“Eoin!” I scream, my voice raw, as he drives into me, deeper than I thought possible. The psychic link is a supernova, a storm of pure sensation, his pleasure crashing into mine, his desperation meeting my own. My climax hits me like a physical blow, a violent, endless series of convulsions that wrings every last drop of sensation from my body. My scream is swallowed by his final, possessive roar as he finds his own release, his massive cock pulsing, flooding me with his heat.
The strength leaves my body in a rush, my legs giving out. He catches me, his arm still locked around my thigh, turning us as we fall so I land on the firm muscle of his chest in the thin, dirty straw that covers the floor. He is still inside me, our bodies still connected.
The roaring in my mind quieters, softening to a low, exhausted hum. The silence of the cell returns, no longer empty, but filled with the sound of our ragged breathing and the scent of our mingled sweat.
I lie on the chest of the monster who violated me, the monster I just willingly took inside me again, and I can feel the steady, rhythmic beat of his heart against my cheek. And it is terrifyingly, impossibly, human.
14
EOIN
The roaring inferno quiets. The storm of sensation recedes, leaving behind a silence that is not empty, but filled with the scent of her, the heat of her, the feeling of her skin against mine. She lies upon my chest, her body a warm, pliant weight. Her cheek rests over my heart, and she must feel its steady, rhythmic beat. A function I had, until this moment, considered purely mechanical.
My analysis attempts to begin, to categorize the event.Objective: Purge the obsession through physical release. Reassert dominance. Reduce the Anomaly to a simple, controllable variable.
The analysis fails at the first step.
The obsession has not been purged. It has been fed. The fire has not been extinguished; it has been stoked into a raging, possessive inferno that now burns in the very core of my being. The act was not one of conquest. I felt her surrender, but within that surrender was a fierce, defiant strength that met my own. She was not a victim in this. She was a combatant. It was not a release. It was a… connection. A forging.
The logic of this is infuriating. It is a paradox wrapped in a contradiction.
She stirs, a soft, involuntary murmur escaping her lips. Her hair, a tangle of dark silk, is spilled across my chest. My hand, of its own accord, comes up to smooth it, my fingers tracing the line of her spine. She is so fragile in my arms, a thing of soft curves and fierce, desperate life. A human. Yet she survived me, she captured me, and she just met the monster inside of me with a fire that matched its own. No Vrakken female, with all their cold, hard perfection, has ever done that.
I watch her in the dim light, the rise and fall of her breathing, the flutter of her eyelashes against her cheek. The analytical gaze I have cultivated for millennia begins to… soften. The edges blur. She is not a variable. She is not The Source.
She is Elza.
Her eyes open slowly, dark and clouded with a mixture of exhaustion and self-loathing. The moment she registers where she is—on top of me, still connected to me—her body goes rigid.
“Get off,” she rasps, her voice raw. She pushes against my chest, a weak, trembling effort.
I should release her. The logical move is to re-establish distance, to reinforce the walls. Instead, a low growl rumbles in my chest, and my arm tightens around her, holding her in place. An involuntary, possessive act that I do not understand.
“No,” I hear myself say, the word a guttural sound I barely recognize as my own.
Her head snaps up, her eyes wide with a fresh wave of fury and fear. “Let me go, you bastard.”
“I am no bastard.” The words are clipped, formal, an attempt to regain control. “My lineage is older than this mountain.”
“Then you are just a monster.” She shoves harder, her palms flat against my chest. “Was that what you wanted? Was that enough for you? Did you finally prove that you could break me?”
I look at her, at the tear tracking a clean path through the grime on her cheek, at the defiance burning in her eyes, and I know she is not broken. She is magnificent.
“You are not broken,” I state, the words a simple observation of fact. I withdraw from her then, a slow, deliberate movement that is a physical agony, the loss of connection an immediate, chilling void.
She scrambles away from me, pulling the tattered remains of her tunic around her body, her back pressed against the far wall. She watches me, her hand instinctively going to her hip where her dagger should be. She finds it empty, and a flicker of pure, animal panic crosses her face before she suppresses it.
“What was that, Eoin?” she whispers, her voice shaking. “Another ‘chemical reaction’?”
The use of my name on her lips is a brand. A claim. I rise to a sitting position, the single remaining chain on my left wrist clinking softly. I feel exposed, my thoughts a chaotic jumble of illogical sensations. I retreat to the safety of cold logic, the only armor I have left.
“It was… a necessary expenditure of energy,” I say, voice a strained monotone. “The proximity, the nature of your Purna… it creates a significant physiological pressure. The release was inevitable.”
It is a lie. A pathetic, transparent lie. And she knows it. I can feel her disbelief, her disgust, through the psychic link. It is a sharp, stabbing sensation.
“So you are just an animal, then,” she says, her voice dripping with contempt. “Unable to control your own urges.”
“My control is absolute,” I counter, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. “That which has no control is the chaos in your blood. It is a poison that would undo us all.”
