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“You. I needyou. I don’t know why you can take magic or what happened at the lake.” His desperate eyes search mine, his bloody lip pinned by his teeth with no escape, so forceful, yet delicate. His stare hits my soul. “But help me, Never. Whatever is in you is not typical magic. It can fix me. Help me escape this damn nightmare in my head.”

“Eli…” My heart melts. “I can’t. I don’t know how.”

He pulls back, moonlight seeping into the brown of his round eyes, endless years in them. “Me either.”

I swear the cave echoes his quiet confession, bouncing off every perfectly written name, every inch of my body beneath him. I wrap my arms around his neck. “But I’ll try.”

He almost collapses on top of me, relief taking over his face. Then he sits up, his muscled frame hovering over my hips. He’s near breathless. “I’ll do anything to keep you.”

I’m speechless, seconds ticking by. Saliva collects in my mouth, warm and sweet on my wordless tongue as I attempt to decipher his words. Silence gnawing at my sanity, I force thequestion from my lips. “Until I fix you?”Until you don’t need me anymore?

He smiles down at me and runs a thumb over my mouth, a full circle, and lets that delicious darkness of his fall around us in invisible drops. “No, my little Never Ever. I’ve been telling you from the start—” He leans down and kisses me just above my lips. Then below. Then right smack on them. “You’re mine, and I’llneverlet you go.”

Chapter

Forty-Six

His tender kisses hurt. I retreat to the opposite side of the cave, leaving Eli alone. Hours pass as I let his words sink in. Between visions of death, my thoughts bounce from his story and plea to his claim on me—fuel for denial. I can’t process this vulnerable side of him while sorting through my own muddled feelings. I pretend nothing has changed, but the quiet space between us seems to collapse like a disorienting dream.

I hold my necklace and shiver against the white letters of the cave wall, my teeth clacking together after another vision. The cold consumes every breath, every ticking part of my body, every pump of blood until the rattling reaches the crux of my existence, taking over any remaining shred of self-directed thought until I’m not thinking at all. And like the night I rolledacross the floor to steal the stone from Eli’s pocket, I roll my body across the muddy cave—my clothes still damp, my skin like ice, my heart like fire. I get closer and closer.

He’s on his side, his back to the opposite wall, and when I almost reach him, I stop. Some seditious, logical part of me tries to prevent one more roll into his arms. It’s too dark to tell if his eyes are open or closed.

I lie in utter quiet, except for the chatter of my teeth, one foot away, trembling head to toe. I wiggle my feet in an attempt to overcome the numbness, my boots scraping. Minutes pass. The longest minutes that feel like hours.

And when my heart is so slow it might give up, Eli sits. My eyes open to see his arms rise, his shirt following. He tosses it aside. Then his hands find my waist. He says not a word as he lifts my shirt, and somehow I’m sitting, my arms in the air as if this is exactly what I wanted. He pulls the damp fabric over my head, wraps an arm around my middle and pulls me up against him as he lies back down.

My back melds to his bare chest. My hips find his, and I tuck my head under his chin. Coarse stubble pokes my scalp.I’m dead.Can’t he tell?I’m not here. I’m under the mocking rainbow in the green Calderan grass, a killer, rotting in the prison of my mind.But I let him stay, touching the stranger I’ve become. Maybe because he’s hurting inside, like me. Or his arms are a safe, dark cocoon. Or maybe because I see another side, an Eli that holds a dying child, that drums and sings and bleeds. Or maybe because I see both sides—and I don’t want to run from either.

He’s so cold against me that I’m sure I’m the one warming him, but still, my insides heat, churning with desire. He works his hand up my side and over my chest, his fingers creeping until they find the cup of my bra. They slip inside, missing my treasures. I jerk from the contact—cold fingers on my nipple, arough hand holding my breast. Then I exhale, releasing all the gnarled, crooked feelings as arousal edges in, a slow climb from pulsing to throbbing. Eli’s hips rock into me in a steady rhythm. His cock hardens, going from a gentle nudge on my bottom, to an insistent, solid bulge I can’t ignore.

It’s a struggle not to turn my body and face him, not to take him in my hands and push his length inside of me, to escape in ecstasy. I contract every muscle to resist, clenching my legs and holding my breath…because how can I let go with my body when my mind is a broken mess? How can he?

But escape is exactly what I need.

He holds me like that for so long, thumbing the bud of my breast and nibbling my ear, his hips rolling against my backside, that not a single other thought makes it past the pleasure.

The silence is palpable after the obscene amount of words he spewed in the woods while torturing me into rapture, but it disintegrates when he pinches my nipple so tight I scream. It echoes off the walls. Then he twists, and it burns in the best fucking way. I reach behind me for some part of him—any part I can make mine. My hand lands on the hair over his ear. I take ringlets and flesh into my fist and pull as his knuckles roll over me.

He doesn’t even try to move my hand, so I yank harder. He growls and sucks my ear into his mouth. Two fingers clamp down on my nipple, twirling and tugging until I run out of curses. My moans roll through the cave. I free his ear and stir against him, pressure building in my core, pounding through me. My fingernails spear the hardening mud on the floor. He reeks of musk and man and blood, mixing with the damp earthiness of the cave, and I haul it into my lungs as I come undone, my breathing frantic and heavy.

I’m still shaking, wet and pulsing and panting when his chest slams into my back, his hips searching wildly for contact. Hishand dips between us, releasing his cock from the restraint of his waistband and pushing it against my ass, still tragically covered with my pants. He rolls me onto my stomach, and his own body follows, his weight on my bottom and legs. He props himself up on one elbow, his other hand under me, still holding my breast. He’s almost quiet, strangled moans stuck in his throat as he bucks into me.

“Don’t hold back,” I command, struck by the realization that his strength is part of who he is. “Give me the real you.” He shouldn’t be hidden by self-restraint. Iwantto feel his powerful body with no escape. Iwantto be trapped by the uncontrollable urges of a man who needs and desires me to the point of chasing me down and locking me up, whose mind and future depend on me.

And I want to fight him every damn step of the way.

“I’d break you to pieces,” he says, his voice strained.

He’ll slaughter anyone who even thinks of hurting me. He’ll protect every last drop of my blood to have for himself. I’m his in a way I can’t comprehend, and I’ll embrace all his sharp edges. I don’t care if they scratch and slice. I’ll guard them like he guards me and never let a fucking soul near his heart.

“I’m already broken,” I yell.

“No,” he grinds out, yet triples his force. My hip bones crash into the muddy cave ground over and over. I slide forward with his thrusts, my clit rubbing against the floor and my hands out flat in front of me, nothing to hold onto. He doesn’t remove the fabric over my ass that keeps him from filling me. He takes me like this, with the urgency and unrivaled carnality of a man unraveling…for me. And I don’t want it to end, but his entire frame convulses in violent spasms. He clenches my breast. I swear he nearly tears it off in passion, and those teeth of his bite down on my ear, all control lost.

With the final jerks of his cock up against me subsiding, his breathing slows, his movements settling back to a slow rock. He rolls us back to our sides and pulls me closer to his now-clammy skin, his fingers skimming lazy circles over my hips.

“Sleep, little Never.” He licks the drops of blood from my ear, following with tiny wet kisses over each tooth mark. His tongue soothes the sting as he pulls out his knife. I tense, but he only smashes my body tighter against his, draping a heavy leg over me. I fall asleep to him suckling my ear, his knife across my chest, protecting me. All night his cold skin against mine keeps me pumping with heat.