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I smile as the tears saturate the cloth blinding my eyes.
The sounds of Titus grunting and moaning fades beneath the pounding of blood in my ears. Why has he gone quiet?
A cold, tight feeling expands across my chest, and the air withers, like a deflating balloon.
Titus?
I open my mouth to say his name, and feel the scratchy cotton against my tongue. The damp, moldy taste of the rag fills my mouth and invades my sinuses.
Titus? Titus! Stop! Stop!
Why isn’t he stopping?
Wriggling in my binds is futile. My pulse slams through my veins as panic settles over me.
“Stop! Stop!”
The blindfold is ripped away, my body flipped back around, and Titus stares down at me with horror carved into his expression. “Did I hurt you?”
Gaze trailing over my surroundings, I note the gentle sway of trees. The bright moon, a full moon, overhead. A sky full of stars.
I clamp my eyes and breathe deeply to calm my rapid panting. I’m safe. It’s Titus. I’m safe.
At the soft touch of fingers trailing down my temple, I snap my eyes open to be sure they belong to Titus.
Brows still furrowed with worry, he studies me, no doubt, searching for explanation.
“I’m … fine.” I cast my gaze from his, so he won’t see the truth there. The reality that I’m not okay. The rims of my eyes burn with the threat of tears, but damn it, I’m tired of them.
“Hey.” With a gentle grip of my chin, he guides my eyes back to his. “No one said you had to tackle everything all at once.”
“I just … want things to be the way they were. Before. I want to be normal again. To forget what happened.” My view wavers with the tears brimming in my eyes, and when he kisses my temple, they slip away.
“Someday, that may happen. But not tonight.”
“And what if it takes years? What if it never goes back to the way it was?”
He thumbs the tears away. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere.”
The emotions inside of me explode, and I lift my head, wrapping my arms around him, and press my lips to his. “You can still make me forget him. Please.”
I trap his massive body between my legs, and he keeps his gaze locked on mine when he slides back inside of me. As I arch back, he buries his face in my neck, kissing my throat, while he moves against me like waves on the ocean. Slow and steady. He’s the calm, placid sea coming to life, crashing over me.
Pulling me under.
An impossible need stirs deep inside of me, a feeling beyond sex, like something stitching my soul to his. I breathe him in and drag my tongue over his skin, filling my mouth with the taste of metallic fire. Leaves rattle in the wind, background noise to the masculine sounds in his throat. All my senses are tethered to him like an anchor that keeps me from drifting away. Sight, sound, smell, taste.
Titus.
My Titus.
“No one is ever going to hurt you, Thalia. I will break anyone who tries to touch you again.” The torment in his voice is overpowered by the anger, and he digs his fingers into my hips, as if imagining such a thing. It occurs to me how much pain he’s stuffed into compartments, too. Perhaps feeling helpless. Useless.
Each drive of his hips becomes more fervent, laden with purpose.
As we claw and bite and fuck each other, I feel a sense of release. Liberation.
He slices me open, exposing the raw, untouched parts of me still coursing with passion and desire. The pieces that Remus could never touch, no matter how many times he took from me. Without even trying, Titus uncovers the delicate fragments of yearning left inside me, my rapture, and unleashes it from my body.
