Page 82 of Of Blood and Banes (The Arterian #2)

He pauses his thrusts as his hot breath warms my neck. Planting a soft kiss behind my ear. “You can scream about how much you hate me,” he whispers huskily. “But we both know how much you love me fucking you.”

Then he slides his mouth down to the crook between my neck and shoulder and bites with a delicious sting before his hands are back framing my waist. Crashing his hips against me in short, hard spurts that drive each breath out of my lips. My eyes fall closed, body quivering with each thrust.

He unleashes his bite on the spot between my neck and shoulder. Then purrs, “Shaking for me?”

Clearly noticing my trembling legs threatening to give out beneath me, he grabs a pillow, tugs my hips up a little higher, and shoves it underneath me for leverage.

Once I’ve relaxed onto it, he’s back at it.

I can’t do anything but moan as he pins me under his weight and mercilessly fucks me.

I drown in the all-encompassing ecstasy of him filling me.

Of that deliciously rough friction. When deep, throaty grunts slip from his lips, I splinter into a thousand pieces, crying his name and every obscenity I can think of.

“So pretty when you’re coming for me,” he growls near my ear. “All night. You’re going to make a mess on my cock until the sun rises. I don’t want you to stop.”

His hands grip my ass hard, nearly pinching the skin as he holds me wide open for him. I find myself bouncing my hips back against him, hungry for every inch of his cock. One of his hands slips down between my legs and rubs circles against my clit until I cry ‘yes’ as I climax again.

He groans, drunk on each of my orgasms he elicits and pushing me closer to the next one like it’s a race.

Flattening himself against me, his chest presses to my back.

One of his hands slips around my shoulder to collar the front of my throat.

Holding me back to him as he bounces us on the mattress.

My vision turns to stars, and I can’t help but cry in the euphoria.

“Oh, fuck,” he growls near my temple. “Keep crying like that and you’re going to make me–”

“Come,” I moan the invitation, leaning my head back into him.

His grip on my throat tightens, with his other hand clenching over my hip. Each of his movements become quick and erratic as he roars, holding me as he spills himself inside of me. His thrusts slow to a stop. He pulls out of me and gives me a playful smack on the ass.

I finally look at him over my shoulders, snickering through pants, “What happened to until tomorrow morning?”

He snorts, his lips pulling up at one side in a crooked grin as he dips two fingers into me, wetting his fingers with the mixture of his cum and mine. “Who said I was done with you? I only wanted to look at how well you take all of my cum.”

He replaces his fingers with his cock and lowers himself over me. His lips brush my ear as he whispers, “I don’t want you to walk tomorrow without thinking of me.”

For the rest of the night, we go round after round. I’ve never had so much sex. Eventually, after my wrists ache from the shackles, he removes them.

And somewhere in between rounds, exhaustion claims us.

I wake to a shuffling sound and open my eyes to Darian’s back. He’s off the bed, his shirt already back on as he slides into his pants. Blinking the sleep out of my eyes, I shift up onto an elbow, watching him clothe himself in the moonlight before he reaches for his shackles to put them back on.

“What are you doing?” I ask plainly.

He flinches, then tosses over shoulder, “Going back to where I belong. In the dirt…on the ground.”

“Since when?” He’s never refused to share the bed with me?

He pauses, thinking. Then works at fastening the belt at his waist with jerky movements. “If you knew any better, you’d know not to trust me.”

“Why? It’s not like you’re not going to kill me?—”

“As far as you know.”

“You would have already, if you intended to. If you wanted to.”

“You know nothing about my intentions,” he quips and takes a few steps over to the opposite wall. “You should be scared of me. I’m fucked up in the head. Do you not realize how stupid you are to test me?”

I recoil at the insult, gritting my teeth against it and biting back, “Because you think I should be scared that you killed your own father?”

He flinches as if I slapped him before pointing a daggered glare at me over his shoulder. “Excuse me?”

“Why?” I press on. “If you’re going to insult me by calling me stupid for not being scared of you, then at least give me a reason why.”

He scoffs, ignoring the question. “I can’t believe you’re insinuating such a thing.”

Still naked, I pull the sheets off the bed and wrap them around me as I get to my feet. Dawn can only be an hour or two away, based on the sky outside the windows. “Sethan told me.”

“Sethan’s a fucking liar,” Darian seethes, his nostrils flaring as I stalk toward him.

“Is it…because he hit you?” I ask gently, brushing his arm. That wicked rage burning in his eyes when I smacked him in the face all those weeks ago when he was training me wasn’t because he was embarrassed I caught him with such an assault.

No, it was something far more sinister. I had a theory it unlocked some painful memory in him. Reminded him of some dark, traumatic past. And now the longer I sit with it, the more I can’t ignore it. I can’t look past and forget it.

He jerks away from my contact, not looking me in the eye. “No.”

“Because you felt like he might kill you first?”

“No,” he growls in my face.

“Then why?” I whisper, trying to just understand him. Back in Arterias, Marge had spoken of how similar Darian and I are, that we both lost our mothers. That hurt things bite. And he didn’t have anyone. No friends…not really any family, aside from Celeste, who he just pushed away.

“Because I’m a ruthless piece of shit. That’s why.” He turns his back to me.

“I…I don’t believe that,” I murmur, hesitantly reaching out again and pausing.

“Then I’ve failed to show you who I really am.”

My fingertips graze his back, my skin tracing hidden ridges and bumps. It dawns on me… scars. I can’t even hide my gasp. Perhaps that’s why he never could have sex with me face to face, and why he always spun me away from him. Because he’s hiding.

He swivels to me, ripping his shirt off and flinging it to the ground. “Is this what you want? Is this what you want to see?” he thunders. “Here, take a gander.”

My heart cracks when he turns away from me again.

The barrier of his shirt between my fingers wasn’t enough to prepare me for what’s before me.

Faint, jagged scars rip down his shoulder blades, his spine, and all the way down his dimpled lower back.

I might have gotten a glimpse of his back once or twice before, but I always brushed it off.

Assuming it was from the night back in Midkeep where I found him in a dungeon getting beaten by Corvin and Sethan.

I never stopped to give it much thought.

Oh, Gods. How could someone do that? And to their own child ? My eyes grow blurry at the sides, a thickness collecting in my throat, and I rest my fingers against my chest.

He glances at me from over his shoulder. “Now have you had enough?”

Something crosses in his face when he recognizes the pain in my expression, before he rips the shirt off the floor. “Don’t pity me. I deserved every lash. And if I had the chance to kill my father again, I would. Every day, for the rest of my miserable fucking life.”

“Stop,” I murmur, taking a step toward him.

His eyes flash, and he pauses, watching me with hesitancy.

I take a few more steps, closing the distance between us and gently tracing my fingers up his forearm, his bicep. My voice is softer than a breath. “If you don’t want my pity, you won’t have it. But don’t lie to me. Why did you kill him, Darian?”

His chest rises and falls heavily, his eyes searching mine as if fishing for something I’m not even aware of. He bites his lip, shaking his head firmly. “Because I wanted to.”

“I don’t believe you…”

“Because it felt good .”

He’s trying far too hard to push me away. He doesn’t want me to see him—he doesn’t want to admit the pain he’s holding. But I have to try. Secrets are painful, heavy things. Lonely. And he has no one.

“Try. Again,” I prompt gently.

“The fuck you want me to say, Katerina!” His pulse races in his throat. “Because he didn’t just hurt me? Because he also hurt my mother? And I couldn’t stand him putting his hands on her? Is that it?”

My breath catches in my throat as the impenetrable wall between us explodes.

He leans closer to stare me in the face.

“Shall I go on? The day I killed him is the day I found him over my mother, his hands wrapped around her throat and choking the life out of her. I fucking flung myself at him, knocking him off her, and even with his hands gone, she was still unresponsive. I fucking killed him. Right then and there. Strangled every breath from his pathetic fucking lungs because he didn’t deserve another.

Because I couldn’t stop myself. Because I was…

” His eyes cloud, reliving the memory for the first and millionth time since the incident, his bare chest rising and falling even more dramatically.

“You were scared,” I whisper with a small nod.

When he breaks our eye contact to stare at the floor, avoiding me and saying nothing, I brush my hand against his stubbled cheek.

I grip his chin, turning his face to look at me. “I understand. I’ve been scared before, too.”

Fuck. The way he’s looking at me. The green of his eyes is agonizingly beautiful and haunting. His jaw clenches, a softness to his gaze as he shakes his head. And then he grabs me.

And kisses me.

For the first time, I realize what this means to him.

Where I buried myself in this mindless, explosive sex to escape from the reality of my future, he does it to escape the haunting of his past. Because his pain is so deep, it lingers with each breath.

I suddenly understand him, seeing him in a new light.

Every flirtatious innuendo. Every venomous threat.

He’s calloused. Hardened by someone who broke him over and over.

How much has changed between that small boy painted in his room back at Windmere and the man in front of me now?

I hold him, running my fingers through his long hair, chasing away all the thoughts and memories haunting him. Our lips melt into kiss after kiss, until a few soft, intimate moments later, he pushes at my shoulders to create space between us.

“I can’t do this,” he mutters, avoiding my eye contact.

I grab his hand before he can move away. “Wait?—”

“I can’t.” He pulls his hand from mine, then he takes his spot on the floor across the room, locking his wrists back into the manacles himself.