13. Never Let You Go
Haera
The harsh scuffing of her skin where the rough stone would have scraped across her knees never came. Theos’ steadying hold on her waist had stopped her from hitting the ground, and now he was hauling her upright as easily as someone might pick up a small stone. Like her two hundred pounds was absolutely nothing.
Now their bodies were even closer. She was trapped against his chest, and his body was as solid as stone. When her legs were firmly planted on the ground, he reached between their bodies and hooked a finger into the waistband of her panties.
“If you can’t stand to take them off for me, give me permission to take them off, Haera.” Theos commanded.
“But that’d be so embarrassing,” she whispered miserably. Relief was spreading through her. He wasn’t pressing for an answer to his previous question.
His canines came out to play as he smiled. Slowly, like he was afraid she would suddenly sink to her knees again, his hold on her slipped away. He knelt before her, one knee at a time, while she watched, transfixed. There was a god on his knees before her.
“This is the least embarrassing thing that could ever happen to you.” The heat of his gaze trailed across her bare breasts, then lowered slowly across her belly and down over her soft mound before dropping to her thighs. “To have the god who created all things, grovelling at your feet, hardly able to breathe from your beauty, begging you to let me take your panties off so I can heal you.”
Her breath caught in her throat, and sudden, hot tears scorched her cheeks. His attention on her bare body was so visceral, and yet she still felt like a…person. It was almost like being naked before him was the most natural thing in the world instead of the revolting, forceful interaction with her body that taking her clothes off usually was.
“Haera, please .” Theos’ voice interrupted her thoughts. “You can be fully clothed immediately after, and I’ll never ask you to remove your clothing again until you’re ready. We’ll go at your pace. I’ll wait for eternity. But please, let me heal you. Your body is still in pain. Your head especially is aching so much that it is interfering with your vision. You’re beginning to get an infection from the wounds that have yet to be cleaned. You’re my mate, you’re in pain, and I am entirely unused to feeling so excruciatingly helpless. Please .”
Gnawing on her bottom lip, she nodded. The sigh of relief that escaped his lips was immediate. Her ribcage ached from the force of her heartbeat. Her blood roared in her ears. Her lip was about to bleed into her mouth. Her body was tense. His hands were rising to her thighs; hooking into her panties. Tugging them gently, down.
Leaning against the wall for support as she was, when they got stuck, she hesitantly angled her hips forward so he could work the cloth all the way down to her ankles.
“It’s okay that you’re scared, little star.” Came Theos’ whisper. Now that her panties were on the floor, he was looking up at her teary eyes. “It’s okay to cry. ”
A sob slipped out immediately and she slapped a hand over her mouth to contain the rest. Theos hummed deep in his throat, the saddest smile she had ever seen forming on his face.
“You don’t have to hide your grief from me, little love. All the mortals pray their stories of heartbreak and sorrow directly to me. With grief, I am well acquainted.” Pressing a reverent kiss to the front of her thighs, he leaned back. “I’m going to touch you now.”
He was watching her intently, and she knew he was looking for signs that she wanted to change her mind. Her guilt wouldn’t let her. If he was bearing her pain, generously absorbing the headaches and vision interference, the least she could do was swallow her fear down and let him examine her skin for bruising. She had been dragged along the forest floor over roots, stones, trees, and had bumped into everything imaginable. She nodded, giving him permission to touch her. Besides, it wasn’t as though he was a stranger.
His large hands splayed across her skin as he shifted his focus to her thighs. Gods . His hands were warm, firm, and spread over her thighs as he tried to locate the spots on her skin that were darker than her usual complexion. Heat rushed straight into her core, and she bit down on her lip harder, praying internally that her arousal wouldn’t be noticeable .
His soft chuckle made heat flood through her even more. “You know that I can hear you praying, right little love?”
She was about to die of shame. Not knowing what else to do, she covered her face with her hands. That seemed to amuse Theos even more, and laughter rumbled out of him as he stood. The heat of his body wrapped around her. He nudged her hands away from her face, leaning in to whisper, lips pressing against the sensitive shell of her ear.
“I won’t grant your request.” The tiniest nibble followed his words. “You smell delicious .”
He knelt, resuming his examination of her skin. He maneuvered her around to look at the back of her thighs and her ass before turning her around again.
“As I suspected, you are incredibly bruised.” His expression was flitting back and forth between distress and anger. “The brute that dragged you over the forest floor and wounded you has already paid for his offenses, but I have a mind to let him pay for them again.”
“I bruise easily.” She supplied. And it was true. Her skin swallowed bruises – hid them from view, cradled them gently so that her abuse never showed.
Theos raised his eyes to hers, confusion clear in them, followed quickly by sadness. “This knowledge does not comfort my soul in the slightest. Because it only means that there have been numerous occasions where you were put in a position for harm to come to you.”
Haera swallowed as he stood, once more towering over her. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, she saw anger in the familiar white irises.
“Now, I will heal you, and after this, you will never have reason to bruise or be injured again.”
“B –” She started the sentence, then thought better of it. But Theos waited for her to continue. “Y-you are so much bigger than me. When we –”
His grin stopped her breath. A finger slid under her chin, tilting her face up so that when he stepped closer, he was looking straight down into her eyes. His free hand was holding onto her waist, thumbing circles on her skin. Heat was spiralling through her again.
“My body will bring you only pleasure. And if I give you pain, it will be the kind that you enjoy.”
Fates’ sakes. Had he somehow figured out that she was messed up in the head ?
“But if you want me to bruise you that way, I will.” He finished. Both hands cupping her cheeks, his eyes glowed brighter and brighter as she stared into them. A white halo was forming around him, her bedroom fading from view. “I’m going to release your pain back to you then heal it. It’s going to hurt for a segund.” Theos murmured.
She nodded. The bond hummed with the energy flowing through it, and then all her pain came crashing back into her body. She yelped, her eyes snapping shut to block out the woozy spinning world. Sharp pains raced around her scalp, much sharper than she remembered them being on the dahy she had gotten those wounds. But it all suddenly dulled when warmth spread through her cheeks and into the rest of her face from his hands. Down her throat, into her breasts across her soft belly, and down her thighs to her toes.
The warm sensation spread back up her body, toes to head, and then it retreated through her cheeks and back into Theos’ hands. She stared at him while the wall of light around them dimmed. His eyes dropped to her lips when her tongue came out to wet them, and he made a strangled noise in the back of his throat before dragging his eyes away.
Raising his hand, he swaddled her in a giant blanket of the softest fibres she had ever felt .
“Where did this come from?”
“I made it.” Theos answered calmly.
She couldn’t help the giggle that burst out of her lips when he responded so casually. “You knit?”
Theos didn’t respond. He was far too busy staring at her with awe visible in his eyes. The bond in her chest was trembling with delight. “If the idea of me knitting makes you laugh like that, perhaps it will be a worthy pursuit.”
She laughed again. “It’s such a funny picture. You might be able to knit, but not very neatly,” she commented, looking down at his hands where they were wrapping the layers of fabric around her over and over again until her arms were frozen at her sides. “Your hands are so large.”
He tucked the remaining end of the blanket back on itself, hiding it in its many layers so it stuck there, and turned his brilliant gaze down onto her.
“All the better to cage you in, little mate of mine.”
Arousal gushed in her sex again, and she bit down on the needy whimper that wanted to come out of her lips. Her cheeks burned when she watched his eyes flutter closed and his nose flare .
“Mmm. Fuck.” He mumbled. “ Fuck .”
She was more embarrassed than she had probably ever been. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She was so well wound into the comfortable web of the blanket that she couldn’t walk away. Sneaking a glance at him and finding that his eyes were still closed, she tried to awkwardly move to the side. Two large, veined hands came up to the sides of her to cage her in, and he leaned close to her ear, the sound of his ragged breathing sending shockwaves of deep pleasure through her body all over again.
“ No running . And for your own good, because I like the chase. I’d catch you faster than you could ever dream to run.”
Her heart trembled at that, but it wasn’t out of fear. She squeezed her hands into fists at her sides, desperate to give her body another sensation to focus on instead of the arousal that was about to start dripping down her legs if he kept whispering those dirty things into her ear.
“The smell of your arousal is constant, and intoxicating. And I truly fear that maintaining my restraint will finally be the death of me.”
“R-restraint?” she breathed .
“Mmm.” He hummed throatily. “Your body is telling me one thing, asking me for what it knows I can give it. But when I do finally take you, I need your heart to want it too. Because after I finally stretch your pretty little cunt to fit me perfectly, there’ll be no keeping me away from it, little star. Waiting for you has been as hard as the eternities have been long. And once I get a taste, you won’t be able to run. I’m starving , little star. I want to sink my teeth into you and never let you go.”
He pulled back, every muscle tight in his body. “Now that I have healed you, I need to make you clean.”