21. Deargán
DEARGáN
“Please,” she whispered again, her fingers flexing toward me.
Her eyes were wide and glassy, pupils blown, lashes clumped with rain. Dark hair spread in the mud around her head, streaked with grit, making her look smaller than she was.
I knew that tone. It was not desire. It was not seduction.
It was desperation for relief. For an escape from thought.
For oblivion.
Her hips rolled upward against me. Chasing pressure. Seeking friction.
My body locked mid-breath. My pulse spiked once, sharp and unwelcome.
I understood exactly what would ease her.
I also knew that if I did it, the line between treatment and need would blur beyond redemption.
Images flashed without permission. My hand reaching up under her dress again, this time with no gloves, the full impact of her heat sliding over my fingers. Her breath breaking into something rougher as I curled them around to find that ridged spot. Her hips pressing up, more insistent, begging.
Fuck.
I rose too quickly off her, my boots slipping in the mud.
I took a long calming breath, steadying myself before I reached down to help her up.
But she ignored my hand.
She rubbed her hands over her body, clutching at her breasts and thighs. The rain plastered the asylum-issued dress to her curves, the fabric clinging to every trembling line of her, her dark nipples visible beneath the soaked material.
I stood there watching her. I should have stopped her. I should have turned away.
Instead, very slowly, I lifted my own hand. “Eyes on me.”
Her gaze found the movement at once, dazed but fixed on me.
I ran my thumb over my lower lip.
Her breath hitched.
I slid two fingers into my mouth, then slowly pulled them out.
Her hips thrust into the air with a broken little gasp, as if the sensation had bloomed through her pussy.
A cold, charged silence opened inside me.
So that’s how intense her mirror-touch became when the emotion was strong enough. When her body was already split open by panic, shame, need, and me.
She shoved her dress up and pushed her underwear aside with a raw, blunt urgency. She didn’t seek my permission. She just started touching herself, her fingers sliding over her clit.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I moved my hand lower, dragging my palm across my chest, wanting to be part of it without crossing the line.
Her back arched off the mud and her fingers faltered against herself. She made a sound, wrecked and involuntary, and fucked her pussy harder, her own body answering touch I had laid only on myself.
My dick hardened painfully, the freezing rain soaking through my trousers doing absolutely nothing to cool the raging heat in my blood.
I knew what I was doing. Knew it and did not stop.
I let my hand travel lower still, palming over my aching cock, testing the edges of her response rather than the morality of it.
Her hips bucked up as if I were on top of her, as if she were meeting me with a responding thrust.
Christ. I was not touching her. But her body was still answering me.
I rubbed my dick over my pants with my palm as I tracked the shift in her breathing, the escalation of her moans, the trembling of her thighs.
Her fingers thrust in and out of herself, her cries mixing with the rain. There was nothing coy in it. Nothing strategic. Only need. A frantic, starving need that I had systematically built inside her.
My cock swelled against my zipper, warning me that I was too close to the edge. That I’d crack if I didn’t stop.
I snatched my hand off myself and curled my fingers into my palms until my nails cut skin, the sting grounding the part of me that wanted to close the distance and give her what she was aching for.
Her body jerked hard against the mud and a sharp cry tore from her before thunder swallowed it. The sound hit low in my gut, something twisting in my chest that did not belong in a controlled environment.
She collapsed into the mud, breath ragged, limbs slack, a long sigh releasing from her.
For a long moment, we just stared at each other, my heart feeling like it was beating out of my chest.
That had been a mistake.
But at least I now knew something dangerous about her that I could use. Her body could be made to answer mine without a single visible touch. Which meant, in the wrong setting, in front of the wrong people, I could unravel her without ever laying a hand on her at all.
She shivered and I moved without thinking. I lifted her, pulling her into my chest, my arms curled tight around her.
For a moment I thought she might fight me. But her head rolled into me, her cheek pressing into my chest and that small acceptance made something tighten inside me.
Mud soaked through my trousers as I carried her across the grounds and back toward the asylum.
Inside, an orderly stepped forward to take her from me.
“No,” I said. “I’ll take her.”
The orderly stepped back.
Inside her bedroom en suite, I set her on her feet and stripped the ruined dress from her. I turned on the shower and washed the mud from her skin with steady hands that grew shakier as they moved over her body, over every curve, over flesh that tightened at my touch.
It seemed like hours until the water finally ran clear.
I tried to keep my gaze above her collarbone.
I failed.
My gaze caught over the water running over her breasts. It stuck on the curve of her hips. And those lips between her thighs.
My jaw tightened when I caught her staring at me, watching me without shame.
I felt observed, cataloged, as if she were filing away the exact extent of my restraint.
I dried her, brushing and patting her carefully as she lifted her arms and turned for me.
I held up a clean dress for her.
She lifted her arms over her head so I could pull it down.
When the fabric settled into place, I found myself suddenly face-to-face with her, close enough to feel the heat of her breath.
I swallowed harder than necessary and cleared my throat as I tore my eyes away.
I guided her to her bed and helped her in, pulling down the sheets and holding out her hair for her as she lay back on the pillow.
Then I stepped back, my job done.
Her hand shot out and closed around my wrist. Her grip was so gentle that I could have pulled out from it easily, so it was more due to surprise that I stopped.
Her soft voice broke the silence between us. “Stay.”
I hesitated because staying reinforced attachment, and attachment complicated control. I should not stay.
But perhaps I should stay, just to monitor her vitals. To ensure she didn’t have another break.
I sat on the edge of the bed, too aware of the precisely half an inch between my thigh and hers.
Her breathing grew steady within minutes, the lines of strain smoothing from her face as sleep pulled her under.
I watched her.
The way her soft lips parted. The way her breasts rose and fell with each breath. The way her hem bunched up on her creamy thighs as she bent one of her legs.
Heat gathered low and heavy in my abdomen, thick and unwelcome, and the fabric of my trousers pulled tight, an insistent ache against my zipper.
This… malfunction was a threat to objective clarity. I would have to formulate a contingency.
Then a realization settled into my gut with quiet weight.
She was beginning to derail my plans.
Another small, unwelcome certainty formed as I remained beside her bed, listening to the rhythm of her breathing.
She was not merely responding to my conditioning.
She was slowly altering me.