So he didn’t.
Which he knew, the longer this lasted, the more it seemed he was being closed from her. Distant.
She was also frustrated because he knew she wished his attentions in another way, these physically, in the night, and she communicated this through tentative touch and a tortuous amount of her long-limbed body restlessly shifting against his.
But he didn’t give these attentions to her.
This was mostly because he wished to give them to her, very much so.
Indeed, too much so.
In fact, it was all he could bloody think about when he wasn’t thinking about how to share about himself, without burdening her with what he was sharing.
However, what he didn’t wish was for her first time to be in a small tent without a lot of room to move, thus room for him to be certain to see to her, as well as no light, so he could not see with his eyes if he was seeing to her, and last, with too many people close by.
This event should be special.
His first time had not been.
At fifteen, he’d fucked a whore his brother had forced him to go see, doing so while his brother and his brother’s mates shouted raunchy encouragement through the door.
He wanted different for Ellie.
Better.
Much better.
And that was what she would have.
Further, Cass had no idea if he would cause her pain, even make her bleed, and he didn’t want them to be where they’d been if those eventualities occurred.
He also knew his response to her enough to know that he couldn’t give her even a little, for if he did, it would spin out of control.
Because he wanted it all.
And as the days slid by, he wanted her more and more.
However, watching what stunningly seemed to be blooming between Mac and Jazz, who bickered a great deal, and fucked even more, was putting right in front of Elena’s face what she did not have with Cassius.
They’d make The Enchantments mid-morning the next day. She said the ride to the center, where her mother was, Dora was, Aelia was (they’d heard word she had arrived), and Elena’s treehome was located was about half a day’s ride farther.
Once there, they’d have a good deal to occupy their attention and very little time alone.
He’d wasted what they’d had, for a reason, but their time was nearly gone.
He had to give her that reason.
And to do that, he had to burden her with it.
He saw her golden hair in the moonlight where she sat beside the brook, watching the lazy but colorful flight of the pixies, these streams of bright Cassius had noted were getting fewer in the evenings as the leaves fell and the temperatures cooled.
She but glanced over her shoulder at him when she heard his approach, then turned back to the brook.
He sighed, carried on toward her, and when he arrived, he dropped his blanket to the still-green, lush, thick grass by the water and joined her on the blanket she’d set out.
He cocked his knees, rested his wrists on them and said quietly, “I must explain something to you.”
“Hmm?” she hummed, pretending not to care when he knew she cared a great deal.
She’d grown fond of him.
He had no idea how.
But she had.
“I do not wish to do it,” he went on.
She turned her head at that, and her voice was sharp to hide the hurt when she replied, “Then don’t.”
“I do not wish to do it, Ellie, because it is vastly unpleasant and the knowing of it is a burden I do not want you to bear.”
He saw the surprise light on her features before they softened.
Yes, as he was finding with Elena, she did not hold her pique. She did not make him work to gain her attentions after he’d (somewhat) spurned them these past days.
She opened immediately to him.
For she was Elena.
“I keep telling you, I’m stronger than you think,” she replied with the softness he saw in her face.
“You do not know, my lamb,” he replied.
“Tell me.”
His eyes moved over her beautiful face and his lips whispered, “I hate this.”
It was then, her expression grew alert, as did the air about her.
“By the goddess, Cassius,” she whispered back, twisting to him and reaching out to wrap her fingers around his thigh. “What is it? Tell me,” she urged again.
He looked to her hand, felt her touch hot as a brand, left it as it was because he liked the feel, then he turned his gaze to the slowly rolling brook.
“You know my mother is dead,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied.
“She died of a chill.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“That was what I was told.”
Elena did not reply, but the awareness he felt from her enhanced.
“It was a lie.”
Her hand spasmed on his leg.
“I remember, nights and nights of hearing the noises,” he shared. “I remember, lying abed, listening, fear paralyzing me, my mind a turmoil, not understanding, but knowing those noises were not right. I remember, the night before it happened, Trajan screaming in the middle of the night. I remember, the day after he did that, we were moved from our chambers to ones far away from my mother and father in another area of the castle. I remember, lying awake then, not able to sleep for fear of it happening without me there, as if my closeness to her was some balm. So I remember getting out of bed so I could go to their room. I wanted her to know I was close. I only intended to open the door enough she could see me and know I was there. But I saw them.”
“You saw them…what?” she prompted when he stopped talking.
He looked to her then. “I saw my father raping my mother.”
She swayed back, then forward, her hand clutching his thigh.
“Cassius.”
“I was six.”
And then he saw what he’d feared he’d see.
The dread in her face that he so wanted to protect her from.
“Cassius,” she breathed in horror.
“I knew, even then, it was not an act of love between partners. The violence. It was obscene.”
She moved closer, taking her hand from his thigh to press it to his chest.
“That was why Trajan was screaming,” he explained. “He told me, later, in whispers, for we knew better than to talk about it openly. He’d had enough. He was older. Understood what was happening. He’d gone to save her. To stop it. Father forced him out and had us moved.”
“I hate that for him,” she said. “I hate that for you.”
“She saw me. In the door.”
“Oh goddess,” she breathed.
“He was in the act, forcing himself upon her, and her face was twisted in pain, but nothing like how she looked when she saw that I saw. That pain…” He blew out a breath. “Ellie, there is no word to describe the depths of that pain.”
Elena moved again, pressing herself to his side, wrapping her arm around his stomach.
“She was dead the next morning,” he declared.
“No.” This came out almost silently.
“Killed herself, drowned herself in her bath. Not because she couldn’t take it, because she did not want her sons to see her like that. Not again. And she had no control over it, nowhere to turn, no one who would help her. It would happen again and again and again, and we would know it did.”
He closed his eyes, opened them and continued speaking.
“But she was already dead inside, Elena. I knew it. I saw it in her eyes that night. Because when she saw me, she knew she’d failed at giving us the only thing she could give us, keeping that from us.”
Elena trailed her hand up his chest, his neck, to cup his jaw.
“By the mercy of the goddess, that’s the most tragic thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m born of rape, Ellie.”
She dropped her head, resting
her forehead against his shoulder.
“So was Trajan. Gods,” he groaned, seeing his mother in his mind’s eye. “She was beautiful, Ellie. So lovely.”
She lifted her head and stared into his eyes.
Hers were bright with tears.
Cassius kept talking.
“She loved us both, so fucking much. I still hear her voice reading us stories or singing me to sleep. I still feel her arms around me and how she would hold me tight. I see her expression when we were brought down to the breakfast table. Her face lit up with such gladness at the sight of her two boys.”
“I’m glad she at least had you.”
He had always wondered about that.
It seemed he and Trajan were the only things that gave her joy.
But how could they with the way they’d been conceived?
He did not ask Ellie about that.
He told her, “It was not a love match from the beginning. Father coveted her beauty, and as king, he could have it. So he took it. She hated him. She feared him. She recoiled every time he was near. She always seemed to move to protect us from him. And I knew nothing but her cuts and scrapes, bruises and swelling, limping and holding herself carefully. I wouldn’t know, until much later, that it was he who made her so. That it was not normal for a woman to be like that. It was just, then, all that I knew.”
He lifted his hand and curled his fingers around hers at his jaw.
“My stories do not get worse than that, lamb,” he said. “But they are not much better. Now, do you understand why I did not wish you to carry this weight?”
“I do, and so now, do you see that I have not broken under it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Elena, more grows from that. This kind of atrocity, this kind of evil, it breeds and spreads and infects everything around it. For me, I’m angry at her almost as much as I hate him. She fought him in the act. Years she’d endured that, and she still fought. Why did she not continue to fight? Why did she not try to get away? Perhaps she could have escaped. To The Enchantments. To Mar-el. Being a bounden, she’d have more rights and protections than she did in that bloody citadel.”
“She still would have had to leave you.”
“But eventually, I could have found her.”
“Oh, Cass,” she whispered, her fingers moving under his to stroke his jaw.
“I also failed her,” he stated.
She appeared perplexed. “How?”
“I wanted no part of him, of my birth, of that castle, of his reign. I removed myself from it as much as I could when I could not actually remove myself. I watched my brother turn into him, and I did nothing to stop it. And I knew women all over my realm faced the same and I did nothing to stop that either.”
“You were the second son. This is a precarious position, Cassius, I know that. You knew it better than me for you lived it.”
“I still did nothing to stop it.”
“You’re doing something now.”
“Do not think this will be easy, Elena. There will be a revolt. It’s inevitable.”
“And you’ll best it.”
“I want to kill him.”
She pressed closer at his declaration.
“I have to remove myself from that too, from the feelings I have,” he told her. “I have to close them down, freeze them out. If I do not, if I let free that rein, I will murder my father.”
“You do know this is not an unreasonable reaction,” she replied, and he let out a bark of disgusted laughter. “It isn’t, Cass,” she pushed.
“The lifelong urge to commit patricide?” he asked disbelievingly. “What kind of man does that make me?”
“You’re asking the wrong question.”
“What is the right one?”
“What kind of son does that make you?”
Was she mad?
“That I want to kill my father?”
“That you want to avenge your mother.”
He closed his mouth.
“And you will do that, by freeing those like her from similar tyranny,” she declared. “She will not witness it, but do you not think she is in the beyond, watching you and proud of you and knowing that she made you? Knowing that, through you, part of her will liberate her sisters? How beautiful a legacy is that, Cassius? What beauty she has created, my warrior. What a precious gift she has given our world.”
Gods damn it, he had to have her.
He could no longer hold his need at bay.
He didn’t want her.
He needed her.
Now.
So he took her, starting with her mouth.
He also took her down to the blanket, with him over her.
And feeling her under him, Cass was as he expected he would be.
Lost to her.
He simply couldn’t get enough.
Her lips and tongue, his hands on her body.
She responded eagerly, hungrily, spurring him on.
He pulled at her tunic.
She tugged at his leathers.
He yanked off her moccasins.
She wrenched off his boots.
Every inch of her skin he exposed, he consumed. Gorging on her taste. Reeling at her touch. Intoxicated by her smell. Triumphing at the sounds he earned from her. Drunk at the sight of her.
Every sensation demanding he take more.
And he did.
A nuance of the haze shifted away when he found himself on his back, naked, with a naked Elena, her smooth skin radiant in the moonlight, tracking her lips swiftly down his stomach to his stiff cock.
He moved to stop her.
But before he could, the warm moist of her sweet mouth closed around him and he lost all reason.
His hips surged up, seeking more, and she moaned around his shaft, giving it. Sucking deeply. Bobbing greedily. She released him only to lave at his balls while stroking his cock with her hand, his fingers in her hair, encouraging her to give more so he could have it, possess it, have her, possess her.
Then she moved back to his cock, swallowing it down, humming around it with a reverence that bordered on worship.
He was close to climax, he could feel the pressure build, his balls drawing up, and only then did a small amount of reason return.
Cass knifed up, pulling her away to her noise of angry protest.
He flipped her to her back, repositioned, opening her legs, using his fingers to spread her, then he bent and fed from her.
Gods, she was nectar.
Her back arched, driving her pussy into his mouth, as her low moan rose, drifting through the trees.
He took and took, starved for her, savoring her, unable to get enough, driving her to a frenzy, pulling her legs over his shoulders, feeling his cock ache as she dug her heels into his back, rocking against his mouth.
Her noises were now desperate whimpers, unintelligible pleas.
Before he heard, “No. With you.”
Cassius kept at her, his mind consumed with the desire to taste her climax on his tongue as it sang in his ears.
She tugged at his head. “Cass, please. With you.”
He knew what she wanted and angled over her, putting his mouth to her ear, his fingers toying in the wet between her legs to keep her primed, as he whispered, “I need to prepare you. You must be ready to take me.”
“I’m ready,” she breathed, her hands moving on him, nails scraping, her teeth sinking into his neck.
Fuck.
He groaned at the bite before saying, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t hurt me.”
“Ellie—”
She was reaching for his cock.
He tried to slant it away.
Both her hands clamped on his cheeks, she pulled his face above hers and whispered, “Cass, sweetheart, please.”
The passion in her eyes, the longing in her face, he was no match to fight it.
He wrapped a hand around his cock, guided it to her, and slowly, carefully, watching her face close
ly, he slid inside.
There was no barrier. No tearing. No sound of pain.
The more of him she took, the more her lids drifted closed. Her back bowed, her arms lifted over her head, her chin tipped back, and she stretched beneath him, receiving his cock like an offering, glorying in the act.
He watched, mesmerized by the beauty of her, until her slick tight closed around him to the root.
Then, with an iron will he did not know he possessed, he held immobile in her snug embrace, giving her the opportunity to get used to him.
Her eyes opened, her arms came down, her nails dug into his arse, and she whispered, “You’re perfect.”
At these words, Cassius completely snapped.
He growled, took her mouth, and fucked his princess.
She gloried in that too, grazing him with her nails, milking him with her pussy, wrapping her legs around his thighs to lift her hips to receive more.
She moaned, and he grunted.
She whimpered, and within but strokes, her head flew back, her mouth disconnecting from his, and her cry of release rang through the forest, spurring him on to take her harder, faster, the sleek walls of her pulsing around him.
He held tight to what little control he had left as her climax carried on because he drove it on, thrusting into her, triumphant in watching the magnificence wash over her and not let go.
And he did this until he could take no more.
He then buried himself inside Elena, his head snapping back, the shout of his impeccable release cracking through the wood like thunder as he poured his seed inside his princess.
When it was done, he collapsed atop her, mindless—her smell, the wet fist of her cunt, the feel of her hair tangled in his beard all he knew.
All he wanted to know.
It was the soft touch of her fingertips drifting along the small of his back that brought him into the present.
He instantly shifted his weight to a forearm to take some of it from her, turning his head so his nose brushed her neck, trying to find the words to ask her forgiveness for his loss of control, the feverish passion he unleashed, the hard fucking he’d forced on her.
Her first time.
He’d made her endure that her first time.
He’d made her climax, but he’d done it like that her first time.
He did not find those words before she whispered wondrously, “You gave me stars.”
Stunned, he lifted his head and saw a soft darkness all around them, blinking pinpricks of light floating about, like they’d risen into the heavens and were coasting in the night sky.
The Plan Commences Page 40
