Chapter 53 #2
Dear Goddess… Have I made a terrible mistake?
I prepare to back away.
Prepare to accept that safety between us will never be possible.
And then, with a heartbreaking groan, he drops to his knees before me, his head bowed, his hair falling forward. His sudden drop wrenches his shackled hand above his head, the chain clattering against the wall.
His voice rasps. “Come here. I will give you what you want.”
I step forward, preparing to cast aside my need, to drop to my knees before him and cup his cheek, to soothe whatever brokenness has forced him to bow before me.
The moment I close the gap, his free arm snakes across my backside, and he jerks my hips forward, stopping me from kneeling. At the same moment, his head rises, and his mouth closes over my center.
The rush of warmth, the heat of pleasure, brings a cry to my lips.
My hands close over his shoulders, allowing me to brace and balance against him, my heightened awareness dragging in every sensation from his mouth and even his other hand, where it clamps across my backside, his fingers kneading my muscles.
He buries his tongue harder against me, a push and ease, every swirling motion faster than the last until I’m whimpering with need.
When he pauses, I cry out in protest, but he takes only a moment to speak.
“Hold on to me, Thyra,” he snarls as he removes his free hand from behind my backside. “It’s up to you to brace.”
I grip harder onto his shoulders, keeping myself close to him as he drives a finger inside me while his mouth resumes destroying me.
Groaning, I rock and push against him, needing more.
He quickly slides a second finger inside me, slipping both in and out until I’m thrashing against him.
So complete is my need that I nearly miss the moment when he gives another low snarl, but the sound makes me acutely aware of the intense tension in his body, the scrape of his teeth against my soft folds, the hard thrust of his fingers, a friction in the air around him that warns me he’s a danger to me right now.
A terrible danger. Even if I don’t understand how.
“You won’t hurt me,” I gasp, using every muscle in my body to brace against his thrusting fingers so I can run one hand into his hair, tugging his head back, forcing him to look up at me.
My heart nearly stops at the darkness in his eyes.
The savage threat. The pain. The promise of pure violence.
Even though my tug on his head has broken the hard contact of his mouth against my clit, his hand continues to slide in and out of me while his lips brush my folds.
I drag air into my chest and harden my voice, commanding him as sharply as he’s thrusting his fingers into me. “You won’t hurt me.”
He jolts forward again, his tongue pushing across my exposed core, but now his eyes are raised to mine, every threat bared to me.
The crash is only heartbeats away, but I hold it off.
“You won’t hurt me,” I whisper, my chest heaving.
He’s snarling. Beastly growls. I’m certain he doesn’t believe me.
My hands curl more tightly around his shoulder and across the back of his head.
I sense his muscles bunch, as if he’s about to act, and I don’t know if he’s going to attack me. Hurt me. Kill me.
But I refuse to be afraid.
I fucking refuse.
He snatches my hand from the back of his head and presses it to his cheek, my calloused palm abrading his jaw, igniting the connection between us. Then, he whispers against my core, his voice ragged and broken, “I won’t hurt you.”
The crash breaks across me, tearing apart my sense of self, every inch of my body coming alive, breaking through a boundary I didn’t even know existed until I’m screaming as wave upon wave of deep pleasure wash through me.
Long, pounding waves.
Tightening my muscles, clamping my core around his fingers, sending my back into an arch while the sharp brush of his bristles scrapes my palm, somehow, the deepest pleasure of all.
I tremble through it all, and even when the waves finally fade, I come back to myself still connected to him, my palm to his face. He slides his fingers gently from my body, slipping his arm around my hips, the sweaty strands of his hair brushing my stomach.
My legs feel boneless. I’m certain I would have crumpled to the floor if it weren’t for his free arm keeping me aloft.
“Thyra.” He speaks my name quietly. One corner of his lips tugs upward. “I didn’t hurt you.”
The inflection at the end of his speech sounds like a question.
Trying to bring my pounding heart under control again, I breathe out my response. “Not at all.”
Quietly, he plants kisses across my lower stomach and, everywhere his lips touch me, the silver material parts anew.
I soak in his gentle touches, accepting the way he works his way upward, nudging his mouth against my stomach and toward my right breast.
He reaches my upper right ribcage and then, suddenly, he becomes still, and the tension returns to his voice. “This is an iron burn.”
My breath catches when his free hand feathers the scar across my upper right rib. Last night, when I pulled off my wet shirt in the bathing room at the cabin, I had covered my breasts with my arm, and I guess, given his height and the angle he was looking down from, he didn’t see my scar until now.
“Yes.”
“How?” The tightness of his voice speaks to his rising anger, and I sweep my hand beneath his chin, bringing his focus up to me.
“It was years ago, and it doesn’t bother me anymore.”
His lips thin. “How?”
“Highborn traders,” I speak quickly now and without reservation.
“They’d sometimes come to the coastal villages where we stayed.
There were never more than two or three of them at a time, and they didn’t usually cause any trouble, but we were always cautious.
One time, when I was twenty years old, three Iron Fae brought sweet liquor to trade.
Fights broke out among the villagers. I couldn’t get back to my father fast enough. One of the Iron Fae cornered me and—”
I gasp as Antony’s arm closes hard around me, but I take comfort from his embrace, enabled to continue speaking past the memory.
“It was dark. He pinned me up against a wall. He made a show of dipping his blade into a pouch filled with iron dust before he cut me with it. The pain was…” I close my eyes. “And he…smiled and…told me…”
I breathe out shakily.
“What did he say?”
I press my lips together. “That he enjoyed my screams and hoped to hear them again someday.”
Antony is like stone, his arm clenched around me, his body straining against the shackle on the wall, as if he wants to whisk me up into his arms and carry me away. To where, I’m not sure.
“Then he let me go and walked away.” I close my eyes, reminding myself that I conquered these memories years ago and I won’t let them dominate me now.
“Where was your father?” Antony demands. “Why didn’t he foresee it?”
I shake my head. “He found me moments later, and we left the village that night. He never understood why his power didn’t warn him.”
Just as he had no warning of his death.
Antony speaks through gritted teeth. “Please tell me you heard this Iron Fae’s name.”
I slip my hand to the back of Antony’s neck, focusing on breathing in and out. “If I knew, I would tell you in a heartbeat.”
Antony’s dark eyes glitter up at me. “Perhaps one day I’ll find him and tear him slowly apart.” His snarling mouth rises to close over my breast, and his vow rumbles against my skin. “You will never feel the cut of an iron blade again.”
Renewed desire banishes my lingering fears.
I can’t stop my smile at his promise or the warmth growing in my chest.
I’m startled when, upon glancing up, he focuses on my lips, and his face falls.
He darts upward, rising to his feet, tugging me closer when the shackle pulls against the wall, threatening to separate us.
“This smile,” he rumbles.
Breathlessly, I ask, “What of it?”
Shadows flood his eyes. “It has the power to slay me.”
I’m suddenly wide-eyed.
Slowly, very slowly, he pushes back against the wall, pulling me with him, keeping me close, wrapping his shackled arm around me as far as he can reach, his other arm pressing across my shoulders, an embrace that feels so damn comforting it’s an astonishing contrast to his fury.
I soak it in, taking every soothing heartbeat of it.
I don’t want to break it. This peace between us.
Don’t want to speak of darkness.
I could close my eyes right here and not utter another word about the past.
But I need to know. “Why did the cut on my face…?”
Even as the words leave my mouth, I regret them.
The tension returns to his shoulders, the sweaty muscles beneath my palms becoming hard.
Exhaling quietly, I nestle my head against his heart. “It’s okay. You don’t need to—”
“I was there when my mother was killed.”
I squeeze my eyes closed.
Of all the awful scenarios I imagined, this was the worst.
I remain still and unspeaking, listening to the hard beats thumping through his chest, giving him the space to continue speaking. Or not. Whichever he chooses.
“On the night the Vividari were slaughtered, my father forced me to go with him to the mountain where they lived. He’d finally let my mother return home. Like the sick fuck he was, it turned out he wanted to watch her die.”
Again, Antony stops, and again, I remain quiet, giving him the space to decide if he’ll continue.
“She was running. She tripped. And—”
His teeth gnash together, his voice strangling.
The tension in his chest thrums through me, unbearable.
Painful.
“Her face was cut up, and I couldn’t. Fucking. Stop. Any of it.” He drags in a breath. “I swore I’d kill my father after that.”
“Did you?” I whisper.
The shake of his head brushes his jaw against my forehead. “Somebody slit his throat, but it wasn’t me.” His arm tightens around my waist. “It should have been me.”
Finally, I raise my eyes to his. There are no words. Nothing I can say could possibly heal these wounds.
Lifting myself upward, I press a kiss to his jaw. Then another to his bottom lip. Then to his full mouth.