Page 10 of The Scars of War (Of Ruin and Fire #1)

A Taste of War

I don’t think…I walk. No phone. No music. Just rain on the pavement and the storm in my chest. My boots hit the sidewalk like gunshots. I don’t care who hears. The city blurs around me, neon bleeding into shadow. My body moves like it already knows the way…because it does.

I don’t remember grabbing my coat or locking the door.

I do remember his voice. The way he said my name like it was already his.

I keep walking towards my car like a woman possessed.

Maybe I am. Maybe he did something to me.

Maybe I let him. On repeat in my head, the way he touched me, the way he looked at me, like I was his next battlefield, and he already knew how I’d fall.

And I did, I fell and now I’m clawing my way back to the fire.

Riven Vescari’s estate rises out of the rain like it’s always been waiting for me.

The gate swings open before I touch it. The path winds through that graveyard garden again, wet stone and screaming statues.

The front doors open for me. They know me now, maybe they always have.

The house is silent, except for the sound of my soaked boots against marble.

He doesn’t meet me at the top of the stairs this time. No performance. No parade.

I find him the way I want him, alone, in the shadows of that towering glass foyer, suit jacket undone, sleeves rolled up. He looks at me like I’m the storm he’s been calling down. I stop five feet from him, shaking from the cold and adrenaline pumping through my veins. “I need answers,” I say.

His head tilts. “That’s not why you’re here.” He’s right.

I take one step closer. “Then why am I here?”

He steps right into the light, slow and certain. “Because you can’t stop thinking about how it felt.”

I should slap him. Instead, I grab his collar and pull.

He doesn’t resist. His mouth crashes into mine before I even breathe his name.

No words. No warning. Just heat. Teeth. Need.

He doesn’t kiss like a lover; he kisses like a warrior.

Like I’m a battlefield he’s stormed before and come back to burn .

I drag my fingers down his chest, clawing at his shirt like I want it gone, and I do.

He rips it over his head without breaking the kiss.

I bite his bottom lip hard enough to taste the metallic bloom of blood.

He groans, low and feral, grabbing my ass before pulling me against him.

His cock is already hard through his pants.

I grind against it without shame. Without hesitation.

He hisses between his teeth like I branded him and pushes me back against the wall.

His thigh slides between mine. I roll my hips over it like I’m starved.

Because I am. “You want answers?” he growls.

“No,” I pant. “I want you to stop talking and make me feel something real. I want you inside me. Fuck me Riven. Now.” That’s all it takes.

He lifts me, rough, possessive, like he’s done pretending he doesn’t already own every inch of me.

Maybe he always has. He carries me past the glass hallway, the one lined with weapons and ruins, and I realize I’m part of his collection now.

He keeps walking down a hallway I didn’t see before.

One lined with thick, sealed doors. One opens under his hand like it’s been waiting for us .

He pauses, looking at me like a challenge. I don't speak a word. I just kiss him again, harder. He answers with a growl in his throat and kicks the door open fully. It’s not a bedroom. It’s a fucking fortress.

Black stone walls, raw timber beams, flickering sconces, and shelves full of relics that look stolen from time itself.

Weapons hang above a fireplace like warnings.

A throne sits in the corner. In the center of the room, a bed is positioned like an altar.

A monument to sin, dressed in black sheets. Stark. Ready. Waiting.

He throws me onto it like I’m a sacrifice and climbs over me like a god who takes what’s owed.

He kisses down my chest, teeth grazing the edge of my bra before it’s torn off, baring my chest. He mouths at my nipple—sharp, filthy, and hot—before he bites down just hard enough to make me curse, ‘Fucking hell…”

“No,” he mutters against my skin. “Just me.”

My pants are gone a second later. He tears them too.

Not an ounce of patience left. His hand slips between my thighs and he groans when he feels how soaked I am.

“You walked through a storm to get to me.” he says, voice like gravel.

He drags a finger through me…sl ow, deep, unrelenting.

“You’re soaked for me.” he says without question, making me gasp.

“Riven”, I moan in return, arching my back.

“Say it again,” he commands, pressing harder. “Louder.”

“Fuck, Riven” I cry, breathless and already on edge.

Then he’s gone, and I almost scream. Until I feel him—his mouth—between my thighs.

Tongue ruthless. Groans obscene. He devours me like a man starving, like I’m his last meal.

I come fast and hard, clutching the sheets, panting his name like a curse.

“Riven” He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t let up.

He keeps eating me through the aftershocks, like he wants to ruin me for anyone else.

He climbs back up, slow, deliberate, until I can see it in his eyes, he’s not finished with me yet.

Lining himself up with my entrance, he pushes his cock inside.

It hurts just for a second but moans still fill the room.

I want this, all of it, even if I don’t know what it is.

“Mine,” he growls into my neck.

“I hate you,” I whisper into his mouth, panting, desperate .

“Lie to me again,” he growls, dragging his teeth along my jaw.

He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t slow. He holds my face like I’ll shatter and then fucks me like I won’t.

And I don’t. He fucks me hard. Brutal like the fighter that he cannot help but be.

It feels like he’s been waiting for this a long time and he wants to make sure no one else will ever be enough after this. They won't.

He flips us, and slams into me from behind, one hand in my hair, and the other gripping my hip like he’s trying to brand his fingerprints into bone.

The sound of our slapping skin, the moans, the crackle of fire…

it’s all thunder in the dark. I come again, louder, messier.

“Riven!” I can’t even hear myself screaming his name.

He follows seconds later, coming deep and hard with a grunt against my spine until we collapse together.

Breathless. Spent. Wrecked. Ruined for anyone else.

The fire still burns low in the corner. The sheets are ruined and I’m lying there like the violence between us hasn’t stopped echoing in my bones.

Riven sits at the edge of the bed still shirtless.

He’s calm like he didn’t just drag me through the gates of hell and back.

I sit up slowly, pulling the sheet with me, more for my own armor than modesty.

“Now,” I say, voice hoarse. “I’m ready for answers, so tell me what the fuck is going on with me! ”

His gaze lifts to mine. Still steady. Still unreadable. “You already know,” he says.

“I don’t know shit, Riven. I’m having visions. People are watching me. And you…” I gesture to the wreckage of our clothes on the floor, “You’re in the middle of it like some smug bastard with a God complex.”

“I never claimed to be a god.”

“No, you act like something worse.”

He doesn’t deny it. Instead, he stands and walks to a small cabinet tucked behind the hearth, pulls out a decanter of something dark, and pours two glasses. When he offers me one, I don’t take it. “Talk,” I growl. He takes a sip from his own, then turns to me.

“You’re not ordinary, Lux.”

“No shit!” I yell, annoyance seeping through my tone.

“You’ve always felt it. The disconnect. The feeling of belonging somewhere else. The pull toward things other people fear.” I stare at him, trying to make sense of his words. “There are others like you,” he continues. “People bound by something ancient. Something violent. Something…unfinished.”

“What does that mean?” I ask as he steps in closer.

“You’re part of a design. A prophecy. One that was set in motion long before you were born.”

I laugh, sharp and bitter. “Of course it’s a prophecy. How fucking original.”

“You’re the only piece that wasn’t supposed to exist,” he says quietly. That shuts me up. “You weren’t predicted. You weren’t written into the ending, and yet—” He reaches out, brushing a finger along the inside of my wrist where my pulse is still thundering. “You’re here. Changing everything.”

I pull my arm back. “What kind of prophecy?”

He hesitates. “One that names four men. Forces. Riders of the end.”The silence punches the air out of my lungs. “Four,” I repeat, voice flat. “And you’re one of them.”

He nods once, “War.” It lands like a weapon. Like a brand. “You’ve met me,” he says. “Now the others will come.”

My skin crawls. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“No,” he says. “You opened the door. ”

I slide off the bed, naked but unashamed, the sheet falling from my shoulders like a challenge. “You set this fire, Vescari. But if I burn…I'll take you with me.”