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“Ah.”
Moonlight slivers through the part in the curtains. It comes over my shoulder onto the bed and the floor just beyond. When I feel his fingers trace the outside edges of the tattoo, I know he can see it in that silvery light.
“Why?” I ask again.
“I don’t know,” he says after a long moment passes. “Go to sleep, Isabelle.”
“I didn’t know it was real,” I say, wiping another tear. “I didn’t know about the tattoo. The marking. All those men watching.”
“Shh. It’s over. Go to sleep.”
“It’s not normal.” I sniffle and if he didn’t know I was crying before, he does now.
“It is life within The Society and although you and I may be half-breeds to them, we are a part of it, and we must obey certain rules.”
I look at him over my shoulder. “I thought you made your own rules.”
“I do in many ways but when they serve me, in this case taking you from your brother, I will do as I am expected to.”
“You almost killed him.”
He doesn’t respond but his jaw tightens.
“I don’t understand what taking me will achieve. It’s not that Carlton will miss me or be upset that I’m sleeping in your bed. He doesn’t care about me. We both know that. So what are you planning? What will I be made to endure next?”
A grin curves one corner of his lip but instead of answering he pushes the blanket off my hips and insanely, I find my body reacting. My center warming. Preparing. He rises onto his knees and takes one of my thighs to reposition me, angling me so I’m face down, my stomach on his knees, my legs spread on either side of him.
I set my forearms down and brace myself. I’m sore but there’s a part of me that wants this.
He grips my hips and raises them, and, to my surprise, bites my right cheek.
“Ow!”
But when he next spreads me open and licks the length of me, I’m gasping again, waiting, anticipating. When he pushes my legs wider to bury his face between my legs, I fist the sheets in my hands and close my eyes. Clenching my teeth when I feel his on my clit, on my lower lips, his tongue dipping inside me then drawing out, circling the hard nub, licking my length from hole to hole.
“I think I can eat you all night,” he says and continues to lick and suck and explore with his tongue. The scruff on his jaw rough and abrasive, so opposite the softness of his tongue and lips. “But I really need to be inside you again,” he says, lifting me to a seat on his lap so I’m facing him. Our eyes locked, he slides me onto his length. He’s slow, taking care. He’s thick and hard and I clutch his shoulders as he moves my hips. My over-sensitive nipples scrape along his chest, sending sensation straight to my core and soon I’m gasping, clinging to him, my head bowed. My body wants more even though my passage is raw, abused from earlier and now this, more of him. I call out his name when I come and he grips a handful of hair to force my head back to watch me.
“Look at me,” he says, voice hoarse when I close my eyes, the moment too vulnerable. “I want to see you.”
I open my eyes and I watch him too, see how one eye darkens, the other brightens, midnight and silver. I hear his short intakes of breath and feel the thickening inside me just before he drives me down hard and grinds against me, throbbing. His eyes are too beautiful to turn away from as I watch him come undone. As I take more of his seed inside me.
This time when it’s over, he doesn’t get up to shower. And he doesn’t clean me. Instead, he lays me down.
As I feel his seed slide out of me, I rest my head on his pillow and close my eyes, too exhausted to move, too raw and empty. Somehow, my eyes flutter closed even as I watch his on me, even as I know it’s dangerous to ever let myself drift to sleep with this man. My husband, it happens. And this, the way he makes me come, the way he makes me want him, drives that point home more than anything else has.
Because even if Leontine was right and I do need protecting from some outside force, I am also right to wonder who will protect me from my own husband.
31
Jericho
It’s not long after we’ve fallen asleep that I’m awakened by Isabelle’s murmurings. Her tossing and turning. I open my eyes and watch. Listen. Her eyes are closed but her lips are moving, some words unclear, others leaving me with a hint of what the nightmare is.
“Christian,” she says, forehead wrinkling, the skin around her eyes growing wet. Her arm reaches out and she tries to grasp something then it drops to her side.
For a moment, she seems to settle back into sleep but then it starts again. This time, it’s a full panic. A low moan comes from inside her throat. It’s the sound of someone trying to scream but that scream is trapped. I know those nightmares. The terror of them.
“Isabelle,” I say softly. I don’t touch her yet.
