Chapter 31 #2
‘My mother was the opposite of my father in every way, although there was a time long ago when he wasn’t as cruel as he is now.
But the moment he discovered black magic, he started to change; it took me a long time to figure out what was wrong.
In our second to last year at the Academy, when we were only seventeen, you lost your father during the winter break; but what you didn’t know is that I lost my mother then as well.
I don’t think your father’s rak was an accident.
I think my father killed yours. He became paranoid as the dark magic infiltrated him more and more deeply.
He began to believe that my mother and your father had been in love with each other all those years and were planning to overthrow him.
There was no merit to any of this; they were the thoughts of a madman who had lost all sense of reality.
‘First, he poisoned your father and forced my mother to watch it all unfold. Then he beat her to within an inch of her life, then let her heal and do it all over again. It went on for weeks until my mother’s body gave out.
By the time the winter break was finally over, both of our parents were dead.
While people knew about your father, no one knew what happened to my mother except for Everett. ’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Everything I had thought to be true surrounding my father’s death was a lie; I had never known of my father’s friendship with Demir’s mother, the enemy.
None of this made sense, but the flame remained still under my skin, urging me to believe Demir.
How could I trust a story so far-fetched from the mouth of someone I had always assumed was the enemy?
Yet here I was, struggling and stunned, believing a man I never thought I would.
‘None of this makes any sense,’ I breathed, not being able to look him in the eyes as my mind tried to process all of this new information. Before he could speak, I asked him something without thinking, my soul yearning for an answer.
‘Did he ever beat you like that?’
His sweet face turned sombre as his eyes glazed over. ‘He did,’ was all he said, not elaborating on anything else.
My heart felt like it physically broke for the man I thought I hated sitting across from me.
The silence stretched between us as my breaths turned shallow and my body was overcome with a cold sweat.
Demir, not missing a thing, dragged his half-broken body by me and enveloped me in an all-consuming hug.
My mind rejected the touch, but my body sank deeper into his arms. He breathed me in, as though he were grounding himself in my scent.
‘I’m sorry for what my father did to yours. I wish could have stopped it, but I couldn’t even protect my own mother from him,’ he said.
He thought these tears were over the loss of my father, but I couldn’t begin to explain that they were for the pain I physically felt at the idea of him hurting.
This bond was warping me, but just like at the Academy, my breathing steadied under his muscular touch.
I looked up into his piercing honey eyes and his messy brown hair, and my breath began to shallow for an entirely different reason.
He stared back down at me, and I saw him for the first time.
Truly saw the man that he was. Not the one he let me perceive him as all those years.
His mental fortitude and quiet emotional strength.
His kindness that left him vulnerable. The arrogance he wore as armour.
The alluring strength of his body that right now sent a hitch in my breath with every sweep of his finger on my bare skin.
Slowly, his hand trailed up my arm and over my neck until he cradled my jawline.
My tears were now dried, but his thumb stroked over my cheek anyway, as though he were wiping away the images of them that still remained in his mind.
Without rational thought, I parted my lips and moved them to his thumb.
His breathing stopped as he hovered there, too scared to move and break whatever trance we were in.
In one agonisingly slow movement, I nipped at his thumb and drew it into my mouth, sucking it as far back as it could go.
A guttural moan escaped his body, rumbling through his chest, as his other hand dug tighter into the thigh I had unknowingly wrapped around him.
At some point I had straddled him and could now feel the twitch of his cock against me as I sucked deeper once more.
Grinding down, I bit into his thumb hard as he cursed under his breath, but refused to pull back.
Slowly, I felt the coppery tang of blood seep into my tongue.
A moan that echoed his escaped me as I sucked harder drawing more of the warm liquid in.
A bone-deep need overwhelmed me as I bit harder; his eyes blazed as he watched me lose myself to him.
My body ground into his long, hard length.
There was no anger or shock, just satisfaction. Rational thought faded in this moment.
‘I bet you taste a hell of lot better than I do, Princess. Why don’t you give me a taste?’ he said, smirking down at me as his fingers trailed the thin fabric of the pants I had conjured up when I shifted.
Another moan left me, and as I slid my now slick core down his cock, his eyes closed. A shudder wracked his body as I finally released his thumb and moved my lips to his neck, biting even hard then I had before. His hands instinctively grabbed my hair, pulling me harder against him.
‘Mark me,’ he breathed and I did exactly that as if he had commanded it.
My body listened as I drew his flesh into my mouth and sucked until I felt him arch into my touch and lose himself, moaning through the sensation until his body convulsed and his pants seeped with his release.
Slowly the fog cleared, and his ragged breath evened out.
Before he could say anything, I stood morphing into a small bird and flew out of the cell. I flew until I found my way out of the castle and into the same courtyard through which I had entered. I could leave now if I wanted to, but running from him wouldn’t change anything.
My body and this bond wanted him, and if a couple of moments of vulnerability were enough to make me fold… I needed to know everything I could about him to protect myself.