Chapter 17

LYRA

My heart physically hurts hearing the words falling from his lips, something I knew from the books I had read over the past few weeks. He sits there with his hand resting on the edge, his fingers swirling in the bubbles at the surface. So many questions war in my mind, needing to know everything I possibly can but being too scared to learn the answers at the same time.

As much as I want to know every single detail about the last eight years of his life, my heart needs one thing. All that beating organ craves is the man in front of me, the one slowly melting away the makeshift wall I have built back up after the rush of adrenaline wore off. The thoughts rammed themselves back in after the feeling of losing him again, of how vulnerable I feel in his presence, the wounds of our intertwined past bursting at the seams. It has been years since I let anyone in, not a soul other than Void, who seems to have made herself scarce, and that thought terrifies me.

There have been weeks to prepare, weeks of digging into as much information as I could consume to find him, to be back within his orbit. But now that I am? The fear of losing him again is so overwhelming, it's making words hard to process. If I push too hard, he might leave, and my heart can't take that again.

"Tell me everything, Ryker. I want to know it all."

His jaw flares at my words, seemingly reluctant to speak, his eyes focused on the way the water flows between his fingers. Taking a deep breath, he looks up at me, a hint of pain in his stare. Those flames from earlier have returned, burning darker than before, but they're there none the less, drawing me in.

"When you left, he lured me down there, to where he hurt you. He tied me up, hurting me until I broke before shoving fistfuls of pills down my throat. A tragic accident, labeled as the suicide of a well-loved lawyer's son."

Tears stream down my cheeks, but I don't dare look away. The need to feel closer to him has me reaching under the water, my fingers lacing with his. Every aching beat of my heart thrums in my ears, the pulse near deafening as I wait for him to continue. He died for me.

"My soul was brought to Hell, and I was taken on by a high-level reaper. He who knew me, or of me, at least. He trained me and sent me back down here."

"Why did you never try to find me?" I ask, trying to mask the vulnerability in my tone. There has always been hope burning deep within me that he cared about me the same way I did for him, a feeling that kept me going on days I didn't want to. He laughs, the deep, gravelly noise sending a shiver down my spine despite the heat of the water.

"The moment I came back up, I was here. I have always been here. You just haven't seen me."

Pain overwhelms me as tears fall from my chin into the water below. All this time, I have been alone, suffering in silence, my heart physically hurting, and he has been here. One moment, he tells me he died, and the next, he has been here the whole time while I have been alone.

"What do you mean?" I manage to grit out, sitting up in the water, allowing him to see the hurt. "I have been alone all this time, Ryker, trying to find you, hoping you made it out of that house. I could never find anything. You disappeared off the face of the planet. I mourned the loss of you."

"It hasn't been a walk in the park for me either, keeping my distance from the one thing keeping me going in this life and the next. I had to fight my inner demons that clawed their way to you, wanting to consume your very fucking soul. It was hard for you, I know." His free hand rakes through his tousled hair in frustration, making it appear shaggier than it was before, falling into his eyes. They are now completely alight, reds and oranges, yellow and blue at the edges. "But it was torture for me too."

Ryker's eyes search mine, waiting for me to say something, to respond, but I can't, the words caught in the lump forming in my throat. I don't want to hurt, to fear the loss. I want to be able to revel in the fact that he's sitting dangerously close to me, each of his corded muscles rippling every time he moves. I want to focus on him and not wallow in the pool of fucking sadness my mind forces me back into whenever I can breathe again.

"I need you like I need air to breathe, Lyra. I always have. Since the moment you walked through my door all those years ago, those pretty fucking eyes filled to the brim with pain and sadness, I wanted to protect you, to covet you, and I failed."

A sob wracks through my chest, one I am unable to swallow back down. My hand slaps across my mouth, trying to hold the noise in but failing miserably.

"So I made it my mission to keep you safe, even in death. I watched you throw away the life I cherished, trying to end it more than once. I held you while services came, doused in smoke I couldn't contain."

I hang onto every word with all my focus, realizations hitting me one after the other in a constant assault. The shadows, the smoke, his scent lingering everywhere I go. All along, it was him—the feeling I was chasing, his presence.

He stands, taking a step toward me, his hands wrapping around my throat to pull me closer until we're nose to nose. Water sloshes out the sides of the bath and onto the floor, but I don't give a single fuck. I'm pulled up to my knees, him bent at the waist, meeting in the middle.

"You might have been alone, little sister, but so was I. I just had the temptation of your body in front of me every day, begging me to have a fucking taste of you."

He hauls me out of the water, my body dripping and soft from all the things he added to the bath. Even if I wanted to flee, I can't, with his grip on my flesh near painful. He wipes the foggy mirror before pulling me to stand in front of him, staring into my eyes in the reflection with heat that chokes me. Calloused fingers touch my sides, dragging a line down to my ass, his other hand firm around my throat.

"I would watch you sleep," he breathes against my exposed neck, nipping at the sensitive flesh. "Listening to your little moans and watching the wetness bloom through your thin fucking panties when you dreamt of me."

My cheeks flush, but he holds my stare, a grin forming on his lips. When he looks at me, it feels as though he is able to see deep down into my soul, much deeper than anyone else ever has.

"I would watch every single video you searched on that sweet little orange and black website, thinking of the ways you would please yourself while watching men hunt women through the woods. Chasing them, biting them. Fucking them into oblivion while your eyes watched."

His feet kick my legs apart as his hand travels between my thighs. Using slow movements, he traces around my clit, slow and torturous. My hips instinctively chase the pressure, needing his touch more. He grins against my skin, flattening his tongue to lick the bite beneath his lips.

"I made it my mission to learn every single thing about you because you were always going to end up mine." His voice is a low rasp, sending a shiver running down my spine. My eyes focus on his, watching the flames dance behind his obsidian pupils.

For someone who has gone without my entire life, my body aches for him. The thoughts cross my mind of how many people he has made feel this way, how he grew to know his way around a woman. Within seconds his finger dips into my pussy before tracing light circles on my clit. I make no attempt to hold the moans from escaping my lips, the light noises mixing with our heavy breaths. His other hand wraps around my throat, tightening at the sides, forcing me to look at him.

"My pretty girl, you have read up on my kind. Did you know what we feed off, hmm?"

None of the books I read went into heavy detail about what hellhounds feed on, focusing more heavily on how they come to exist. Shaking my head slightly, I peer at him through wet lashes as he breathes me in, inhaling deeply at my neck.

Sharp, white canines descend from his teeth, but the rest of him remains as is: imposing, possessive, but all human. Every muscle at my back is tense, his skin on mine feeling warmer than humanely possible. There's no doubt in my mind that the man behind me is all predator; I've seen it with my own eyes, his teeth ripping through flesh. Those same teeth hover just above my collarbone, waiting to take a bite.

Licking the spot first, his teeth slice through the skin, eliciting a squeak from me, but it hurts much less than I expected. A low groan rumbles against the sensitive skin as crimson paths trail down the front of my body, dripping from my hardened nipples to the tiles below us. The moment is so raw and primal, filling a need I never knew I had.

"We feed on emotions, siphoning everything we can. Just before, you had a spark of jealousy mixed with your lust and sadness. It was bitter, taking away from the pure fucking taste of you."

Moving his fingers from my throat, he traces the marks he left on my neck, the wound starting to heal right before my eyes. The pang of pain begins to dull, the sting feeling more like a surface scratch.

"When I bite you or hold you here, your lust pours out so freely, it makes me borderline high."

My teeth sink into the inside of my lip, the bitter tang of blood spreading in my mouth as he continues toying with my clit. My entire body feels tightly wound, my muscles tense, praying for a release regardless of having multiple only hours ago. He pushes his hard length into my lower back, my thoughts drifting to the feeling of him inside me, how insanely full it felt, the way his cock pulsed with need, locking inside me. Fucking hell.

"My girl likes a little hint of pain with her pleasure. Just enough to push you over the edge, huh?"

Ryker pinches my clit slightly, pushing me over the edge of oblivion. Waves upon waves of tremors run through my body physically trembling in his hold. Taking a look in the mirror, I see his warm eyes raking down my body, appreciating the state of it, flushed and naked with a touch of blood.