36. Drystan
Chapter Thirty-Six
DRYSTAN
Isit in the heavy velvet chair facing our bed, the ancient frame creaking beneath my weight like a sentinel chained to the shadows of Hellebore Mansion.
It is four in the morning, and the world outside the heavy drapes is a void of endless night.
Hours earlier, around eight in the evening, she had asked me for a sleeping pill, her voice a fragile thread.
I had hesitated, selfishly, cruelly, desperate to keep her awake for me alone, to cling to the sound of her breathing as proof that she still lived.
These past two weeks without her, haunted by visions of the worst. I had not slept then, and I cannot sleep now.
I do not know if I will ever sleep again.
My fingers curl around the cold steel of the gun resting across my thigh, the weapon half-angled toward her sleeping form, half toward the door that might yet betray us.
The entire mansion now pulses with an expensive alarm system wired directly to the twins, who left only a few hours ago.
It is just us now, me and my Briar, yet after all that has happened, safety feels like a mocking illusion.
I cannot feel it. I cannot trust myself to keep her safe.
Not anymore. Not after failing her twice.
How didn’t I see Lawrence’s venomous hand at work? How didn’t I see how fast my name appeared on that company right before trial?
I shake my head, and my eyes sting from days without closing, from weeks without rest. Fuck. The exhaustion presses down on me like the weight of the grave itself, yet my mind races like a storm.
He killed my mother over nothing. Destroyed my life, and the woman I love, for nothing but his own selfish rot. And now he waits in a cell deep in the basement, surrounded by the black hellebore flowers I had scattered around his body.
He will not live much longer, that bastard. But I lack the strength to end it yet. I want to savor it, to draw it out until his screams echo through the stone.
Right now, only Briar calms the beast inside me. Only she keeps me from losing the last fraying threads of my mind.
She looks so peaceful, her chest rising and falling in the dim glow of the single candle I refuse to extinguish.
But when I close my eyes, I still see her as I found her, the way she screamed.
That sound will haunt me until my final breath.
My Briar… the raw agony in her voice, the fracture in the air itself—
Fuck. Another tear slips down my cheek. I didn’t even cry when my mother passed. Yet in these last twenty-four hours, the dam has broken, and the darkness floods through.
“Drystan?”
Her soft, sleepy voice pulls me back from the hellish hole devouring my thoughts.
“I’m here,” I murmur into the gloom, my voice rough as gravel. “Rest, my love.”
“Aren’t you coming to lie down with me?” Her sad blue eyes flutter open, drifting over me, lingering on the gun still clutched in my white-knuckled grip.
“I can’t…” The words tear from me.
She rises from the bed, my oversized shirt draping over her to mid-thigh.
Her black hair cascades over one shoulder, a river of midnight silk.
The bruises bloom across her cheek, the cut along her neck and the fingerprints—his fingerprints—mark her pale legs in vicious violet.
Rage ignites in my veins, a slow, feral boil that threatens to consume everything.
She stops in front of me, close enough that her warmth cuts through the chill clinging to my skin. I tilt my head up to meet her gaze. She leans in, her small hands enveloping mine. I grip the gun harder, unable to release it, as if letting go would invite the abyss to swallow her whole.
I must protect her—
Briar straddles my lap, pressing her body into my chest. Her breathing is steady, calm, a lifeline in the storm.
Her warmth seeps into my frozen bones. I wrap my free arm around her, crushing her closer, and breathe her in like a man dying of thirst in an endless desert, she’s the only salvation I have ever known.
“I thought I lost you,” I whisper against her hair, the words fracturing. “I thought I lost you forever.”
“I thought I lost you too…” Her reply brushes warm against my chest.
“I’m sorry it took me so long.” I fight to keep my voice steady, but the knot in my throat chokes the sound into something raw and broken. “I tried. I never stopped looking for you. I never would have, not until my last breath dragged me under.”
She shifts higher on my lap, straightening, her gaze locking with mine. “You came for me. You nearly died.”
“I deserved it. You didn’t.” My eyes never leave hers, even as my hands tremble with the effort not to seize her, to brand her with everything raging inside me. “I told you I would take all the darkness so your light could shine. And I failed.”
“Drystan…” Her voice is a velvet blade. “I know you think this is because of you. You blame yourself, and it is destroying you from within. Lawrence isn’t you.
He never was. He hated it. He hated every time I called your name, every time it slipped from my lips in the dark.
Your darkness… it kept me alive. Deep down, I knew that if anyone could find me, it would be you. And you did.”
She leans in and presses the softest kiss to my lips, a fragile seal against the chaos.
“I—” I begin, but her finger rises to hush me.
“Help me remember who I was.” she begs against my mouth, her breath a caress. “All of it.”
“What?” I pull back slightly, searching her face in the flickering candlelight.
“Help me feel like me again.” Her hips roll against me.
“Briar, you’re hurt—” She silences me with the crush of her lips, hungry and desperate.
“I don’t want him to be the last memory my body keeps.” Her plea slices through me like a rusted knife. “Please, Drystan—”
I drop the gun. It clatters forgotten to the floor as I surge upward, lifting her with me. I carry her to the bed and lay her down with a reverence that borders on worship, though every muscle in my body screams to claim, to ruin, to heal.
“Are you sure?” I rasp, but she offers no words.
Instead, her hands grasp the hem of the shirt and pull it over her head in one fluid motion.
She lies back, black hair fanning across the deep purple silk sheets like spilled ink.
Moonlight filters through a gap in the heavy curtains, kissing her pale skin and illuminating the bruises that mark her everywhere.
Shadows upon shadows, reminders of the monster I had failed to kill sooner.
I lean down, pressing my lips to the bruise on her cheek first, then trailing lower to the cut along her neck. “I will kiss every mark,” I murmur, my voice a low, reverent growl. “I only wish I could erase them from your skin.”
Her fingers thread into my hair, tugging. “You are removing them from my soul.”
The words send a chill racing down my spine.
I keep kissing every mark I can reach, slow presses of my lips against the bruises on her collarbone, the ones along her ribs, the darker ones on her hips.
My hands follow, gentle where I know she’s sore, reverent everywhere else.
She’s here. She’s real. And after two weeks of hell, I need to remind myself of that with every touch.
“Briar,” I murmur against her skin, my voice low and rough. “Let me take care of you.”
I move lower, settling between her thighs, spreading them carefully. She trembles slightly, and I pause, looking up at her. “Eyes on me, my love. Keep your eyes on me the whole time. I need to see you. I need to know if anything hurts.”
She nods, her blue eyes locking onto mine.
I hold her gaze as I lean in and kiss the inside of her thigh, soft and lingering, then higher, tasting the warmth of her skin.
Two weeks. Two fucking weeks she was taken from me, and now I’m finally tasting her again.
A low groan rumbles in my chest the moment my tongue meets her wet cunt.
“God, you taste so good,” I breath against her as I press open-mouthed kisses along her pussy before dragging my tongue slowly up to her clit, circling it with patient strokes. “My soul, my light.”
Briar’s breath hitches. Her thighs tremble around my shoulders. I stay locked on her face the entire time, watching every flicker of pleasure, every tiny reaction. My hands stay firm on her hips, holding her gently in place while my thumbs stroke soothing patterns over her skin.
I take my time, savoring her, slow, flat licks followed by gentle suction, then soft flicks that make her hips twitch. When her body starts to twist beneath me, arching and shifting restlessly, a quiet moan slips from her lips. Her eyes flutter, starting to close.
“Open, my love,” I pull back just enough to speak, my breath warm against her wet skin. “Keep them on me. I need to see you.”
She forces them open again, heavy-lidded and glassy. “Drystan…” She breathes my name laced with pleasure, soft and needy. It hits me straight in the chest.
“That’s it,” I praise, voice rough. “Just like that. Let me hear you.”
I dive back in, licking and sucking with a little more focus now, but still slow, still controlled.
Her moans grow louder, breathier. Her body twists again, hips rolling against my mouth as her fingers tighten hard in my hair.
I groan into her, the taste of her making me lightheaded with need and relief.
I’ve missed this, missed her, more than I can put into words.
“You’re so beautiful when you let go,” I admit between slow strokes of my tongue. “So perfect. I could stay right here for hours… tasting you, listening to you moan my name.”
Her back arches, another broken whisper of “Drystan—” falling from her lips as her thighs start to shake. I don’t speed up. I keep the same steady rhythm, reading her face, adjusting every time her breath catches or her eyes threaten to close again.
“You are being such a good girl,” I whisper.