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Chapter Forty-Six

R hiandra had been asleep for another half a day when the pain struck.

It wasn’t the first time since she'd hit me with lightning and severed the magic from my body. There had been other attacks when she was still unconscious. But that didn’t mean I was prepared for it. Every time, I hoped it would be the last.

I squeezed my eyes shut, hands braced against the rock wall, gritting my teeth against the sharp flashes of agony snapping through my head. Bit down on a groan. It would pass. It had passed every time it had happened so far. But that knowledge didn’t keep me from a brief flash of fear that this time it wouldn’t.

I wasn’t sure whether the pain was a consequence of a body long used to the addictive, poisonous high of magic going through withdrawals, or if it was the magic writhing to escape a body to which it was no longer bound. I wasn’t sure if it would get better or worse. But it was extreme, debilitating, and left me shaky, mouth dry and ashy. I groaned again as a spasm of pain raced along my limbs, cramping every muscle like an echo of the lightning Rhiandra had struck me with.

When the druthi bound their victims, severing the connection between magic and the ability to use it in order to drain it from their veins, they shocked them with electricity to achieve it. I knew that. It made sense that lightning could do the same. That didn’t mean I‘d suspected this would be the outcome of that moment on the bridge. It didn’t mean I’d been prepared for it. I definitely hadn’t been prepared for how much it would hurt.

I straightened when the pain finally subsided, rubbing at the tightness in my neck. Sought the now-absent hum of magic almost without thinking in some pathetic impulse grounded in a doomed hope. There was nothing to reach for. That power I’d so long possessed, gifted to me by my dying mother when I was too young to know what it would do to me, was gone. My mind was quiet without it.

I took a few deep breaths, scrubbing my hands over my face, then continued on my way through the dark channel with nothing but my own memory of the way to guide me through the dark. I wondered whether I’d return to the cavern to find Rhiandra had woken again, and how she’d respond to me if she had. Would she be feeling better? If she was, would she be wrapped in rage again, ready to have another go at killing me? Or would some of what I’d told her by the fire soften her a little? She was nothing if not tenacious in clinging to her rage. I would have been stupid to let my hopes get the better of me.

When I reached the cavern I halted, poised on the threshold, arrested by the sight of her sitting on the edge of the ocean pool, unclothed, rinsing herself in the salt water, skin glistening in the dim light. Her hands stilled for just a moment, long enough to convey that she knew I was there. I could imagine her pulse quickening to a flutter, heat flushing her skin. But then she kept moving like nothing was amiss, combing her fingers through her hair, but slowly now, like she was in no hurry. Always so brazen. I wanted to read her, to reach out and taste the desire on her in an decadent pleasure that magic had offered me. Reading her had always been an illicit secret no one else could share, a way of reaching past the facade she presented and knowing what she felt beneath. But that possibility was gone.

‘You’re awake,’ I said, and my voice was too low, too husky, as I watched her.

‘I’m feeling better,’ she said, flicking her hair over her shoulder.

I approached her slowly, gaze clinging to her, devouring her. ‘Are you putting on a show for me?’ I asked, knowing how it’d gall her to suggest it.

‘Why? Are you tempted to touch?’ Her movements stilled completely as I moved behind her, basking in the sense of her so close to me.

‘I’m always tempted to touch you.’ I traced fingertips along her neck, exposed where she’d lifted her hair. ‘Would you like me to touch you?’

‘No,’ she lied.

Immediately, I withdrew my hand. ‘Then I won’t.’

She stiffened. ‘Oh, so now you find restraint?’ she accused without turning around, like she could only speak the words to the wall. There was anger in her voice. That couldn’t be helped. In this one particular arena, I was going to be sure to disappoint her. If I didn’t, she’d get to keep playing reluctant and living in denial forever. That wasn’t enough for me anymore. If she wanted something from me, she was going to have to take responsibility for wanting it, not lure me into giving it to her without ever having to ask.

‘Restraint?’ I repeated with a sardonic twist of a smile. ‘What did you think I would do? Tie you up down here so you can pretend it was never your decision?’ My hand was drawn back to that curve of her neck, smoothing round to caress her throat. ‘That’s what your idea of me would do, isn’t it? Just take what I want from you.’ Her breath hitched, lips parting she leaned into me, her eyes flickering closed. My blood surged, rushing to places I didn’t need it to go if I wanted to keep a clear head. ‘It’s enticing, my dear. But what I want most can’t be taken that way.’ I withdrew my hand and straightened up. ‘Dry off. You’ve not been long out of your fever. You need to stay warm.’

She rose to her feet and turned on me, hands held resolutely at her sides, staring up at me with those dark eyes that always held a dare. My gaze dropped, taking her in slowly, the dips and curves of her, peaked nipples and flushed skin and thighs I wanted to part around me. This, I would take with impunity, revelling in the burn of wanting her, toying with the decision to keep myself from touching her. Stepping away a moment before I did.

She saw the step, and triumph lit her eyes. ‘I’m not cold,’ she said, crossing back to the sandy spot that had been her bed for several days, the display of her walking away just as enticing when I could see her hips sway. She sat on a boulder rubbed smooth by the churn of waves. Leaned back on her hands.

The urge to go to her was a heady, pulsing thing. It thundered as she dawdled a hand over her breast. Held my gaze brazenly as she parted her legs. This was why I hadn’t wanted to tell her I loved her. Because in her hands, it would become a weapon. Was already a weapon as I watched her drop her hand lower, over her stomach, fingers winding through the soft patch of dark hair at the apex of her thighs.

‘How tempted are you now?’ she challenged, the wicked smile that stole her mouth sharpened by the scars on her face, by the imperfection of her fierce, violent beauty, all vibrance and defiance. I was going to lose this game. Was already moving towards her, powerless against her pull. Always fucking was.

‘You win,’ I said as I knelt before her, took her in my arms. Kissed her with a force as fierce as she demanded, arms hooking around her waist, revelling in the smooth, bare skin. She was climbing onto my lap, her legs around me, her kiss tasting of salt and anger and her hands rough as they clawed at my clothing and tried to get at what she wanted without having to stop and think. I relented to her tug at my shirt, raising my arms as she yanked it from me. She unbuckled my belt, freed my cock, and I dropped my hands to her hips, holding her still. Pulled back.

‘No,’ I said, staring her down as she looked up at me with murder in her eyes, her breath coming fast. ‘Not like that. I want to take you slowly . I want to savour you.’

‘I don’t want your restraint. I want you hard and fast and now .’

‘No,’ I repeated, trailing fingers around her, reaching between her thighs, feeling her curve against me with a gasp as I found her wet warmth. ‘I know why you want that. You want to tell yourself after that it was all just an accident, that you got swept up in the moment. But I’m not going to keep being your mistake. I want you to feel every moment of it and know it’s me inside you. I want you to know you want this just as much as I do.’

Her fingernails dug into the skin of my shoulders and she arched against my hand, lifting her hips and whimpering as I slid a finger inside her, but I kept my pace slow, moving in and out of her with deliberate, languid strokes, breathing through the need quivering through me as I relished in the way the rage eroded away, her cheeks growing flushed, her breath coming in open-mouthed gasps, her eyelids fluttering. I wanted to hold her there, on the edge, forever, looking at me like she just might shatter as she dragged her hands up my shoulders, wound her fingers through my hair. They remained there as I lifted her back onto the boulder to kneel at the altar of her, ready to worship her, licking the salt from the planes of her stomach, trailing down, brushing lips over her flushed and swollen centre, caressing her with my mouth, my tongue, until she was trembling.

‘Rhiandra,’ I breathed, satisfied to feel the way she shuddered at the words whispered against her skin, watching her come apart. ‘Tell me you’re in love with me.’

She started, shoving me away, sitting up. ‘I’m not ,’ she snarled, glaring out at me from between tousled curtains of dark hair.

I stared back at her, pulse thundering, gripped with the feral urge to use magic I didn’t have, to read her and know it was a lie. And if she wouldn’t give me the words, I would take them from her. Hooking my arms beneath her legs, I lifted her, tumbled her back onto the nest that was her bed, where I could pin her beneath me while she squirmed and tried to push me off.

‘You’re not?’

‘That’s not what this is!’

I leaned in, so I could murmur in her ear. ‘Then why are you still down here?’

She stilled. I felt something shift in her, something adjusting, giving way.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, and the words were a sweet victory, because she’d dropped the rage for just a moment. And then she said, ‘Why do you always have to beat me? Why couldn’t you just fuck me and have done with it?’

‘Because I want more from you than this. I want all of you.’ I kissed her neck, murmured the words against her skin, cock rock hard and nudging up against her. Fuck, she was wet. It was brutal not to push inside her, to slip into the warmth of her and have a different kind of satisfaction. ‘Every last piece. All your darkness. All your rage. I want you to surrender your heart and finally admit it belongs to me.’

She grasped my hair, drew me back up until our foreheads were pressed together. I stilled at the look of suffering I saw there. ‘No good can come of this,’ she breathed. ‘Do you realise that? We’ll destroy each other.’

I searched her face, saw something I didn’t want to see. She really believed that. ‘Then how would you have it? You fight me on a battlefield then take me to your bed in the secret hours of the night? You can’t stay away from me anymore than I can stay away from you.’

‘I know.’ The words were barely a whisper, and I knew what these damaged admissions cost her. Could see in her eyes that I was pushing her too far, that she couldn’t confront what I needed her to own. And despite what she believed, I didn’t want to break her. Not even now. I took a steadying breath. Drew back. Gently pried her hands from my hair and captured them above her head in one hand while with the other I snapped the belt from my pants and wound it around her wrists, binding them together. It was a flimsy pretence, given how this had started, but I knew she’d cling to it like a lifeline.

‘Is that better?’ I asked. The grim acceptance that this is how it would be, was all it would ever be, grated sharply against the raw pleasure of seeing her bound. Naked. Helpless. Mine .

‘Tighter,’ she whispered.

‘Your wish is my command.’ I tugged the belt, listening to the trembling, halting pattern of her breathing and feeling how bitterly the words were coming to be true. Fastened the buckle. Ran my hands back down her arms, caressing the soft skin of her sides, found her breasts and took them in my palms with liberty. I could touch her as I wanted. The more I took from her, the more she could deny she took from me. She could construct a prism of lies around her so this moment wouldn’t torment her when I was dead.

She arched her back, her body seeking mine, eyelids fluttering closed. I took her chin, lifted her face, forced her to open her eyes.

‘You look at me.’ My voice was rough, grated raw with what I was giving up. She held my gaze. Nodded.

Finally, finally, I pushed into her, and her sharp gasp was a thing I wanted to hold and keep. She surrounded me, undoing me, testing my intention to draw out her pleasure endlessly, to keep her pinned beneath me until the stars burned and the sky fell and no one remembered who we were. And the way her neck arched when I fisted her hair, the way her pulse thundered against my lips as I pressed my mouth to her throat, the way she lifted her hips to me as I thrust into her, tested me further. But if I was going to bend to her thirst for denial and bind her wrists while I fucked her, then I was going to make it worth it.

‘Is this what you want?’ I curled a hand around her throat, filled with savage pleasure at the sight of her flickering eyelids, the way she lifted her chin to grant me territory. ‘You want me to be cruel?’ She just whimpered, all those walls crumbling, all those bindings fraying and snapping as I stole that control she always fought tooth and nail for, freeing her from the responsibility for this choice the way she so desperately needed. ‘If this is the only way I’ll have you, then I will own you, do you understand?’ I murmured against her open mouth. ‘You’re mine. And I’m yours. Whether you’ll admit it or not.’

I pulled back so I could look at her, arms bound above her head, hair tangled, skin flushed, and I slid her legs higher, hooked them over my shoulders. If she was going to be my destruction, then at least that end would come with this memory of my cock sliding in and out of her, slick and glistening as she quivered around me, back arching and lips parting. I turned my mouth to her skin, grazed teeth against her calf, slowed my movements just to hear the way she whimpered in protest as I drew out of her. Paused there, waiting for my blood to settle, for my breathing to even. But she didn’t give me a chance to regain my control. She hooked her bound wrists around my neck and straddled me, and I groaned as I sank inside her, everything I’d been trying to contain shuddering loose. She ground her hips against me as she kissed me hard, her tongue in my mouth, the buckle of the belt digging into my neck as she pulled me closer, and she was warmth and breath and life and the soft give of her thighs beneath my fingers made me grip her tighter. Fuck, I loved the way she felt, the way she smelt, the freckles on her shoulders, the touch of her hardened nipples against my chest, the way she tightened around my cock as she chased her release, the way she had imprinted herself on every part of me until there was nothing left untouched. I was eternally chained to her, and as she dropped her head back and cried out, I was glad for it. I held her fast, pulling her tight, groaning against her neck as I erupted in her, the rush of relief beginning and ending with her, as everything always did.

We held still, skin cooling, hearts pounding in time. Her face was pressed into my neck, and the soft brush of her breath against my skin was a sweeter, silkier kind of pleasure than what had torn through me moments ago. All tension and violence spent, for a few moments we could just be, just stay tangled around each other in a way that I wished I could hold onto. I reached up and undid the belt, releasing her hands. Ending her freedom from accountability. She slid her fingers down my body, her eyes still closed, pausing when she found a long, raised scar on my stomach, stroking it.

‘You gave me that one,’ I said, and her eyes fluttered open, glancing down to inspect her handiwork. ‘Just the most visible of the marks you’ve left on me.’

Her hand moved up, finding the spidery red burn on my chest where she’d struck me with lightning. ’This too,’ she whispered.

She looked up at me with glistening eyes before she slid off my lap, and I was already preparing myself for the moment she would draw away and push me out, erecting those walls I was always so hopelessly throwing myself against. But she surprised me by grasping my hand tightly and drawing me down onto the bed. I lay beside her as she curled herself around my hand, hiding her face in my chest as her shoulders started to shake. My throat tightened and I pressed my lips to her hair, fucking helpless to know what to do, how to make this alright. You like to break things , she’d said to me, and it was true. It was all I’d ever been good at. How did I put her back together?

‘What can I do?’ I begged in a whisper.

‘Nothing,’ she sobbed.

Eventually, her breathing slowed and her body softened as she drifted into sleep. She was so warm, curled within the curve of my body, so smooth, fitting against me like she was the other half of a whole I’d never known had been split.

And I allowed myself to acknowledge the wish that had been burning away inside of me ever since I’d realised I was in love with her. A wish that when she’d wake, she’d look at me. That she’d look so hard she really saw me. Not the monster she projected onto me. Not who she needed me to be in order to live with herself. But me , as I was. Devoted to her. Ready to kill for her. To be killed for her. To reduce the world to ash just so it could no longer scare her. To endure the bite of all her sharpest parts if it meant she would no longer hurt herself. I would give myself to her protection, her reverence, her every whim—if only she would let me.

‘I may never have your forgiveness,’ I murmured into her hair. ‘And you don’t owe it to me. But I’m going to spend every breath I have left in my body trying to find a way to earn it. And if you never give it to me, then I’ll love you anyway. You can hate me until the day you die, and I’ll love you anyway.’

She showed no signs of hearing me. She slept on.