines down his shoulders. My pussy clamps down so hard, he curses, his hips stuttering.
But he doesn’t stop.
He fucks me through it with long, punishing strokes that drag the pleasure out until it hurts. My second orgasm builds right on the heels of the first. I’m sobbing now, tears mixing with shower water.
His eyes are glazed over as he lets my legs drop so that I can stand. I barely do before he spins me; my front is against the tile again, and he kicks my feet apart.
“Bend over,” he orders.
I do. Hands braced on the wall, ass presented.
He slams back in from behind. Deeper this way. Hitting something inside me that makes white sparks explode behind my eyes.
One hand wraps around my throat—not choking, just holding. The other finds my clit and rubs fast, merciless circles.
“Tell me you still love me,” he rasps. “Even if you hate me. Tell me.”
“I—” My voice cracks. “I can’t…”
“Anne. Say it anyway.”
Hearing him say my name right now is my undoing. Tears stream down my face. “I love you,” I choke out. “Even though I can’t forgive you, I’ve never stopped loving you, Kain.”
He groans like I’ve wounded him. His rhythm turns erratic, desperate. He’s on the edge; I can feel it.
“I’m gonna come inside you,” he warns. “Gonna fill you up so deep, you’ll feel me for days. So if I die, you’ll still have part of me leaking out of you.”
It seems he’s been thinking about that, too.
The filthy words, the fear, the brutal pleasure…it’s too much. I come again, violently, shaking and screaming against the tile.
He follows right after, growling my name, hips slamming one last time as he empties inside me. Pulse after hot pulse, and I feel every single one.
We stay locked together for a long time. Water pouring. Breathing ragged.
Slowly, he pulls out, and I whimper at the loss.
He turns me gently and cups my face, kissing me softly now, slowly, reverently. His tongue tastes of salt and regret.
We clean each other after that. The water feels gentle now, warm and steady, washing away the evidence of what we just did but not the weight of it.
Kain reaches for the shampoo and squeezes some into his palm. His hands move to my hair so attentively, it makes my throat tight. His fingers work through the strands slowly, massaging my scalp with a tenderness that feels almost worshipful.
I close my eyes, letting myself feel it. The gentle pressure of his fingertips. The slide of soap through my hair. The way he’s so careful not to tug or pull, like I’m something precious he’s afraid of breaking.
When was the last time someone touched me like this? Like I mattered?
He guides me under the spray, one hand cupping the back of my head to keep the water from my face as he rinses the shampoo away. The gesture is so protective, so instinctively caring, that tears prick at my eyes.
I reach for the shampoo when he’s done, but my hands are shaking slightly. He notices—of course he notices—but doesn’t say anything. Just bows his head to give me better access.
His hair is thick and dark, longer than I remember from when we were teenagers. I work the shampoo through it, my fingers finding the shape of his skull beneath. Strong. Solid. Alive.
I rinse carefully, watching the suds slide down his neck, over his shoulders, and disappearing down the drain.
Then, I reach for the soap.
My hands move to his chest first. Safe territory. I trace the planes of muscle there, feeling the steady thump of his heart beneath my palm. It’s beating fast. Almost as fast as mine.
I move lower, washing his stomach, his sides, his back. The scars, burns, and whip marks. Some are barely visible. Others are raised, the skin having healed wrong because there was no one to tend to the wounds properly.
My fingers pause on a particularly vicious one across his ribs—wolfsbane burn, I think. The kind that eats through flesh slowly, agonizingly.
I soap my hands again and continue. Each scar gets my attention. My touch. My silent acknowledgment of what he survived.
There are so many. So, so many.
My vision blurs with tears that mix with shower water as they stream down. Kain’s hands come up to cup my face, thumbs brushing across my cheeks even though the water washes the tears away as fast as they fall.
I lean forward and press my lips to the burn on his shoulder. Then the scar on his collarbone. Then a whip mark on his chest.
Kain goes very still.
I kiss each mark I can reach. Not to heal them—I can’t do that—but to honor them. To honor him. To say without words that I see what he endured. That it matters. That he matters.
His breath hitches when I kiss the scars on his wrists—the ones from silver chains, worn raw over and over. His hands tighten on my shoulders, not to stop me, but to steady himself.
When I finally look up at him, his eyes are wet.
Neither of us speaks. We don’t need to.
He takes the soap and begins washing me with the same careful attention. His hands move over my skin like he’s memorizing it. Like he’s trying to map every inch of me in case this is the last time.
Because it might be. This may be all we have left.
The idea makes my chest ache, but I push it away. Right now, in this moment, we’re together. Both here. Both alive.
His hands are gentle on my shoulders, my arms, my back. When he reaches my hips, he pauses, his thumbs tracing small circles there like he can’t help himself.
I turn to face him, and we stand there under the spray, water cascading over us both, just looking at each other.
His hair is plastered to his head. Water drips from his eyelashes. He has never looked more beautiful.
I rise on my toes and kiss him. Softly this time. Slowly. Saying everything I can’t put into words.
He kisses me back with the same gentleness, his arms wrapping around me, holding me close.
When we finally step out of the shower, he wraps me in one big towel and dries my hair with another while I stand there trembling, though not from cold.
I do the same for him, patting the water on his shoulders, his chest, being very careful around his scars even though they’re long healed.
We end up in my bed. No couch for him—my bed. Together. He pulls me into his chest, arms locked around me like he’s terrified I’ll vanish.
“I love you,” he whispers into my damp hair.
The words feel like heavy rocks dropped into the still waters of my heart, sending ripples through everything I thought I’d settled.
I love him, too. Goddess help me, I do. But love isn’t forgiveness, and I’m still so fucking angry. So, I don’t say it back.
I just press my face to his throat, breathe him in—pine, earth, sex, fear—and hold on tighter.
I don’t know how to survive losing him again.