Page 31 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

I shift forward on the mattress, sitting fully beside her now.

The bed dips with my weight, and she stirs—just enough to roll onto her back, her head turning toward me.

The scent of her hair finds me first, soft and inviting, curling up from the pillow like a thread pulling me in, just before sits up, her mouth moves close enough to matter.

It’s not a kiss. Not at first. Just the nearness of it. A warning. Or maybe a promise.

I don’t move.

Not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t know what I’ll do if I start. There’s too much folded between us. Her leaving. My silence. The way her fingers still rest on my thigh like she’s waiting to decide which version of me will answer when she finally speaks.

“You’re too quiet,” she says.

“So are you.”

“I had to be,” she responds.

“I know.”

Another pause.

Then her mouth finds the line of my throat, slow and steady, like she’s mapping something no one else has earned the right to name.

I let her.

Because this—this heat, this ache, this tension drawn tight as wire—isn’t about comfort. It’s about recognition. She’s not reaching for safety. She’s reaching for proof.

My hand threads into her hair. Not rough. Not yet. But firm.

Her breath hitches.

“I thought you might not come back,” she says, the words pressed into the hollow of my neck.

“You thought wrong.”

“Did I?”

I pull her back just far enough to look into her face. The bruised softness of sleep still clings to the edges of her eyes, but what’s underneath is sharper. Awake. Watching.

“I left the house because someone made you a target,” I say. “I came back because that someone doesn’t understand what it means to cross a line I didn’t invite them to.”

“And what if it’s more than one?” she asks. “What if it’s not just Vale, or Caleb, or ghosts with burner IDs?”

“Then I burn them all down.”

Her fingers curl against my chest.

“You say that like it’s easy,” she whispers.

“It is.”

We’re nose to nose now. Breath to breath. Every word is a choice.

She presses her forehead to mine. Her voice is barely there. “What if I break something in you by staying?”

“You already did.”

She freezes.

And I feel the air shift. Not away from me. Not toward.

Just deeper.

“What did I break?” she asks, no longer soft.

“The part that thought I didn’t need this.”

She exhales like she’s been holding that breath since before I walked through the door.

Her hands rise. One to my shoulder. The other to my jaw. Her thumbs stroke along the edge of my face like she’s memorizing fault lines. Like she knows I might fracture but won’t fall.

Then she kisses me.

This time, it’s real.

No warning.

No hesitation.

Her mouth opens under mine with a desperation I haven’t earned and a certainty I don’t deserve. I take it anyway. I take all of her. Her weight. Her heat. The way she climbs into my lap without ceremony. The way her thighs tighten around me like I’m the last real thing she can hold.

Her shirt—my shirt—bunches around her hips.

She doesn’t pull it off.

She drags my hand under it instead and presses it to the flat of her stomach.

“Feel that?” she murmurs. “That’s not fear.”

“What is it then?”

“Need.”

It shatters something in me.

I lift her. Turn her. Lay her back against the bed in one breathless motion. She arches into me without asking. Her fingers grip the back of my neck, nails sharp. Her breath fans across my ear.

“Don’t be careful,” she whispers. “Not with me.”

So I’m not.

I press into her. Mouth, hands, heat. I take the edge of her moan and swallow it whole. I push the shirt up and over her head. She helps. She always helps. Even when she’s breaking.

I don’t say I missed her.

I show her.

With every touch.

With every breath.

Every growled promise against her skin that no one will ever get close enough again.

Her hips buck. I hold her there. Not to restrain, but to remind. That I’m here. That I’m real. That no one touches her but me.

Not the ghosts.

Not the enemies.

Not even the versions of her past self still clawing at the inside of her ribs.

I take my time.

Not to be gentle. Not to be slow. But to make sure she feels every goddamn second of this—every inch, every shift, every breath that leaves my mouth and finds her skin.

Her body is an altar, and I’m the heretic who’s come to defile it.

She’s sprawled beneath me, skin glistening with sweat, lips parted and raw from the brutal edge of our kisses.

Her hips twitch, restless, a silent plea for more, but I’m not here to grant mercy.

I’m here to unravel her, to make her feel every pulse, every scrape, every goddamn shudder until she’s nothing but need carved into flesh.

I start at her throat, where her pulse throbs like a war drum under her skin. My lips graze it first, soft as a whisper, then my tongue follows, slow and deliberate, tasting the salt of her desperation.

She whimpers, a fractured sound that’s more animal than human, and I let my teeth scrape just enough to make her gasp, to make her wonder if I’ll draw blood.

I linger there, sucking gently, then harder, marking the fragile column of her neck until her breath hitches and her fingers twist in the sheets, clawing like she’s trying to hold onto sanity itself.

I move to the curve of her shoulder, biting down with intent—not enough to break skin, but enough to brand her with the ghost of my teeth. Her body jerks, a low moan spilling from her lips, and I soothe the mark with a slow, wet drag of my tongue, savoring the way her skin trembles under my mouth.

Lower now, my lips trace the delicate ridge of her collarbone, then find the soft weight of her breast. I don’t rush.

I circle her nipple with the tip of my tongue, teasing until it hardens, then draw it into my mouth, sucking with a rhythm that mirrors the pulse between her thighs.

She arches, heels skidding against the silk sheets, her body screaming what her voice can’t.

“Elias—” My name is a sob, a plea torn from her throat, raw and jagged, like it’s the only thing tethering her to the earth.

I seize her wrists in one hand, pinning them above her head, my grip a steel promise—firm, not cruel, but unyielding. It’s a command, a cage, and her pulse races under my fingers, her body yielding even as her eyes burn with defiance.

I release her wrists as mouth continues its descent, lips brushing the taut plane of her ribs, tongue dipping into the shallow dip of her navel. Her skin is a fever, salt and silk and sin, and I’m drowning in it, each taste pulling me deeper into her orbit.

Her thighs part for me, shameless, dripping with want. The air is thick with the scent of her arousal, musky and intoxicating, and I pause just to breathe her in, to let the anticipation coil tighter in her gut.

When my lips finally find her cunt, my tongue parting her slick folds, slow and deliberate—she cries out, a sound so raw it could shatter stone.

I don’t rush. I explore her with my mouth, lapping at her core, teasing the swollen bud of her clit with soft flicks, then harder, circling until her hips buck against me.

My fingers join, two sliding inside her, curling to find that spot that makes her choke on her own breath. She’s tight, molten, and so fucking wet I can feel her dripping down my hand.

I torment her, drawing her to the edge with slow, deliberate strokes, then pulling back just as she starts to unravel. Her pleas are a symphony—fractured, desperate, “Please, Elias, please”—but I don’t give in.

I want her to feel the ache, to know I’m the one who controls it. My tongue presses harder, my fingers thrust deeper, and when she finally breaks, her orgasm crashes through her like a tidal wave, her thighs clamp around my head, her body convulsing, her scream a jagged hymn of surrender.

I don’t stop. I lap at her through the aftershocks, drawing out every shudder, every sob, until she’s trembling and spent, her chest heaving like she’s run a marathon.

I crawl up her body, kissing a slow path over her quivering stomach, her heaving breasts, the marked skin of her throat.

My cock is aching, so hard it’s almost painful, but I pause to look at her.

Her eyes are wild, pupils blown, lips swollen and parted, her hair a tangled halo against the pillow.

She’s a fucking vision, a goddess undone, and I’m the bastard who gets to ruin her.

She meets my gaze, unflinching, and nods once, her voice a low, broken rasp. “Now. Fucking take me.”

I don’t make her wait, but I don’t give her soft either.

I settle between her thighs, my body a furnace, and when I thrust inside her—slow at first, letting her feel every thick inch stretching her—she gasps, legs wrapping around my waist, pulling me deeper.

Her nails rake down my back, sharp and vicious, drawing blood, and I hiss, the pain igniting something primal in me.

I move then, hard and deep, each thrust a claim, a punishment, a vow.

She meets me, hips rising, her body as hungry as mine, her moans a chorus of need and defiance.

I angle my hips, hitting that spot inside her that makes her eyes roll back, her breath catch in her throat. My hand slides to her throat, not squeezing, just resting there, a reminder of who’s in control.

Her pulse hammers under my palm, and her eyes lock on mine, daring me to push further, to break her completely. I lean down, my lips brushing her ear, my voice a low growl. “You’re mine. Say it.”

“Yours,” she gasps, her voice breaking as another climax builds, her body tightening around me like a vice.

I fuck her through it, relentless, my own release clawing at the edges of my control. When she comes again, her cry is my name, a desperate, reverent thing that shatters me.

I follow, my orgasm ripping through me like a wildfire, spilling inside her with a force that leaves my whole body jerking, shaking, vision blurring, heart pounding like a war drum. For a moment, there’s nothing but her—her heat, her scent, her trembling body beneath mine.

This isn’t love. It’s possession. It’s a hunger that could burn the world to cinders. And as I collapse beside her, my arm curling around her waist, pulling her close, I know one thing: she’s the only altar I’ll ever worship at, and I’d rather die than let her go.

We lie in the dark, tangled in the ruin we made of the bed. Her thigh is draped over mine, my hand still sprawled low on her hip, fingers flexing slow and thoughtless, like they’re memorizing her shape in a new language.

The room smells like heat and salt and something buried. Not smoke. But the echo of it. Like whatever we just did might still be burning in the walls.

Mara doesn’t speak.

She just breathes. Quiet and steady. One palm pressed flat to my chest, right over the spot she kissed before I slid into her like the only answer she trusted.

I turn my face into her hair and breathe her in. Still her. But different.

Marked.

She shifts.

Then says, softly, “I thought you’d be angrier.”

I let the silence stretch a beat too long. Then: “Anger’s too soft for what I felt when I saw the message.”

Her fingers twitch.

“I wasn’t going to run,” she says again, like she’s repeating it for both of us. “But I needed to know if I still remembered how.”

“I know.”

That’s all I give her.

Because I do know. And it’s worse than not knowing at all.

She pulls back enough to look at me. Her face is flushed, lips still bruised from how hard I kissed her. But her eyes are sharp again. Awake.

“What happens now?” she asks.

I reach past her, grab the edge of the blanket, and pull it over us. Her body presses back into mine with the kind of ease that says she stopped trying to leave five minutes ago.

“Now?” I say. “We make a new plan.”

“And Vale?”

“Vale dies.”

She doesn’t flinch. But she doesn’t nod either.

Instead, she whispers, “Then we better get it right.”

And she's right, because next time, there won’t be room for foreplay before the fire.

Just ash.

And blood.

And the two of us standing in what’s left.

Together.

Or not at all.