Chapter 53

Ipull from a sleep so quiet and still I don’t want to wake. Don’t want to slip off this warm slab of stone I’m wrapped around. That’s rising and falling beneath me like it has real, working lungs, lulled by the slow, sludgy beat thumping against me.

Thud-ump …

Thud-ump …

Thud-ump …

I nuzzle in, drawing myself full of leathery musk nipped with the smell of a frosty morning. A smell that paints itself all through my chest, filling me up—

Rhordyn.

My eyes snap open.

The window comes into focus first, the world beyond it crammed with the powdery brightness of morning, casting dim light through the cabin. I look to the chair Rhordyn was sitting in when I fell asleep and confirm that it is, indeed, empty.

My pulse whooshes in my ears as I register my nakedness.

The blankets heaped on the ground.

The weight across my bare back.

Two heavy, warm arms bound around me. Arms belonging to the man beneath me—my legs tucked up and straddling his torso, head pressed firmly upon his beating heart. My hands are woven beneath his armpits, curled up his muscular back, my fingertips kissing his shoulder blades …

Fuck—fuck—fuck—

Midnight memories pummel me: him dragging me flush with his rock-solid chest; me clawing at him, tangling us together; falling back asleep to the sound of his heart beating safely against me.

It wasn’t a dream. It was real.

He’s here, in bed with me. Cuddling me. Letting me use him like a mattress.

My dome bears a massive cleft straight through the middle, barely visible beneath everything that’s spilled out of it—those raw, tender vines of relief I’ve been tucking and stuffing beneath the surface no longer vines but a forest.

They’ve used my spine as a ladder to weave around my ribs so tight there’s no bone left in sight, then stitched my heart into a tidy lump that makes me feel so beautifully whole. They’ve smothered every other emotion in sight, sprouting thousands of little buds that look like they’re just about to split their heads and bloom.

I squeeze my stinging eyes shut, releasing a slip of tears.

I thought my home was a castle sitting on the edge of a cliff, looking over a bay that’s shaped like a monster bit the shore. I thought my home was a tower poked through the clouds, with my rocks and my paints and my plants. But I’d happily live right here for the rest of eternity and never feel another pang of homesickness. It’s a realization that just makes more tears slip from my scrunched-up eyes.

Because this moment—this beautiful, perfect moment—is stolen.

Not mine.

His temperature snaps to cold so fast I gasp, wondering if I just imagined him warm in my half-asleep state.

Must be it.

I tune into his slow and steady breaths …

I need to get up. To wiggle out of his hold before I do something stupid, like kiss him awake. Like reach back and take his hand, urge it farther down my spine, between—

Get up, Orlaith.

I open my eyes, lift my head the slightest amount, look straight into his silver eyes, and freeze.

My heart whumps into my stomach, a small, choked sound slipping free as I hold that paralyzing stare.

His hair is mussed from sleep, brows pinched, mouth serious, a tension strung between us so tight I’m certain it could shatter like splitting glass.

The world could combust right now and I wouldn’t notice.

His throat works, and I whimper as his hand comes up to brush the tears from my cheek. I’m too drunk on the moment not to lean into his touch. To close my eyes and nuzzle his hand—stealing a sip of serenity because I’m greedy.

Happy.

Bereft.

Because I’m just about to let him go and blow him back to the wind.

I swallow, force myself to open my eyes. He doesn’t stop me from sitting up, climbing off him. Doesn’t shift a muscle until my feet kiss the floorboards.

His hand latches onto my wrist, and in a few swift motions he’s sitting on the edge of the bed with me straddling his lap—forehead to forehead, breathing hot and heavy, his fingers delving into my hair that’s a mess of wild, unruly waves around my face.

I can feel his manhood hard and heavy between us, resting against my belly.

I thread my hands through his beard so as to set some barrier between us … partially. But also because I want to touch him.

Feel him.

Love him.

His body goes entirely still as I brush my lips against his, softer than the beat of a butterfly’s wing. Because I’m a thief, stealing little trinkets, stashing them in my chest for when feast becomes famine. For when we’re not stuffed into such a small space with too much of him and no room to breathe.

To think.

To nurture my self-control.

The storm in my stomach churns.

“I can’t,” I whisper pitifully, more tears slipping down my cheeks as he makes a rumbling sound, then feathers his lips along the edge of my jaw.

“Speak to me.” The words patter against my pebbling skin, and his teeth dig in—a gentle nip that loosens the strings of my composure. A moan cuts into me as my head falls back, spine arching, my aching breasts pushing so far forward my nipples brush his chest, the blunt ends of my hair tickling between my shoulder blades as he ghosts his lips across my right clavicle.

He plants a kiss, and I can almost feel it brushing the petals of one of my blooms. Another is pressed beside it, like he’s mapping a constellation with his mouth, hatching the next kiss upon my shoulder.

A smaller, softer one beside it.

Pleasure ripples through me like honey slugging through my veins, and I moan, swallowing a whimpered beg for him to do it again.

And again.

For him to do it forever.

His mouth journeys into the dip of my neck—tender.

Nudging.

My head tips to the side, and he blows an icy breath upon the stretched hollow, a shiver pebbling my skin.

I picture a senka bloom unraveling milky petals.

He drags his hand from my hair, down my spine, the frosty brush between my shoulder blades kindling my nerves.

My want.

He braces my back with his unflinching strength, giving me a perch to arch upon as he feathers more kisses across my clavicle.

I count each one, memorizing them.

Tucking them away.

Ten …

Eleven …

“Please.”

I didn’t think he knew that word.

He plants another kiss in unison with the heavy roll of my heart.

“I have nothing to say,” I whisper, and he makes this deep, pained sound, his hand spearing up into my hair to cradle the back of my head. He presses our foreheads together so I’m looking into his silver orbs from beneath tear-stained lashes.

“Then fight me,” he grits out from between clenched teeth. “Fucking use me if you have to.”

There’s a vulnerability in his eyes that breaks my fucking heart, a waiting silence shoving between us that seems to grow its own hungry pulse.

I used the man in the forest nymph lair. I will not use the man I love.

Delving my fingers through his thick locks, I blow a breath upon his lips, wishing I could tip forward.

Steal another taste.

“You deserve better than that …”

Than me.

Because I’m broken.

In pieces.

A tangled black vine that’ll smother him to death.

His stare tracks over my face in catastrophic sweeps, darkening. “I don’t. I deserve a lot of things but your respect isn’t one of them.”

“You don’t understand,” I whimper, my voice soft and fragile. Weak—just like my ability to battle the gravity bringing my mouth closer to his, thieving another brush of his lips. Another trinket I tuck away, cradling close to my heart. “My love will tear you apart.”

He digs his hand into the hair at the back of my head. “Then I’ll die a happy man,” he snarls, and crushes our lips together in a clash of desperate, wild abandon.

A deep, aching strike I fall upon the blade of.

Willingly.

I moan into his mouth, tugging at his hair as I tip his head to the side and stoke the kiss. Tasting him.

Devouringhim.

More vines of tender relief cram into all my nooks and crannies until I can barely inflate my lungs, and my body grows loose like softening butter.

We tide together, a perfect meld of hunger and repose, our souls seeming to skim with the dig of our tongues and the pull of our lips. He rumbles into me, almost like a purr, making heat pool in my lower belly.

I grow greedy … ravenous. Rock my hips.

Just once.

A zing of pleasure spears through me when that tender bundle of nerves brushes against his solid length, like an electric shock to the aching organ in my chest, reminding me of all my singed, jagged edges.

I break our kiss, resting my head on his shoulder, my breaths hard and heavy.

Heart thrashing.

Breathe …

His arms move around me, lips skimming my temple, planting an icy kiss that ignites my skin in a flush of delicious goosebumps.

I open my eyes, seeing the wide, risen scar on his chest …

A chill slips through my veins, dousing the throb between my legs.

I remember the feel of his blood on my hands; the way it felt when it dried and cracked.

I remember the way he kissed me on the head right before he slipped away.

I remember his final words that gave so much and took so little despite everything I’d just done to him.

Don’t cry.

Guilt crashes over me. Ugly, selfish guilt—saturating the air, making it hard to breathe.

I can’t control this thing inside.

I ripped my own mother to bits.

Not having him at all … it’s worth much more than losing him again.

Setting one hand upon his scar, the other on his jaw, I look into silver eyes that reflect my flushed cheeks, tear-stained lashes, and the wild mess of my hair.

“Milaje—”

“This was a mistake.”

His eyes shutter, a raw, angry sound boiling in the back of his throat.

“It can’t happen again.”

Drenched in the heady musk of our tangled scents, I unsaddle myself from his lap and take backward steps toward the clothing rack, willing him to stay.

Don’t make this harder than it already is.

His canines lengthen. Ears sharpen. Eyes darken.

Please—

He stands, dwarfing me in both size and presence as he prowls forward—huge. Naked.

Beastly.

When he’s so close I feel his static against my skin, he stops, grips my chin, and tips my head, his words a frost skimming my lips as he says, “I bow to no one, but I’ll get down on my knees before the Gods and beg you to choose this.To live.”

He plants a kiss on my forehead, and again, I picture him falling backward off a cliff—down into the frothy nether.

Dead.

“Get dressed,” he murmurs against me, then grabs his pants off the rack and steps into them, pulling them up. “I’m taking you home.” Snatching his sword, he makes for the door, thumping it shut behind himself.

I claw at my tightening throat, breaths turning short and sharp as I picture him in bits, reeking of scorched death …

Murderer.

The vines that were so budding and hopeful turn yellow, brown, then black—breaking down into a blow of dust and inky seeds that clog my insides.

I carefully pick up those precious, hopeful seeds, tucking them through the split in my dome before plucking beads of luster, tenderly filling the jagged cleft as I crumple to the floor and weep.