Page 38 of Chain Me

My head fell back against my shoulders, my eyes on the ceiling as pleasure built.

“I’ve had centuries to prepare for you,” he growled as I convulsed, mindless. “Years beyond your understanding. Do you think this means anything? No.” He stiffened, grunting against the base of my throat. “You mean nothing.”

His arms caught me as my thoughts drifted. As if from far away, I could hear him talking still. To me? Or himself?

“I won’t letyoube the end of me. I won’t…even if it means I have to ruin you first.”

Memento Mori

Icame to in frozen arms. Dublin’s. For what felt like ages, he carried me, but I lacked the strength to even open my eyes. When his body finally withdrew from mine, a cloud of silken sheets provided a clue as to our destination. Forcing my eyes open confirmed it—a bedroom, darker than the main space. A sliver of moonlight served as the sole illumination, giving his limbs ethereal definition as he stood back.

My heart lurched in my chest. God, he resembled an angel more than ever as his eyes swept over me, his jaw tight. But his grated, hollow voice was pure hell.

“You should be fine,” he said, almost to himself. “I cleared it with the doctor. Your labs had improved, and she didn’t recommend against it.”

Sex,I realized in the depths of my addled brain. He had gone through the trouble of discussing sex with his mysterious doctor. An image of my dress came to mind, how easily he’d removed it…

I didn’t want to jump to the obvious conclusion. It was too insane. I wanted to sleep. Forget.

But some cruel sense of curiosity wouldn’t let me. Struggling for breath, I croaked, “Yulia—”

“I lied to her,” he admitted, easily catching onto my train of thought—the lace had been one of her mysterious alterations.

But the fact thathehad requested such a detail presented a scenario I couldn’t fathom at the moment. I closed my eyes instead, desperate to reconnect with my limbs. They were jelly, disobeying any command I issued. I could only lie at his mercy, blind to his expression. Eventually, he left anyway, his steps resonating through the silence.

Only to return minutes later.

I jumped as warm liquid dripped against my inner thigh. My eyes flew open to watch him kneel over the mattress, a rag in hand. He ran it between my legs as reverently as a worshipper cleaning off a cherished altar, and the insanity of it…

I trembled, but he didn’t look up, intent on his task. But something in my silence made his jaw tighten and his fingers stall.

Finally, he grated out a single request. “Say something.”

“I’m dreaming,” I whispered, clinging to that thin possibility. Otherwise, my brain throbbed with too many thoughts to process. His touch. His words. His rage…

“I won’t let you destroy me.”

But then he stood, tossing the rag aside, and turned toward the door. Guilt didn’t belong in this specter—it made him feel far too real.

“Wait,” I croaked.

He froze near the threshold of the hall. Within a heartbeat, tension transformed him into a creature of muscle and bone. An unrivaled statue of perfection.

But his gaze revealed a crack. Something elusive that made my thoughts twist into knots when I tried to decipher it.

So I didn’t.

I closed my eyes and willed everything away. Everything but the childish ache worming through my chest where my heart might have been.

In the end, all I could muster up the strength to voice was, “Why? Why leave?” I added, choking every word out. “Then come back. Then kiss me. Then…” My body hummed, riding the wave of lust even as my mind raged in turmoil. “Why?”

I waited.

But footsteps broke the silence rather than words.

He left.

And, alone, I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and fell into the darkness eager to consume me.