Page 126 of Gilded Curses

Anger, jealousy, and grief about all this lost time mingle in my chest, threatening to explode out of me. A deep-seated need to touch her body and her mind overcomes me. I want to make her remember me… remember the way I used to make her feel. Maybe the memories will come back if I show her.

That thought has me moving quickly. Dropping my arm from her body and letting go of her knee, I bring both of my hands to her hips. Holding her in place, I lower my head and press my lips to hers.

She freezes in shock, her body stiffens, and her lips are unmoving for less than two seconds before she slaps her palms onto my chest and tries to shove me away.

Her fight has me pressing her against the wall harder, my cock rubs onto her wet skin, and my balls ache to be inside of her. Not now, though. This isn’t about me; this is about her, and making her feel good.

Letting my fingers trail over her skin, I bring them between her legs. She gasps, and I use the small parting of her lips to deepen the kiss and push my tongue inside her hot mouth.

She tastes just like I remembered; sweet and sinful.

Her fingernails dig into my chest as a sound of displeasure comes from her throat. I press my thumb against her clit and let my fingers slide between her slick folds. This time her groan takes on a different tone. One of enjoyment.

I take this as a win and rub circles over the small bundle of nerves while burying my middle finger into her tight hole. I’m quickly rewarded by her teeth sinking into my lip until blood drips into my mouth, and I hiss out in pain.

As soon as she stops biting, I pull my face away and bring it to the crook of her neck, where I press my busted lip against her warm skin.

She has the audacity to chuckle, but I make her shut up quickly as I force two digits into her small cunt and grab one of her tits roughly. I know she likes a little bit of pain during sex, so I pinch her nipple and press my thumb down hard.

As I expected, she moans, her pussy clamps around my fingers, and the hands that were pushing me away a moment ago seem to want to draw me closer now.

I continue teasing her, kneading her breasts, pinching her nipples, while finger-fucking her pussy and playing with her clit until her back arches. Her already tight channel clamps down, a guttural moan fills the space, and her thighs quiver with her release.

Feeling her legs giving out, I quickly grab her waist to hold her upright. Lifting my head, my eyes find hers. I was hoping to find recognition, an awakened memory, or at least a sense of something familiar. I find neither.

All I see is confusion.

IVY

My back is against the tile, and I can’t feel my legs.

The water is still running, beating down on both of us, and I’m trying to remember how to breathe. My chest is heaving. My fingers are gripping his shoulders—when did I grab his shoulders?—and every nerve in my body is lit up like a circuit board that’s been hit with a surge. The aftershocks roll through me in slow, involuntary waves, and I hate that I can’t stop them. I hate that he can see them. I hate that the sound I just made is still hanging in the steam between us. Low, broken. Completely involuntary.

I don’t do involuntary. At least, I didn’t until this morning.

He’s watching me. Those pale blue eyes, close enough that I can see the flecks of gray in them, are steady and calm. Patient, as if he has all the time in the world. Like he didn’t just take me apart with nothing but his hand, and now he’s watching me put myself back together.

The worst part isn’t that he did it. The worst part is how. When he had me pinned against the wall, when my knee failed and my strategy crumbled, and I was caught with nothing left to throw at him, I expected retaliation. I expected him to take what he wanted, because that’s what men do in my world. That’s what I was prepared for. The thing I’ve been trained to endure when a seduction goes wrong and the target takes control.

Yes. They even trained me for that. They trained me to take it. How to take it and lock it away in a part of me that can never be unlocked.

Only he didn’t retaliate the way I was expecting. He could have. Easily. I was pinned, wet, naked, and he was stronger. I can admit that, if only in my own head. He’s stronger. There wasn’t a damn thing stopping him.

Instead of splitting me in half with the redwood he’s packing, he watched my face like he was reading a language only he understood. When his hand moved, it wasn’t rough. It wasn’t punishing. It was deliberate and precise, focused entirely on me and what I was feeling. Like that was the only thing that mattered, no matter what he muttered about punishing me.

I don’t know what to do with that. I literally do not have a framework for processing it. In my experience, intimacy is a tool. You use your body to gain access, to lower defenses, to extract information. What just happened wasn’t any of those things. It wasn’t transactional. He didn’t take anything for himself. He just…

My brain stalls out every time I try to finish that thought.

He steps back, giving me space. The water runs between us, and without his body heat against mine, the shower feels cold despite the steam. I press my palms flat against the tile behind me because my hands are shaking, and I refuse to let him see it. I’ve let him see enough already.

“You okay?” he asks. Quietly. Like he actually cares about the answer.

“Fine.” My voice doesn’t sound fine. It sounds like someone scraped it raw.

He doesn’t push it. He just reaches past me and turns off the water. The sudden silence is deafening. Then he steps out of the shower, grabs a towel from the rack, and comes back to me.

I expect him to hand it to me. He doesn’t.