Chapter 3 #4
I let go of her wrists. She pulls them against her chest immediately, curling inward, turning her back to me. Every line of her is rigid—shoulders, spine, the locked muscles of her legs—and the ragged pull of each inhale tells me she's closer to breaking than she has been since Dover.
I get off the bed. Adjust my breeches, re-lace them. I cross the room and stand at the door with my hand on the iron latch.
She doesn't look at me. She's curled on her side on the furs, her wrists pressed against her sternum, her hair a dark tangle across the pillows. The firelight catches the shape of her spine, the curve of her hip, the marks on her skin that are my handprint repeated in red.
"Eleanor."
She doesn't turn. Her shoulders tighten, bracing for whatever comes next.
"The evidence of my discipline marking your skin.
My seed drying on your thighs, mixed with the blood that tells me no man has ever been where I just was.
" I let each word land. "You're marked inside and out.
Every inch of you that fought me tonight is carrying evidence that you belong to me. Sleep well."
I pull the door shut behind me.
The corridor is dark. My boots echo on the stone for six steps before I stop.
I stand with my back to the corridor wall and my hand flat against the wall.
The bond tells me she's still in there, still awake, still holding herself together through sheer will.
I can feel it the way I've felt her all night: a low pulse beneath my skin that won't quiet.
Below me, the Tower lives its evening: the murmur of wolves in the hall, the distant clang of the gate watch changing, a raven settling on the battlements with a hoarse call that carries through the arrow slits.
For a long moment there is nothing from the chamber.
Just stone and silence and the faint hum of a woman on the other side of a door that might as well be a wall between countries.
Then a crash. Something shatters against the far wall, swung two-handed, bound wrists and all.
The cup. A second crash. One of the candle holders, the iron ringing off stone.
A third, heavier, something wooden that splinters on impact.
A woman who isn't going to cry, who's going to break every object in this room instead, because breaking things is the only language she has left.
I stand in the corridor with my palm still pressed to the wall and let myself feel what I've been refusing to examine since the great hall at Dover.
Underneath the strategy, underneath the terms, underneath the careful scaffolding of control I've built around every interaction with this woman, there is something I can't calculate.
Something the bond has woken that my planning didn't account for.
She throws something else. The impact shudders through into my palm. My feet don't move.
I should walk away. I stand there. I listen to her break my things and I let myself want something I can't justify, can't strategize around, can't fold into the framework that holds every other part of my life in place.
She goes quiet. The silence afterward is louder than the breaking was.
I press my palm harder against the stone and I think: I have never wanted anything I couldn't justify. Until tonight.
I should walk down the stairs. Run my pack. Put distance between myself and the door and the woman behind it and the wanting that has no place in my operational framework.
I open the door.
She's on the bed where I left her, curled on her side, surrounded by the wreckage of everything she could reach.
The cup is in pieces against the far wall.
The candle holder lies bent near the hearth.
The wooden chest lid is cracked down the center.
She's breathing hard from the effort, her rope-burned wrists pulled tight against her collarbone, and when the door opens she goes rigid. Waiting.
I cross the room without speaking. I pull the knife from my belt and cut the rope from her wrists. She flinches at the blade, then holds still while the cord falls away. The skin beneath is raw, chafed red from hours of Thane's knots and everything she's done against them tonight.
She rubs her wrists. Watches me. Waiting for the explanation that will make this make sense.
I don't give her one. I pull my shirt over my head.
Sit on the edge of the bed long enough to pull off my boots.
Unlace my breeches the rest of the way and step out of them.
Her eyes track the movement, and I can see the calculation running: why is he undressing, what comes next, how much more can she take tonight.
"Stand up."
She stands. Slowly. Her legs are unsteady and she grips the bedpost for balance, the same bedpost she held after the discipline. I pull her tunic over her head. She doesn't fight it. She's too spent to fight, and the look on her face says she's saving whatever she has left for whatever comes next.
Nothing comes next. Not what she's bracing for.
I turn her around, press my hand flat against her belly, and pull her back against me.
Skin to skin. My chest against her spine.
My hips against her backside, my cock settling into the cleft of her, half-hard and heavy against the welts my hand left earlier.
She stiffens. Every muscle in her body locks.
Her nipples are hard. Tight and swollen, peaked from cold or desire or both, and when my hand slides up from her belly and cups her breast, her whole body tries to pull away from me.
I don't let her. I catch the nipple between my thumb and forefinger and pinch, rolling the stiff peak until her breath hisses through her teeth.
She grabs my wrist with both hands but she doesn't pull.
She holds on, and the difference between pulling away and holding on is something I file for later.
"Lie down."
I guide her down onto the furs. Pull them over both of us.
Arrange her the way I want her: on her side, her back pressed against my front, my arm locked around her waist, my hand spread flat across her belly.
My cock nestled between the curves of her backside, thick against tender skin.
She can feel every inch of me against her, and she can't move away because my arm is an iron bar across her body.
She is shaking. Not with cold.
"This is where you sleep." My mouth is close enough to the back of her neck that she can feel my words on her skin.
"Every night. Against me. You don't get a separate bed.
You don't get distance. The last thing you feel before you close your eyes is me, and the first thing you feel when you open them is me. "
She says nothing. Her hands grip my forearm where it crosses her body, and I can feel her pulse hammering through her wrists where they press against my skin.
"Tonight I chose not to knot you." I keep my voice level.
Conversational. As if I'm reviewing supply routes with Thane.
"When I do, you'll feel me swell inside you and lock.
You won't be able to separate from me until my body decides you can.
And when I claim you, my bite will change you into what I am.
Permanently." I press my lips against the hollow below her ear, where her pulse is racing so hard I can feel it against my mouth.
"Your mother told you stories about this.
Your father wrote laws to prevent it. Every woman in Dover has been taught since birth that the worst thing a wolf can do is knot and claim her. "
I let that settle.
"I'm going to do both. The only question is when, and that's my decision. Not yours."
The tremor that runs through her body is visceral, full-bodied, and the bond feeds it to me raw. She is terrified. She is also, beneath the terror and the fury and the exhaustion, wet against my thigh, and we both know it.
Her body is rigid, locked against the contact, refusing to yield even in exhaustion. My cock is pressed against skin that still carries the heat of the discipline, and she hasn't moved away from it. She can't. My arm won't let her.
The bond is feeding me everything: her anger, her humiliation, the traitorous warmth building where my body touches hers, the absolute refusal to acknowledge any of it.
I hold her. Not gently. The way you hold something you've claimed and intend to keep.
Her breathing evens out before mine does. I don't know if she's sleeping or just pretending. Either way, she stops fighting the arm across her body, and her weight settles against me in increments, grudging and involuntary.
I lie in the dark with my woman pressed against me and the wreckage of my things scattered across the floor, and I don't sleep for a long time.
Neither does she.