24. Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

I t was obvious.

Been obvious all along.

If only she would allow herself to not only admit it, but accept it.

Sylvie wasn’t wrong. How Thomas looked at her, what he wanted her for, was obvious.

And it was just as obvious how much she wanted him in the exact same way.

Though just hours ago, he’d shoved her away from him and told her to pick a husband so he could get rid of her.

Discarded her without a backward glance.

He didn’t know what he wanted, and she wasn’t a toy he could play with and then toss aside when his mood swung. She had to remember that—have that much spine—no matter what he was saying in this moment. No matter how he was looking at her.

Her heart drumming out a beat that flooded her ears, her tongue darted out, licking her lips. “Except you don’t know what you want, Thomas. That is the only obvious notion in this room.”

“No?” He leaned toward her, the blue lines in his hazel eyes alive, pulsating as he hunted her. “I haven’t been living in a very long time, Izzie. I have been going through the motions, yes. Faking all of it for far too long. But living?” He shook his head. “No, I haven’t done that for seven years. I had accepted this was to be my fate for the rest of my miserable life.”

He looked down to the floor, seemed to consider the space between them, then took a step forward and lifted his gaze to her. “And then, out of nowhere, the very first time I have felt something in forever. It was the moment I dunked you into the bath that first day and I realized you weren’t a dirty little waif.”

Her fingers curled inward, itching her palms. “What was I?”

“You were feeling. Every one of them and all of them at the same time in that tiny little second. So much so that I couldn’t wade through it all. Didn’t know how to.”

“And have you?”

“Not completely, but I can quite clearly see the other side now.”

“What is it that you see?”

“You. Much to my dismay.” A slight shift forward and he towered over her, staring down at her, the sliver of air between them vibrating with sparks that neither one of them could control. “You think I don’t know what I want? Maybe. But there is one thing I have realized I have to be truthful about. You are the only thing on the other side—the only thing worth wading through all of the blasted muck for.”

“Why? Why me?”

“I don’t know why.” His shoulders lifted as a dry chuckle came from his throat. “I don’t know why I cannot get you out of my head, out of my dreams, but I cannot. You are stuck like a burr deep under my skin that I cannot dislodge, and I have come to the conclusion that I don’t want to dislodge you.”

She opened her mouth to breathe, but found the breath couldn’t get past the lump in her throat. “Then what do you want to do with me?”

Without a word, his head dipped and his lips met hers. Hard. His hand slipping through the back of her hair, and he angled her head, deepening the kiss.

She was lost to him within three heartbeats, the kiss sucking her in, everything about him overtaking her being.

He took his time, cupping her chin, his mouth on hers, exploring the depths, tempting her tongue to battle with his. As though he had all the time in the world to just kiss her. To imprint everything about her into his mind, for she was certainly doing the same of him.

Memorizing how his upper arms felt under her fingertips, the muscles straining, twitching everywhere her fingers roamed. The taste of him intoxicating, with remnants of whisky on his tongue. How his breath drifted against her face, the cadence of it, how it sped every time his left hand drifted somewhere new on her body.

A kiss so sensual, her folds were already pounding, begging for him to veer his hand inward on her thigh to reach the crux of her.

He pulled away from her mouth, his lips trailing down along her neck, heated, soft words from him. “You taste like something my mouth has always craved, but never known. I could spend all day sucking on your tongue. Lost in your breath.”

The devil take her, she needed his skin. Needed to feel the heat of him under her palms.

Her fingers curled into his lawn shirt, tugging it up and forcibly lifting his arms to pull it off of him. A growl in his throat, he broke contact with her for only a moment as his shirt went over his head.

Her look dropped, and her intake of breath was instant.

His forehead furrowed at her sudden alarm, confusion hitting his face.

He followed her look downward. “Oh.” Surprise in his voice as though he forgot for a moment he actually existed as a human being with a human shell.

“Blood,” she whispered, her fingers reaching out to run across the scab that had already formed over a gash across his chest.

But that wasn’t what had made her gasp.

Her fingertips with a mind of their own, travelled to the left along his skin, touching one of the hundreds of gnarled scars she could see on his torso and arms. Some large. Some small. Some in shapes, as though his skin had been carved with initials too ragged to recognize. Some rough, some smooth white skin.

“You are battle worn—what happened to you?” She glanced up to his face.

“It is nothing I want to think about at the moment.” His eyes hooded, his look lifted, pinning her. “Unless they disgust you?”

She immediately shook her head. She was well accustomed to scars. Others’. Her own. Her look dropped to his skin and her fingers moved, tracing a circular scar on the top of his chest, just under his right clavicle. The raised skin puckered, like a circle had been branded onto him and it had healed poorly a long time ago.

She wanted its secret. Every last one of the secrets that each scar held. A map of pain and survival.

Her look lifted to him. “The scars are beautiful on you.”

His head jerked back, surprise making his hazel eyes go huge.

She needed to know those scars. Needed to know them intimately.

Without thinking, she leaned forward, setting her tongue on the circular scar, and she traced the ring of it. Salty with some indiscernible taste she couldn’t identify, but knew was the essence of him. Slowly, around and around until she felt every bump, every tear that had once ravaged his skin.

Thomas stayed stone still under her tongue. He didn’t shift, not a muscle twitching as she moved onto the scar to the right of it, a straight line, smooth, probably the tip of a dagger slicing downward for how it grew wider at the bottom of the line.

A third one, just below it, wide in the shape of a quarter moon. Ragged on one side, smooth on the other.

“Iz.” His voice rough, barely audible.

Breaking her of the trance.

She pulled back, looking up at him, surprised she had just found herself licking him indiscriminately. Rude. Bizarre. She was an ass.

His jaw twitched for one second as he stared down at her, and for a moment, she held her breath, thinking he was going to explode and kick her out of his room.

Instead, his mouth crashed into hers. Rabid and raging, he moved his hands, pawing at any part of her he could touch, grabbing the lawn shirt she’d been in and ripping it up over her head. Naked. Naked to him.

His mouth hungry on her skin with a constant growl rumbling in his throat, his fingers dipped down, sliding in along her folds, breaching her slit.

She leaned into him, mewling at the instant pleasure flooding up into her.

But no. She wanted him fully this time. All of him.

Her knuckles brushing against the hard bulge straining against the cloth, her hands worked his fall front, popping free buttons.

This was the moment he’d walked out last time, and she paused, even though it was killing her to do so. She looked up at him, her breath heated. “Wait. What about your celibacy?”

“Fuck celibacy.” His hands grabbed her at the jawline, his mouth finding hers in a desperate kiss.

Fuck celibacy indeed.

She flicked open the last buttons and his cock jutted out, angry and proud and demanding her touch.

She happily obliged, wrapping her hand around his shaft, sliding her fingers down the length of it, the bumps and lines of it—the nuances of it—smooth and fascinating under her palm.

With the touch, his rumbling growls turned louder, vibrating into her mouth in the middle of the kiss, and he wrapped his hands under her butt and picked her up, moving to the bed and sitting down.

Straddling him, her knees on the bed, she lifted herself up, her head slightly above his. She slid her left hand behind his neck for support, her right staying on his shaft, stroking.

He used her higher angle to slide one finger into her, his thumb working her nub. Slick, he slid in two fingers.

Pumping, his tongue pulsated into her mouth in time with his fingers. She was losing her head, losing her bearings with how he plied her body. Fingers sliding in and out, stretching her, until she was panting, gasping for breath, having to break the kiss for how close she was to slipping off the edge of control.

Without hesitation, she set the head of his shaft at her entrance and sank down onto him.

Pain, the length of him breaking her barrier, she stopped as the hard pinch of it mixed with the pleasure pulsating hot through the center of her.

He froze under her. “Fuck, you’re a virgin, Izzie.”

Her fingers tightened along the back of his neck. “Not anymore.”

“How is that possible?”

“I just slid down onto you?”

His eyes lifted to her, his look piercing her. “No, with your job.”

“Does it matter?” Her eyebrows lifted. “Do you really want to talk about this now?”

He stared at her for a long silent second, then shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. You all right?”

The sharp pangs of his engorged cock throbbing deep within her had faded. The spot the tip of his shaft was wedged against deep within her, starting to come alive in a new way. She nodded. “Just don’t stop.”

He grabbed the back of her head, dragging her to him, kissing her as his left hand went between them, his thumb sliding in along her nub. Grinding slowly against it as she shifted, adjusting to his girth and getting him seated just right within her.

He swirled her nub, bringing back the insistent throbbing deep within her folds, pressure building on pressure. She moaned into his mouth, the need for more friction crushing.

His hips lifted slightly, testing her tightness, and it spurred her onward, the pain nearly gone as she ground down against him, desperate for friction. Buried deep in her, he felt so right. So damn right.

Her knees digging into the bed, she lifted herself, letting his cock slide out slowly, then she descended. Up and down, his hand working her nub, the pressure point of all things good and evil in the world.

A sin for how extraordinary it felt.

Like she didn’t deserve to have these moments of delirious sensations rampaging through her.

She gasped a breath at the thought, pulling back from him. Wrong. This was wrong.

“Your face.”

She looked down at Thomas. “What?”

“Your face just changed—shifted into…what I’m not sure. Resistance? Why? Are you in pain?”

Impossible that he’d seen that in her. She hid errant emotions way better than that. She shook her head. “I’m not.”

“No, you were riding me, losing yourself, and you just pulled back. Why?”

“No.”

His face set hard, his fingers pulled away from her folds, both of his palms going flat and defiant onto the bed on either side of him. “You’re telling right now, or I don’t move another inch.”

She tried to squirm on him and his hands clamped onto her waist, holding her in place, removing all friction.

Her hips tried to drive down on him, her voice a raw plead. “Please.”

“No. Not until you tell me.” His stare locked onto her, devouring every last bit of her resistance to him.

She shook her head, looking up to the ceiling with a whisper. “Ghosts. Ghosts of the past. Earlier, last time—I didn’t know—didn’t know what you could do to me, how easily you could make me feel what you did. But now…” Her voice choked off.

“Now what?” The question softer, his thumbs dug into the flesh just inside of her hip bones.

“Now the ghosts are in my head. Ghosts that call me a whore.”

Rage came instant to his face, his hold on her tightening almost to pain. “Who called you a whore?”

“No one, not now. My father. When I was six, seven, eight. I didn’t even know what a whore was, just that I was it and it was bad. I was a little whore and that’s why he wouldn’t let me go into town.”

“Fucking hell, Iz.” His eyes closed as he seethed in a breath. “Did he ever touch you?”

“No. His words were for my mother. Only she wasn’t there to scream at, so he screamed at me.” She shook her head. “It does not matter.”

“It does.” His eyes had opened to her, and in the hazel, a softness that she’d never seen before. “It does if it’s in your head.”

Her breath caught in her throat at his words. She shook her head. “I know what I was and what I wasn’t. I was little. Not a whore. But knowing it doesn’t always stop the whispers of the past.”

He seethed in a breath, his hand clamping onto the back of her neck to force her look to him. “Ghosts are not real. I can’t take his words out of your memory, but I can help you ignore them, you just have to let me.”

She met his look, losing herself in the swirls of greens and blues and browns sifting against each other, the fire, the want in his eyes as he stared at her. She nodded.

He was still seated deep within her, and his fingers slid into her folds, stroking as he spoke. “We go slow, so you feel every swipe of my finger. Feel the sparks of it traveling through your veins. Sparks that will burn up all those fucking whispers of the past that have no right to be in your mind.” The ferocity of his words struck down the middle of her chest, taking her breath.

She could only nod.

He angled her body backward, arching her over his hold on her lower back and his mouth dipped down, taking her left breast between his lips. Swirling his tongue around her nipple. The sensation immediate and sending tremors down to the crux of her, which only sent deeper tremors upward. A fiery circle feeding upon itself in her body.

“You were made for this, Iz.” His words heated on her skin as he looked up at her. “Made to have my hands, my tongue on you. And the only one that decided that was fate. Fate can be a cruel mistress, but fate can also give us immeasurable pleasure, all you have to do is give yourself over to me. Set your eyes on me.”

She didn’t think it would be possible to look anywhere but at him.

His hands shifting to her hips, he lifted her, his cock sliding thick out of her. A void. And then he slid back into her, filling that agonizing void. Again. Slowly. Again and again.

His stare searching her face, his voice came raw, his tenuous hold on his own control sending a shake into his words. “What do you feel?”

“Blood pounding, pooling in the crux of me.” Her words breathless. “In my folds. Around your cock. More.”

“Bloody hell, you are magnificent.” He pulled her body back toward him as he dove his fingers inward to her folds, rapid in working her nub, savage in its manipulation. “Come for me, Iz. Come. Come.”

All it took.

Her body broke, shattering as she arched backward, a guttural scream ripping from deep in her chest. Her body writhing against him, driving down onto him as waves ripped through her, surges of pleasure devouring her over and over.

Her eyes cracked to find his teeth bared, his stare locked onto her with a primal hunger. “Set your nails into me.”

“You’re already bloody.” She could barely get the words out.

A growl and he pulled her body to him, his grip locking onto her hips, holding her steady as he drove up into her hard, the pace speeding. “I like the pain.”

She didn’t ask, didn’t need to.

The scars told her everything she needed to know.

She leaned into him, digging her nails into his back, his muscles contracting under the sharp bite.

“Hell, Iz.”

He seethed in a breath, exhaling it in a roar as he lifted her body, slamming it back down onto him. His body tensing, shaking with the force of the explosion slamming through him.

She could feel everything all at once in his release.

Not just excising ghosts of her past, but his as well.