My arms fell to the side as if he’d crucified me. My head sank into his hands imprisoning my hair. My legs flopped wide, no longer denying his rapid plunging into my prone body.
He fucked me deeper, taking what I’d given him. “Given up? Finally understood that you’re mine?” He licked my cheek like a wolf tasting his meal. “Or do you feel what I do? Feel the heat, the fire, the need.” His breath caught as if his entire system short-circuited with bliss. “How—” He swallowed a groan. “How does it feel to have nothing? To know you’re nothing. Nothing but filthy snow, destined to melt and die.” His voice was dirt and death and desire. “God, I—” His face contorted with pain. “You feel like...death. Like life. Like—shit....” He clawed at the carpet by my ears, driving deeper. “I can’t stand this.”
He sounded twisted and lost, desperate and sick.
And I hurt so fucking much for him.
He was smothered and choking, dying from every black nightmare he’d lived through.
I’d felt numerous things for this man in the month that I’d been his. I’d cared for him maternally, I’d cursed him eternally, and I’d fallen for the boy he once was.
But now, now I opened my arms to the true monster this heinous mansion had created. I was brave enough, mad enough, caring enough to welcome a man who no longer belonged to himself. A man who fucked me with tears in his eyes while he repeated the disgusting things that’d once been whispered into his ears.
He taught me that for all my empathy of what he’d gone through, it was nothing, nothing compared to living it. Of feeling the destruction it caused firsthand.
The partitioning of your psyche.
The corners in your mind.
The walls soaring sky high to block any memory of the pain.
That was what this was.
A lesson.
A teaching that I would forever remember. Always recall the fear, the loneliness, and the momentous understanding that just because I was human, just because our species was on the top of the food chain, nothing was guaranteed. There was nothing written that said we deserved happiness or hope, safety or sanity.
Some of us weren’t so lucky.
Some of us were forgotten and left to die.
He thrust again, his entire body tensing as he chased a release. “Please. I need it. Just one second of pleasure.”
Pleasure that his body might want, but his mind thrashed against. He was two people in one. The monster and the boy. The sane and the insane.
He grunted with frustration. He howled with despair.
He fucked me as if any second now something would snatch him, kill him, and leave him bleeding in the woods. His hips drove deep, and we both cried out. His cock hit the natural obstruction of my body, bruising both of us.
His forehead furrowed as his speed increased, short stabbing thrusts as he lost himself to his nightmares. He snarled with bitterness. Driven mad with anger, grief, and failure.
He was at a pinnacle.
He was about to fall.
I made the choice to be strong enough to catch him.
Lifting my arms, I cupped his face. I willed heat and gentleness to my fingertips as I spoke from the inner wisdom and power inside me. “Wake up, Kassen Sands. I need you to stop.” My tone wasn’t mocking or mean. It wasn’t cajoling or cruel. It was breathless with tears and broken with kindness.
He froze for a second. His hips still pumped with the primitive instinct to copulate. He trembled. He panted. His eyes were glazed and lost to me.
But I didn’t give in.
I fought for him.
Because no one else ever had.
“Kas...look at me. See me.” I dug my fingers into his scruff, latching my nails into his soul and dragging him back from ghosts and demons.
He blinked.
I whispered, “Please...see me.”
And then, the world imploded.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SOMETHING WASN’T RIGHT.
Something was...wrong.
So very fucking wrong.
But even as my mind tried to understand, my body was too far gone. Too drunk on lust and full of desperate frustration to finish. My hips continued working against my control, chasing that ever-elusive release.
I had to come.
I had to feel happiness.
Didn’t she see?
Couldn’t they give me that tiny shred of joy before they took everything else from me?
“Kas...look at me. See me.” Trembling hands cupped my cheeks, warm and gentle, so different from how others touched me.
I blinked.
“Please...see me,” she murmured, sounding so sweet and so, so far away.
I blinked again.
I slowed.
I tried to see.
And slowly, the black fog lifted.
Snow flurries and blood-soaked carpets vanished, incinerating like pieces of paper chewed up by the fire.
And then, I saw clearly.
And I gagged.
I retched.
I died.
“Oh, fuck! FUCK!” I jack-knifed up and withdrew. I skidded back so fast, I fell on my ass and sent a lance of agony through my broken arm.
That was why I had that contraption around my forearm. Why I was hurting in places that hadn’t been touched in my nightmare. Why I suddenly realized how badly I’d messed up.