by Maisey Yates
He groaned at the view before him. The rounded curve of her ass, that sweet, tantalizing view of her feminine flesh between her partly spread thighs.
He could not resist her. He didn’t want to. He wanted nothing more than to be buried in her.
He positioned himself at her slick entrance, sliding in just half an inch, testing her readiness, allowing her desire to bathe the head of his arousal.
He swore, grinding his teeth so tightly together he thought for sure he might reduce them to dust.
He grabbed on to her hip again, leaning in with his other hand, pressing her wrists more firmly against the wall, he flexed his hips, drawing her rear back farther as he slid deeper inside her. She gasped, a shiver running down her spine, through her body, and he felt it echoing inside him.
She lowered her head for a moment, and then looked back at him, those blue eyes colliding with his, the electric shot from that unexpected eye contact reaching all the way down to where they were joined, causing him to surge up even more deeply inside her.
He flexed his hips and she groaned; then he withdrew, slamming back into her. He moved his hand around to the front of her body, stimulating her sex with his fingertips as he established a steady rhythm designed to drive them both insane.
She whimpered his name, over and over again, driving him closer, faster than he wanted. He wanted it to go on forever. And like this, it wasn’t going to.
He freed her wrists, taking hold of both hips and driving himself hard into her one last time before he withdrew.
“What?” she asked, her tone dazed.
“Trust me,” he returned, his voice a stranger’s even to his own ears.
He turned her so that she was facing him, claimed her mouth in a deep, hard kiss before taking her into his arms and carrying her to the bed. He set her on the edge of the plush mattress. “Lay back,” he commanded.
She complied, her legs dangling over the edge, her head tossed back, her breasts thrust high. She was like a beautiful virgin sacrifice being given to the monster in the manor. And yet, even realizing that, believing it, he would not stop himself.
He was the monster, after all. Past the point of redemption. But if he had a hope of coming close, it would be inside her.
He gripped her thighs, drawing her legs up over his hips, urging her to wrap them around his body. She complied. Then he thrust deep inside her again. She gasped, throwing one arm over her face as he thrust down into her from where he stood at the edge of the bed.
“Adam,” she whimpered. “Adam, I need—”
“This,” he finished, punctuating the word with a hard thrust. “You need me inside you.”
She nodded, reaching up and taking hold of his forearm, drawing her fingertips down to his wrist before moving his hand to her lips. Then she darted her tongue out, sliding along the edge of his finger before sucking it deeply into her mouth. He jerked inside her, the surprising contact nearly pushing him over the edge then and there.
She met his gaze, drawing his hand even closer to her lips, taking a second finger inside and sucking hard.
He jerked his hand back, pressing his palms firmly into the mattress as he gave himself up to the riot of need roaring through him.
He was not considerate. He did not give her pleasure the full weight it deserved. But he could not think of anything else. The demons that always hovered at the edges of this room were tearing at his skin, trying to get past the defenses that had been built up between himself and Belle. With each flex of his hips, every time he drove himself home into the tight heat of her body, he was able to prolong the inevitable. Was able to hold on to that little spark of light she had planted inside his chest.
He held her hard—too hard—and he knew that he was going to leave bruises behind on her beautiful hips, evidence of how his blunt fingertips had dug into her flesh. He knew that he would leave marks all over her, not just on her skin, but inside her, as well.
He would break her. As he had broken everything.
She loves you, a mocking voice said. What have you ever done to have a woman love you? And yet, you have earned the love of two different women. And you failed the first one so badly.
He pushed the thought away, enraged that it had managed to penetrate this moment, that it had managed to get beneath his defenses.
He wrapped his arm around her waist, drawing it down to her lower back, lifting her off the mattress slightly as he moved them both back so that they were fully on the bed. He thrust in, long and slow, pinning them both to the soft surface, pressing her completely beneath his weight. Reveling in the feel of being flush against her soft, perfect form.
He alternated between quick, shallow pulses of his hips and long, slow glides that took him all the way to the hilt.
She flexed beneath him, meeting him thrust for thrust, her internal muscles beginning to pulse around his length.
She tossed her head from side to side, reaching out and grabbing his shoulders, her fingernails biting into his skin. He hoped that she would leave scars. He hoped that she would make him bleed. He hoped that he would never recover from this. From her. That as much as he would leave an imprint on her body, she would be one on his.
Of all the scars that he bore, he would be proud to bear hers.
It would be the one beautiful mark on his body.
The others were simply signs of failure. Of selfishness. Of the rash behavior of a young husband who knew about nothing but pleasing himself. Who had thought his wife’s concerns were silly, and who had prized the comfort of his reputation and of his political alliances more than her comfort.
He had paid. They had all paid. All because of him.
He deserved to look as he did. He deserved all that and more.
What he did not deserve was for Belle to be moving beneath him so sweetly, for her to say his name as she did. For her to love him, when he was more a beast than she would ever know.
But he would take it. Because he did not possess the strength to turn it away, to deny her, to deny himself.
He slammed his hips down hard, his pelvis making contact with that place where she was most needy for him. And he felt the explosion detonate inside her. Her body pulsing around him as she found her release. She lifted her head, sinking her teeth into his shoulder as her orgasm overtook her. And it was that, that primal active possessiveness, that pushed him over the edge too.
On a growl, he gave himself up, spilling himself deep inside her beautiful body, staking his claim in a way he had absolutely no right to.
He deserved nothing, least of all this. But he did not possess the strength to do anything but give himself up to it. To her.
Being marked by her would be the only thing that gave him pleasure, solace, once she was gone.
And he realized, as the remnants of his orgasm washed over him, that he would have to let her go.
The headline didn’t matter. Not in comparison with her happiness.
He could not allow her to stay here. He could not allow this woman to stay in this dark, oppressed palace with all these demons simply to gratify himself. He could not allow her to bind herself to him without knowing what he was. And more than anything, he could not allow her to love him. Not him.
Because whether or not he loved her in return didn’t matter. Eventually, he would break her. As he broke all things in his life.
The only solution was to allow himself to sink deeper into his own brokenness. Only then would she be safe from him. Only then would he not be a danger to anyone.
He rolled off her, breathing hard, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. A ceiling he’d stared at countless nights, replaying his feelings over and over again. Replaying that moment he had reached out to touch Ianthe to find her skin ice cold, to find her already gone before help ever arrived at the accident scene.
Compulsively, he reached out, brushed his fingertips over Belle’s cheek. She was living. She was warm, and she was bright.
And unless he let her go, s
he would not stay that way. Because he knew exactly how this ended. With darkness. With cold.
“You have to leave.”
* * *
Belle was still catching her breath, trying to orient herself after the force of the climax that had just ripped through her body, leaving her weak and breathless. And then Adam said she had to leave.
“Are we going to sleep in my room?” She had thought for a moment that they had made progress, that he had finally let her in, but, now he wanted to get out of the bedroom. She supposed there were steps to take, and she couldn’t be too angry if they were small.
“No,” he said, his voice hard. “Not just out of my bedroom. You need to go back to California. You should go back to Tony.”
“What are you talking about?” Panic scurried through her like a team of nervous field mice. “I don’t want to go. We are engaged. You just gave me a ring.”
“You can keep the ring. I don’t care. Sell it, if your father needs more money for his treatment.”
“I... I don’t understand. We made love. We—”
“It was a mistake. All of it. I was being selfish. I was allowing you to sacrifice yourself in order to save my reputation, but I do not require that, Belle. And you should not subject yourself to it.”
“I chose it,” she protested, “because I love you.”
He turned away as though she had slapped him. “You do not love me. Read a headline or two about our relationship, Belle. You have Stockholm syndrome. You have begun to identify with your captor because I cut you off from the outside world so effectively.”
“You insulting bastard. How dare you tell me what I feel and don’t feel like some amateur pop psychologist? I know my own mind. And I know what I feel.”
“Or, you think you do,” he bit out.
Rage fired through her. “So, you’re going to gaslight me? Tell me how it’s actually been so that you can try and deny my feelings?”
“You don’t know what you feel.”
“Why not? Because I’m a woman, and I’m simply too softheaded to understand my own heart?”
“No,” he said, “because you don’t know the man that you chose to take to bed. I have never told you the whole story about that night my wife died. I have never let you know why it is I think I’m a monster. You think it’s because of these scars?” He sat up, his muscles rippling with the motion. “I don’t give a damn about my scars. About the loss of my pretty-boy face. What the hell does any of that matter? I was a monster long before that accident, and all that did was reveal who I actually am. Selfish. Hideous. At least now my face serves as a warning.”
“Stop it. Unless you’re actually going to back that up with facts I don’t want to hear any of it. It’s all drama. It’s all you running away from something that feels too real for you to handle. You’ve been hiding for so many years that you’ve forgotten how to stand in the light.”
“No, I know exactly how to stand in the light. In your light. And I would steal it, Belle—trust me. Use it all up until you were just as dark as I am.”
“Maybe you should trust me. Maybe you should trust that I’m strong enough to know what I want, to know that I can handle this.”
“Do you want to know what kind of husband I am?” He shook his head. “I am selfish. I prized my own reputation, my own happiness above all else. My wife was very pregnant when she died. And she didn’t want to go to the gala that evening. No, she wanted to stay home and put her feet up. But I told her in no uncertain terms that it was not to be done. It was important that I be seen there, you see. That I make an appearance, that we make an appearance, because as a couple we were quite the darling in the media. I needed her to come there and look radiant. To look like the happy princess carrying the future of the nation. I wanted to present a specific moment to the media. We were beloved by some of the press, but hounded the rest. Popularity always has two sides. And there were rumors about her, about us, I wanted to dispel. And so, even though she wanted to stay home in bed, I pressed the issue.”
“Adam...” She tried to take a breath but she felt oppressed by the pain that was coming off him in waves. It made it difficult to stay sitting up, much less speak. “You can’t blame yourself for that. It isn’t as though you could have ever known there was going to be an accident. It isn’t as though you could have anticipated—”
“It doesn’t matter. Of course I couldn’t have. I cannot predict the future. And of course I blame the photographer who just had to get the photo. Who was determined to try and shove a camera in my poor wife’s face, to make more snide comments about her past, about the fact that she was a woman with a certain reputation before she married me, and that I couldn’t be certain the child was mine.” His expression was fierce. “Of course the child was mine. I knew her. I knew who she was, and that she was faithful to me. But the media was intent on making her into some kind of caricature. Something she was not. I don’t blame myself for that. But, I cannot forgive myself for insisting on trotting her out in those circumstances. For not listening to her when she said she was too tired. For not honoring her as I should have done. I loved going out. Being seen. Being part of that glittering world. Why do you think I removed myself from it so effectively after her death?”
She felt as though she had been stabbed in the chest, as though she might begin bleeding out all over the brocade bedspread. Of course, of course he had kept himself locked away. Because he blamed the fact that he liked to go out, the fact that he enjoyed his status. The fact that he had enjoyed that aspect of royal life, and that it had betrayed him. Of course he had punished himself like this. Keeping himself away from people, away from women, away from even his subjects—whom she imagined he loved. He had cut himself off from everything. Everything but this pain. And he had fashioned for himself in this corner of the castle a mausoleum, not to his wife and child, but to his failure.
A monument to his grief and his guilt. She couldn’t blame him. Not really. After all, her entire life was a monument to the pain that she felt over her mother’s rejection. Her fear of being rejected again. But she didn’t blame herself, not really. She never had. Yes, it had made her afraid, but she had always known that the culprit was her mother. That there had been nothing a four-year-old girl could do to make her mother love her more.
But Adam was awash in regret. In what might have been. Adam didn’t just have grief, hadn’t only experienced loss; he had taken that loss into himself entirely. And he was determined to punish himself forever for it. He was punishing himself now.
He would punish them both, so that he could live in his grief and guilt forever. She thought back to what he had said when they had landed in Santa Milagro. About how part of him wanted to hold that pain, that darkness to his chest forever, to make it matter, to make it mean something.
But it was more than that. He was consigning himself to eternal punishment, eternal damnation. He had played the part of judge, jury and executioner. She wished so much that she could take it all away.
But she couldn’t. She knew that without a doubt, sitting there across from him, naked body and soul, that she couldn’t take it from him if he didn’t want to release it. And living like this...with all these cracks between them, all of these walls, would be the death of her eventually. Oh, not literally. Because whatever the world said about him, whatever he thought about himself, he was not that brand of monster. But emotionally...after all these years of living with so much of herself repressed, she couldn’t imagine submitting herself to such a thing again.
To live with a man who was determined to reject the love that she had dug so deep inside of herself to offer him.
But she didn’t want to leave him. Part of her wanted to stay forever, regardless of the fact that it would end in her destruction, because at least, if she went down, it would be in a blaze of glory. At least, it would be experiencing the kind of passion she had only ever dreamed of before. The kind of passion she truly hadn’t imagined actually existed.
> She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. “I love you,” she said again. “And nothing that you can say is going to change that. Nothing that you tell me is going to change that. You think that you’re going to uncover some hidden darkness inside of yourself that’s going to make me rethink everything?” Her heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. “Adam, I have lived my whole life shoving my feelings down, shoving down my desires. I thought I was happy. I thought that the sort of easy moving through life like that was the answer. The answer to happiness, the answer to stability. But it isn’t all about easy. It isn’t all about happy. I would rather struggle here with you, deal with this pain, this deep, dark emotion that you feel, fight with you, scream at you, make passionate love with you, than go back home to my safety net. I don’t want easy, not anymore. I want real. I want to feel real. I want to be real. And I did with you. I do. This is what I want. This crazy, messy thing that we have here. Don’t try to protect me from it, because it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t want you here. I thought that perhaps it was the answer. I thought that perhaps if I took you to bed here, I could start over, that I could forget. But it isn’t only that I can’t. I don’t want to.”
Those words hit their target, lanced her like a sword. She also knew that they weren’t right, that they weren’t real, that he was protecting himself with them. She could see it, could see it in the despairing look in those dark eyes. He didn’t want this, but he was not holding her prisoner; he never had been. He was holding himself captive. And he seemed determined to never allow himself to be released.
She got off the bed, moving to the center of the room, standing there, naked and completely unashamed. “You’re going to have to tell me again. If you want me to go, Adam, I’m not going to force myself on you, but you have to look at me and tell me that you want me gone. What happened to you—what happened to your wife and your son—was a tragedy, and you had no control over it. You’ve lied to yourself, you’ve taken that guilt onto yourself, and in a lot of ways I understand why. Because you’re afraid of being hurt again.”
