Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
OBSIDIAN
I sink into Ariana, and she’s still everything I desire.
I’ve been inside her many times, but this is different. Hell, I kissed her. Broke my rules about keeping her at arm’s length, but I couldn’t hold myself back. I wanted that intimacy, to feel the love and adoration only she offers me. And now that I know what sex feels like when it’s about more than just getting off, I’ll never have the strength to give her up, even if it’s what’s best for her.
With our bodies joined, my eyes don’t stray from hers. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. The only woman who, despite not knowing all the facets of my past, has seen who I really am beneath the veneer and still accepted me. The strongest woman I’ve known. The funniest, too. Everything about her is what I never knew I wanted and needed. What I’ve been missing.
She’s a miracle come to life.
If I had a genie, I’d use all three wishes to be the man she deserves.
To be the man she needs me to be. Not like my father, a man who destroyed every good and precious thing he touched.
Our pleasure builds slowly, matching the emotion in my chest until tears glimmer in her eyes. When the first tear slides from the corner of Ariana’s eye, I follow its path with my tongue, vowing to always be the one to soak up her tears and never cause them.
Love is a foreign concept to me when it comes to a woman. I’ve never made love to a woman, never even come close, but that’s what we’re doing. Just as I now know what it is to value someone else’s happiness and needs over my own. My chest cracks open, and Ariana nuzzles her way in. Hell, she’s been inching in since the day she showed up here.
“I love you, Ariana. So much that it hurts. So much that now that I’ve discovered this euphoria, I’m crippled by the knowledge I could fuck up and lose it.” The words I’ve never said to anyone in my life slip free.
She brings her hands to my face, tracing her fingertips over my features while I rock into her. Then her hands slide to my back and crest over the physical scars that hold nothing to the emotional ones I’ve buried deep into my soul.
I’ve always been self-conscious of my scars, but when she brought her lips to the first one then kissed each one in turn, she released the pain those memories held. The shame that was present the first time someone discovered them drifted off into the ether.
“I love you too,” she whispers, tears spilling. She’s just as overcome with emotion as I am.
I bring my lips to hers, increasing the pace of my thrusts and driving us toward bliss and what feels like freedom.
A few minutes later, as if divined by the universe itself, we come at the same time, lips pressed together, wrapped in each other’s arms, two hearts open and full of love. As I fall down on her body, hearing her labored breaths in my ear, I realize how badly I’ve fucked myself because she’s ruined me. No one will ever compare to her.
I soften inside her, so I roll onto my back, tugging her with me so she’s half lying on my chest, not willing to let her go yet.
Her leg drapes over me, and her fingertip runs a lazy path over my chest. “So much for sex only, huh?”
With the arm wrapped around her, I squeeze her and kiss the top of her head.
Hearing the words I love you did something to me. Rather than wanting to hide my shame in the dark, it’s time to bring it into the light. What she’s done for me, she deserves the truth.
“The first time my father burned me with one of his cigars was shortly after my mother died.” Her finger stills on the path she’s drawing, and I bring my hand over hers, squeezing it. “He was always a bastard, but things got worse after she died. She was the only good thing in this place. The only source of light.”
“Obsidian, that’s awful. My father isn’t perfect by any means, but what he did to you is unfathomable.” Her voice holds the hurts, and I take comfort in her.
“Prior to that, he used to lock me in the closet in my room—not this one. I think that started around the time I was five or so. He’d lock me in there, and I’d beg and cry to be let out. It always felt like the walls were closing in on me. He’d leave me there so long I’d piss myself and have to sit in it for hours.”
A shiver racks my spine when I remember the terror whenever he’d drag me toward that closet. I’d cry and sob for so long that by the time I was let out, I’d often lost my voice.
“I remember wondering what I’d done that was so bad to deserve it. Eventually I concluded that I must have been born with darkness inside me. A darkness my father recognized because it was in him too.”
Ariana bolts up from my chest and stares at me with fire in her eyes. “That’s not true.”
I tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear, but I don’t agree with her.
“It’s not true, do you hear me? Stop thinking that about yourself.” Tears well in her eyes, and I cup her face.
My sweet Ariana. What the hell did I ever do in this life to get her?
“He used to tell me all the time how much of himself he saw in me. How, out of all my brothers, I was the one he knew would grow up to be just like him. The idea of it terrified me. That’s why…” I search her face. I don’t want to cause her any more pain, but this feels like the moment to lay myself bare. “That’s why I tried to end my life a decade ago.”
She sucks in a breath, and something passes over her stricken expression I can’t quite place. “Oh, Obsidian.” The tears pooled in her eyes slip free. “Thank God you weren’t successful.”
“It had nothing to do with God. Kol found me and got my stomach pumped before it was too late.”
“I don’t care what your asshole of a father told you, you are not that man. You aren’t filled with darkness. We all have pieces of ourselves that live in dark corners, but it doesn’t make up the entirety of who you are. If it did, you wouldn’t even care if you turned out like him.”
She has a point. I’ve never thought about it that way.
I’m quiet, contemplating her words, when she says, “Can I ask you something?”
I trace my fingers over her forehead, down her temple, then along her jawline. “Anything.”
“Why didn’t your mom stop it from happening?”
It’s a fair question. I’d ask her the same if the roles were reversed. “He was physically abusive toward her too. A lot of times, what my brothers and I were being punished for was sticking up for her and trying to intervene.”
She shakes her head. “You were just children.”
“That never mattered to him.”
“How did your father die?”
I hold my breath, then it comes out as a rush of air. “That’s the only thing I can’t discuss with you, I’m sorry.” I thread my hand through the hair at her temple.
She looks as though she wants to ask more, but respects what I said with a nod. “Well, however it was, I hope it was long and painful.”
It was.
Ariana leans her head back down on my chest. “Thank you for telling me all of this. I know it must be difficult.”
My hand runs up and down her side, basking in the feel of her soft skin. “I want you to know all of me, Ariana. I want to be worthy of your love.”
She pops up again, this time straddling my lap and leaning in so we’re surrounded by the flames of her red hair, noses touching, breathing in each other. “You are more than worthy, Obsidian.”
Then she slides her body down mine and takes me in her mouth, obliterating any thoughts of the past. By the time she’s finished with me, it’s hard not to believe I’m the luckiest bastard in the world.