Chapter 28 #2
“Helena, no,” he said, his voice raw with fear as he gripped her hands. “I cannot let… I cannot risk frightening you.”
The secret he had kept from her was significant, yet she had forgiven him anyway.
In fact, the truth sent tendrils of love rushing into her heart, making her dizzy with relief.
He was her secret admirer, the reason she smiled.
The reason she felt a moment of happiness during the dark times that followed.
It was him, and not only had they rediscovered their way back to each other, but the physical version of Evander was so much better than the man she had only known through letters.
She was not about to give him up—but she planned to use such a secret to break down this final barrier between them.
“You say it was my eyes, my face, that you thought of during those awful years,” she said, pushing his hands aside to the sides of the bed.
“It was seeing me that helped you. Now it is my turn to see you. All of you. And love you fiercely for everything that you are,” she said, her tone trembling with sincerity.
She felt Evander’s arms tense under her hands. He could overpower her. Quite easily, in fact. Yet as his piercing blue eyes shone with apprehension, he kept his arms on the bed.
“You will run away from me,” he whispered.
“I will stay,” she stated firmly, reaching once more for his cravat.
Evander closed his eyes, as if he could not face what she was about to reveal; as if his scars would reflect in her eyes as she looked at him.
“Open your eyes, love,” she murmured, using his own words as she leaned down to press feathery kisses along his temple as her fingers loosened the knot of his cravat. “Let me see those beautiful eyes.”
She drew his cravat from under his lapels as she sat back up and felt a sense of divine feminine power move through her as her usually dominant husband obeyed her command.
“There you are,” she breathed, working the buttons of his shirt free. “So handsome. So perfect.”
Between her legs, Evander’s hard cock, already pressing against her sex, pulsed and stirred as she praised him.
She watched his corded throat work to swallow, but he said nothing as she pulled back the sides of his shirt.
He hissed in a breath, his muscles tensing as his chest was finally made bare, and slowly, Helena drew her gaze down to the man she had been longing to see.
Pain, not fear, lanced through her heart as she took in the messy ring of scars around his throat; the spiderweb of ragged old wounds that stretched across his broad chest and rigid abdominal muscles.
She shifted his shirt down, working it free until she could toss it aside.
More scars littered his shoulders, biceps, and forearms, and her breath grew ragged as she slowly reached down.
Evander winced the moment her fingertips touched the largest scar that dragged from his upper right shoulder down to his navel, and she almost drew away, worried she had hurt him.
Then she realized that it was her fear that he was most afraid of, and she had to prove him wrong.
“My sweet husband,” she breathed, leaning down to brush her lips softly along the thick scars around his throat. “My sweet, handsome husband.”
“Do not,” Evander gritted out, his arms trembling and taut at his sides. “Do not pretend. I am disgusting.”
Helena rose up at once, fury tunneling through her gentleness as she gripped his chin and made him look into her eyes.
“Do not ever say such things about my husband again, do you understand?” she stated with full authority.
Evander’s eyes widened, and once again, his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
“You are my heart,” she swore, her voice trembling. “My husband, and I love you for exactly who you were and who you are now, and I will never turn away from what you survived in order to make it back to me.”
Evander’s muscles, taut and trembling from tension, relaxed at once as he expelled a breath. His blue eyes glistened and grew watery, though no tears escaped down his cheeks.
“I understand,” he rasped, his fingertips inching toward her splayed knees.
This time, she did not stop him, because instead of trying to keep himself covered, he grazed his fingertips over her knees, up her thighs, and to her hips, where he gathered the skirts of her nightgown and pulled it up and over her body until she was wearing nothing but the necklace he had placed around her throat.
A necklace, she vowed then and there, to never take off.
“My wonder,” he breathed, sliding his palms up her naked waist to her breasts. “My love. My wife. How does a beast like me deserve an angel like you?”
Helena whimpered as his hands firmly squeezed her breasts.
She scooted up just enough to loosen his breeches, and Evander freed her long enough to wrestle the rest of his clothing away; then he grabbed her shoulders and brought her lips to his.
Their moans erupted together as their passionate kiss swept away the last bit of fear for both of them, and when Helena eventually pulled away to trail more kisses down his scars, he did not stop her.
Instead, he gathered her golden hair into his fist, and their eyes stayed locked on one another as her lips grazed gently over every scar she could find until she reached his throbbing member.
Even then, her kisses did not stop. She slid her bottom lip over his engorged, mushroom head, and reveled in the low, aching moan that poured from Evander’s lips as she did so.
Growing bolder, she flicked her tongue there, and a gush of arousal sluiced down her thighs as Evander threw his head back into the pillows and his hand tightened in her hair as he let out another bestial groan.
“God… Helena…” he panted.
She rose back up to her knees, feeling like Aphrodite herself as she straddled Evander’s waist and slowly sank her soaking sex down his cock. A snarl hurled from Evander’s lips as his hips bucked into her, filling her to the hilt in one brutal stroke that had her crying out.
“Ride me,” he growled, his hands clamping hard around her hips. “Show me how badly you have wanted this.”
Helena obeyed, rolling her hips against him, but the pace she set did not satisfy him for long. His grip tightened, and he began driving up into her from beneath, meeting each of her movements with a thrust of his own.
“Evander!” she cried out, her nails biting into his shoulders as he filled her again and again, deeper each time.
“I love how well you take me, love,” he snarled, sitting up in one powerful motion so that her back arched and her breasts pressed against his scarred chest, his hands sliding down to grip her buttocks as he pounded up into her without mercy.
He claimed her mouth in a deep, ravenous kiss, swallowing her cries as his hips never once slowed, driving into her with a raw, relentless hunger, as if two years of starvation were finally being answered all at once.
Helena felt herself unraveling around him, her release building faster and harder than it ever had before.
Their orgasm, a mutual culmination of pleasure, relief, and love, tore from their throats in desperate screams as they ravaged one another, his hips stuttering through one final, brutal thrust that seated him fully inside her and held him there, shuddering, as he spilled into her, and together they collapsed, flesh on full flesh, finally, onto the bed.
“I love you,” Evander panted, holding her head to his scarred chest as she listened to his hammering heart. “God, I love you.”
She turned her head, brushing kisses over the scars she had just been lying on, up to his scarred throat, and then to his lips.
“I love you with all my heart,” she breathed onto his lips. “Do not ever hide from me again.”