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“I don’t, and I’ll die anyway.”
She rubbed her face and gave a tattered little scream. “Stop it. Just stop it!”
I frowned. “Stop what exactly? Caring for you? Cursing you?” I crowded her against the tiles. “You are mine, little nightmare, and I will defend you as such.”
“You don’t care about me. You only care that I’m your little chew toy and got jealous because someone else played with me!”
“Of course I fucking care!” I roared. “Have you not been listening? Jesus Christ, Ilyana, I almost lost myself seeing that cunt on top of you. I committed murder for you. I almost ripped off his cock for you. Why would I do that if I didn’t care?”
Not letting her reply, I snarled, “And I’m fully aware you are not my toy. You are not my possession. But you are mine. You are my fucking wife, and if any other Master wants to test my commitment to you, then—”
“I’m not your wife, Henri,” she cried with a strange, frustrated scream. “You’re fooling yourself! Believing in things that aren’t real. I will never be any more than what you turned me into. I’m a collared possession, nothing more!”
I staggered back, needles of firewater falling over me.
I’d expected her to snap into sobs, not bristle with barbaric rage.
The fall from earning her gratitude to being reminded of her hate fucking eviscerated me.
Wiping my mouth with a shaking hand, I struggled.
Fucking struggled with existing.
In that single second, every emotion I’d ever been denied suffocated me like toxic oil.
I shouldn’t be surprised.
It shouldn’t even hurt.
After a lifetime of being denied love, I’d grown rather used to it.
But now?
Fuck, now?
I didn’t know what to feel.
Only that I felt everything.
Every emotion.
All of them.
Craving and confusion, admiration and anger, disgust and despair. Horror, relief, grief—too many. Far, far too many.
Swooping into her, I grabbed her by the hips. “If I have to drag you before a priest and force you to say some binding words to make you believe my pledge to you, then so be it.”
She squeaked as my fingers kept squeezing.
The bones in my wrists ached.
My knuckles turned white.
I couldn’t unbury myself from the avalanche of feeling after feeling after feeling.
I’d never had someone to care about before. Never had a reason to hate if my loved one was threatened. Never suffered jealousy. Never learned how violently my heart would revolt at the thought of losing what was mine.
My fingernails dug into her.
Fury spilled like poison.
She’s mine.
And they tried to take her from me.
That made me feel…
God, how does that make me feel?
Furious. Possessive. But…beneath all those self-serving, selfish rages, another one lurked. One that came with excruciating pain and screeched with absolute warning.
Sour sickness crawled up my throat.
Sickness I never wanted to suffer again.
Fuck!
“Henri…” Her fragile fingers landed on my shower-wet chest. “Y-You’re hurting me.”
“Merde.” Ripping my hands off her, I backed up.
She’d said the same thing when I’d grabbed her after I’d fought those bastards.
Such a condemning sentence delivered by the softest whisper.
“I didn’t mean to…I—” I sighed heavily. “I’m sorry.”
She hates me.
Her haunted eyes locked on mine as I stood ramrod straight.
I tripped into her stare, counting the swirling shadows and sorrow that hadn’t been there before.
My stomach knotted.
I swayed back another step.
Instinct blared that the emotion currently welling in my every vein—the emotion coated in sickness—wasn’t just possession but…
Fear.
It’s fear.
…you’re motherfucking terrified that you’ve lost her.
My hand lashed out.
I grabbed her chin and stepped forward.
She gasped as I crowded her.
Her fingers locked around my wrist, hot water sending curls of steam around her head as if she wore a halo. Her shoulders tried to brace, but they rolled instead, attempting to cocoon herself in protection. “Henri…stop it.”
My arms longed to wrap her in a hug, but a lifetime with no intimacy meant I was an uneducated beast. A childhood of no embraces equalled an adulthood of lonely pain.
I didn’t have the first fucking clue how to touch this girl.
I wanted her to see me as someone different.
I needed her to feel my regret instead of my darkness.
We stood there awkwardly, the shower pummelling us in scalding heat.
When I didn’t speak, her tension dribbled down the drain, and she sighed. “Look…it’s over, okay? I’m fine, thanks to you. He didn’t hurt me…thanks to you. I’m grateful, Henri. Extremely grateful, but…you can’t get angry with me for pointing out the truth.”
“The truth?” I spoke around sharp gravel. “The truth that I’m no better than they are?” A red, horrible haze dripped over my eyes. “The truth that each time you sleep with me, it’s because you don’t have a choice? That you don’t…enjoy it?”
Her lip curled as if to throw filth in my face. To deny her wetness or her orgasms.
I braced for it.
But then she slouched and said quietly, “I do enjoy it. Despite how I feel about you, our bodies are, unfortunately, perfect together.”
