by W Winters
“I’m sorry, it’s just… there’s always something that happens that proves I know nothing and I’m lost.”
“You’re not lost.” My response is immediate, and my tone is one I expect from myself. It’s not to be questioned. “You belong here, with me.”
Her shoulders steady as her breathing calms and her formerly emotionally-distraught features calm once again, but it’s an act. She’s brimming inside with a mixture of fear, betrayal, anger, and confusion.
“You’re only lost because you want to be,” I tell her low and deep, reaching out and pulling her small body closer to me.
Her hands land on my chest and she gasps slightly before looking up at me.
“I can give you everything. I can give you what you never even dreamed of before.” I mean every word. I can and will.
Her long hair shines in the light as she nods, making it swish along her collarbone. She’s compliant, but her wide eyes are full of questions. Questions she doesn’t ask me. Some of them I’m grateful I won’t have to answer.
“If you want to run, you run here.”
“Carter, there are things you can’t replace.” She looks straight ahead at my chest as she speaks and her shoulders shudder. “Money can’t replace--”
“I’m fully aware of what money can’t replace. Nothing can erase the past. Nothing can bring it back.” The sharp edge of my words and the pain and anger I refuse to hide in them erase her desperation to beg me for what I will never give her.
“I’ll give you what I can. Everything that I’m able. But sometimes what we want most is impossible to achieve.” My throat tightens with emotion and just as it does, Aria props herself up on her tiptoes, gently caresses my face and kisses me.
It’s short and only a peck. Only a small kiss. Nothing like what we’ve shared before.
It feels different than it has before. Her touch is hesitant. A different kind of fear is in control of her and shows in her eyes. The kiss is meant to put an end to the conversation. She’s hiding in that act.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I command her although the edge of desperation is evident to me. I don’t think she can hear it. I pray she can’t.
Her answer doesn’t come quickly. She tries to leave me, and I cling to her, but she grabs my wrists and pulls my touch away as she tells me, “I’m scared.”
“You don’t have anything to fear if you obey me,” I tell her, pinning her gaze to mine.
“You don’t understand,” she whispers.
The unspoken words between us are causing a crack in the delicate balance of what we have.
The reality that she’s still my prisoner.
The truth that I won’t rest until her father is dead.
The fact that she won’t forgive me for killing everyone she’s ever known and loved.
And the fact I never want to be without her and I think she feels the same about me. If only she could accept what’s to come.
The Talverys will be massacred. And she, the sole survivor of her name, belongs to me.
Chapter 40
Aria
It’s too much, I think with my thumbnail in between my teeth as I lie in the soaking tub.
Every day, something changes, and I never know how to react or what it means for us. What it means about me.
How could I not have known someone was watching me?
It must have been Mika.
He was always watching and taunting and teasing, but I thought it was just because he was an asshole on a power trip.
I lower my hand back into the steaming water and try to settle against the edge of the tub. My foot slips up to the faucet, feeling the hot water splash against it.
I can feel my fight leaving. The urge to keep fighting and keep holding on to the girl I was before Carter acquired me is trickling out of me day by day.
He’s going to kill my family. My father. Nikolai. I know Carter will, no matter how much he cares for me.
That’s the most painful part. I think he does care for me, but Carter is ruthless and there’s nothing I can do to stop him. There’s no point in trying.
The hopelessness presses against my shoulders, threatening to push me under and drown away my sorrows.
I wish I was numb to it all. There’s nothing worse than being fully aware yet having no way to change any of it. Without fighting, I feel like a traitor. I’m not just surviving anymore. I’m living, and I don’t know how I can forgive myself for having feelings for the man who’s responsible for so many horrible sins.
Just as I feel tears pricking at my eyes, Carter’s voice startles me. “You’re tense.”
I try to hide my sniffling and feel pathetic that I’m crying at all. Carter ignores it though, offering me that small bit of mercy as he strips down and slowly sinks into the tub, scooting me forward so he can lie in the bath behind me. The water sloshes and rises higher up my body as he sinks into the tub.
His touch is gentle, and I don’t fail to notice that he’s hard already. Just the thought of his cock makes my thighs clench and the dull ache that never leaves sends a wave of want through me.
Maybe that’s why I don’t want to fight him. The only thing that takes away the pain and anger is the one thing he gives me constantly. And that makes me a whore of the worst kind.
The water sways and a shiver runs down my spine as Carter’s large hands press against my shoulders, pulling me into his chest. His fingers drift down my body, over the pearls and diamonds of his necklace that I always wear because he told me to, and the faint touch hardens my nipples and leaves goosebumps in his path to the hot water.
“What are you thinking?” Carter’s deep voice rumbles just as I close my eyes and I open them to stare at the tiled wall and answer bluntly.
“I was thinking I don’t want to kill you anymore because you fuck me so often.” The truth spills out easily, not even questioning my answer to him.
His rough chuckle almost makes me smile as he reaches for the sponge and then dips it into the steaming water.
“I’m so tired,” I say absently as Carter runs the sponge along my shoulder and down my forearm.
“It’s late. Later than you usually stay awake.” I spent hours in the gilded room. That’s what I’m calling it now. That’s all it is. Even if it is beautiful, and I do love that he had it built for me and I’m grateful to have my things back… or replicas of them.
“When do you even sleep?” I ask him. “You’re always awake when I go to sleep, and awake when I wake up.”
“I don’t like to sleep,” he answers me. “I can sleep when I’m dead.”
His even tone and lack of humor make my heart tense. Like it doesn’t want to beat when he talks like that.
Readjusting, I watch the film of bath oils move on the surface of the water and nestle my foot under Carter’s calf.
“You know we could have started this way,” I say weakly, not sure if I should broach the subject, but what do I have to lose?
“What way?”
“With you giving me a room and being less of a monster.” The words slip out easily and Carter’s ministrations pause at the last word. But then he keeps going, continuing to wash me.
“And what would you have done? Destroyed the room and used the shards of glass to kill me?”
He’s not wrong. I could easily see that happening and the reality makes the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
What happened to that fight? To that edge I’m fully aware would have come out had the situation been different.
Nothing has changed. Carter stole me, keeps me prisoner and he’s going to kill my family.
None of that has changed. Yet here I lie against him, loving his touch and finding my heart being ripped into two.
“We should talk about something else,” Carter suggests.
The sound of the water falling from my shoulder to the tub is calming. Which is anything but what I should be feeling. The sponge is still hot, and it soothes my tired muscle
s.
“I could fall asleep in here,” I murmur absently. All I want to do anymore is sleep. I don’t know if I’m depressed, worn out, or if that’s what happens when you lose your fight.
“Can I wash you?” I ask him, wondering if he’d let me.
A moment passes and then he dips the sponge back under; I expect him to give it to me, but that’s not what happens.
“I like washing you,” he whispers against my ear, his warm breath creating a wave of want that flows through me. But my eyes stay open.
Of course, he wouldn’t want me to wash him. He couldn’t even let me suck his dick. A small huff of feigned humor leaves me, and I readjust in the water so that the sound of it splashing will drown out the huff, but he hears it anyway.
“What?” he asks and leans forward to look at my expression, pulling my shoulder against his to keep me from avoiding him.
I meet his dark gaze, the grays and silvers seeming to take over in the bathroom light. “Nothing, it just feels good. It’s nice to feel cared for.”
Without speaking he leans back, kisses the crook of my neck, and moves the sponge to my neck and chest.
“Did you think it would be this way from the beginning?” I ask him. Truly wanting to know what he thought back then, only weeks ago. The reminder of the cell, of me starving and dying of both boredom and fear should make me angry, but all it does is make me pity Carter.
“I didn’t know what to expect from you. I only knew I wanted to have you.”
“To have me,” I echo and settle my head in the crook of his neck. The movement makes my breasts rise above the surface of the water for a moment and the chill is unwelcome until I settle back into the water.
“Your choice of words always seems to amaze me.” My voice is flat, and I wish I could take it back. Silence stretches, and I wonder how long I’ve been in the water.
You can’t wash everything away, but I wish I could.
“How did you think this would end?”
“You’re asking a lot of questions tonight,” he says instead of giving me an answer and places the sponge back on its shelf rather than answering me.
“Oh, and I see I’ve found the question that crosses the line,” I tell him with a smile although a deep pain courses through my heart as I shut my eyes. Each beat feeling harder and taking more of me just to keep going. I can only imagine what Carter wanted to do with me.
“It all changed when I saw how much you wanted me. When I saw how much you craved my touch… how much you needed me.” I open my eyes as Carter’s fingers reach for my chin, the water dripping into the tub as he forces me to look into his eyes.
“I need you to want me still when this is over.” Carter’s words hold an edge of sincerity that’s too much to handle.
I almost ask why, but I’m afraid of the answer I’ll get. I’m afraid what I feel for him isn’t reciprocated. I’ve been foolish before, and I’m almost certain I am now.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I confess to him, wanting to at least hint at the depths of what I feel for him.
“You should be.” He doesn’t try to make his words gentle in the least. “You need to be.”
In his presence, my body turns to fire. He ignites something inside of me like no one else ever has. I doubt anyone else could ever affect me the way he does. Some moments, I hate him and who he is, and what he’s done and will do. But unless those thoughts are on the forefront of my mind, the hate fades and it’s replaced with a lust that clouds my judgment and demands my body bow to his. To show him love like he’s never seen and the power of what it can do to heal him.
What’s more? I crave it more every day. I’m addicted to Carter Cross. And the shame of that fact, although present, has quieted.
But the voice is still there and picks away at me. It’s relentless, but so is Carter.
Chapter 41
Carter
Some moments, I feel closer to her.
Others, more distant.
I wish I knew what to make of her tonight. Nothing went as I thought it would and that puts me on edge.
She fell asleep in the tub, and as I carry her small form wrapped in a towel to bed, I can’t help but notice how peaceful she looks.
Tonight, was like knowing you’re in the eye of a storm. She’s calm and placated but beneath the surface, everything she’s truly feeling rage inside of her. She needs to let it go.
I have to set her down and pull the comforter from underneath her before she can bury herself into the mattress.
As she nestles into the sheets, she wakes calmly.
Rubbing her eyes, she comes to and asks, “Is it morning?” She practically hums the words.
With her damp hair a mess and sleep lingering in her expression, she’s fucking gorgeous.
I cup her cheek and plant a soft kiss on her lips, to which she lifts hers up and deepens it. I’m growing addicted to the way she kisses me. How she doesn’t hide her passion in her touch.
Unlike in her gifted room today. I want them all to be like this one.
I’ve never kissed a woman before her. Never let myself fall for anyone or given them that part of me. So, every peck, every time she deepens it, it means so much more than I thought it would. I need more of this from her.
“Not yet, songbird.” Whispering against her lips I tell her, “You fell asleep in the bath.”
She slowly sits up as I climb into bed next to her.
“Well, I don’t feel tired now,” she tells me and sits cross-legged.
Exhaustion sweeps over me as I lie down and pull her close to me. “Good, I can have you then,” I tell her, letting my lips drag against her neck to leave a trail of open-mouth kisses. I rock my erection into her hip and then pin her under me. “I wanted you in the bath.”
I’d planned on putting one heel on each side of the tub, just as I’d told her to do in the office, but her questions were more important. More insightful, even though I didn’t like where they were going.
It feels like she’s slipping from me, slowly. I’m losing her, and I don’t know how or why.
But I’ll get her back. She has nowhere else to run and no one else.
She only needs to accept that.
Her hand sweeps behind my neck and she pulls my lips to hers, taking and demanding. “Make me forget,” she whispers against my lips and my chest aches at her words.
I need to forget, just as she does. It’s so easy to get lost in her.
My fingers trail down the dip in her waist slowly until I find her cunt. Already hot and wet and needy, she rocks herself into my palm and I smile against her lips.
Nipping her lower lip and guiding my cock to her entrance, I tease her, “You’re always ready for me.”
“Always,” she mewls just before I slam into her to the hilt.
“Fuck!” she yells out as I pull out and then thrust into her slowly, taken aback at the tone of her strangled cry.
Her palms press against my chest, pushing me away as I kiss the crook of her neck and she moans a painful sound. “Carter,” she whispers my name with agony. Her brow is etched with a look of pain.
“It hurts,” she gasps, arching her neck as I pull out of her completely. “It hurts,” she repeats, trying to close her legs. Shit. My body tenses concerned that I hurt her. Fuck. Not like this.
“Shh,” I whisper against her neck and kiss her lightly as my fingers find her clit. She needs to feel good under me. I can’t have her any other way.
Instantly, she moans that sweet sound of pleasure I love hearing. “I was wondering how much I could fuck you before you’d be too sore.” She only replies with a quick inhale and the buck of her hips which does nothing but give me slight relief.
“Look at me,” I command her, and her head turns instantly to face me. Her gorgeous hazel-green eyes burn into mine. My thumb rubs ruthless circles around her clit and Aria bites into her lower lip, desperate to keep her eyes on me but knowing the pleasure will rock through her soon.
&n
bsp; Her back bows slightly and her breaths turns to pants, but instead of letting her get off, I lower my fingers, trailing them through her lips and gathering the wetness to bring it lower.
“I could always take you here,” I say lowly, pressing my fingers against her forbidden entrance.
Aria’s answer is to open her mouth wider with a look of shock, but more than that, sinful curiosity.
A smile stretches across my lips as I say, “Not tonight though. I have to play with you first.” Her eyes light again with curiosity and the guilt I felt a moment ago diminishes. I bring my fingers back to her clit then down to her entrance, pressing them inside her gently, but even that makes her wince.
I have to pull the covers back to look at her slick folds; she’s red and swollen, well used.
That doesn’t mean I can’t give her pleasure and that I can’t have mine in return. If I’ve learned anything about Aria, it’s that the more I give her pleasure, the more compliant she is.
Her eyes stay pinned on me as she looks down her body and waits for what I’ll do to her.
I run my tongue up and down her pussy and then suck on her clit. She’s so fucking sweet. The taste of her on my lips makes my cock twitch with need. With her hands in my hair and her heels digging into the bed she finds her release, screaming out my name.
She curls on her side as I move back up the bed and lie next to her, not waiting to position her just as I want her. With one hand on her breast and the other pushing the hair away from her flushed face, she’s still reeling from her orgasm when I move my cock between her thighs.
“Arch your back,” I tell her, and she obeys instantly, jutting her ass out. And it tempts me. The curve of her waist and the round flesh of her ass are so seductive. I can just imagine gripping on to her and rocking into her as she screams in ecstasy.
