by Bethany-Kris
“Yes?” he asked.
She let the truth slip out. “I want Eryx.”
The man nodded once. “He said you would know where to find him.”
How? she wanted to ask. How, when she’d never been in this house?
And yet, she said nothing.
He wasn’t wrong.
All she had to do was listen, like every mate searching for her other half, she only had to wait for him to call.
She finally found him in a room, surrounded by shelves filled with books. A long table separated them, and he stood at the far end. In front of large glass doors that led out to the steps she’d been watching for days. Where the water lapped and the waves raged. Rain slapped the glass and the wind howled.
The storms raged on.
He had to know she stood there, yet he didn’t turn around. If he did, he would see her crazed and broken and willing all of this to be different.
Wishing she had done this differently.
“I have a theory,” he said.
His words were quiet.
They still made an impact.
“About what?” she found herself asking.
“Well, about us.”
TWENTY-ONE
Eryx
“A THEORY?”
Her question came out like a whisper, and yet it still traveled all the way to his spot as though she had shouted it. Eryx had wondered how long she was going to last … when he couldn’t seem to drag the answers he was looking for out of her any other way, he’d defaulted to the last option he’d had. Changing everything.
Here she was.
So had he been wrong?
He would soon find out.
“What theory, Eryx?”
He smiled. His reflection in the wet windows mirrored the expression when the lightning streaked across the blackened sky. Looking up, he was able to see just how thick the rolling storm clouds were and just how much water was dumping down on them. The wind had already ripped several trees from their roots on the property. Word of floods in the surrounding villages had come in yesterday.
Not that there was anything they could do.
The storms would continue.
They would only get worse.
Thing was … Eryx was no longer afraid of them.
“Before we get into that,” he said, finally turning away from the glass doors that were stressed under the pressure of the storms, “I have a question first.”
He found she was still standing at the far end of the room and Gods … what a sight she was. Wrapped in silk, with fire-red curls that sprung out in every direction, and something haunted in her beautiful face.
A treat, really.
It took every ounce of willpower he had to stay right where he was and not cross the room to go to her. Despite how the last while had been meant to force her into coming to him, it hadn’t been particularly easy or kind for him, either. Not that he’d expected it to be, but he certainly hadn’t thought it would be this hard. For one, because he suspected none of this would end the way he wanted it to. And for two, because he was determined to get his answers tonight.
He couldn’t do that if he were fucking her.
However, it simply confirmed things he believed.
Something was different with them.
She would tell him what it was.
“What would happen,” he started, tilting his head toward the doors that led to the stairs currently kissing the sea with every wave that rushed up to touch the marble. “If I opened those doors?”
Arelle’s gaze darted from his to the rain-drenched glass. “The rain and wind would get in, wouldn’t it?”
“And make a mess.” He chuckled. “But that isn’t what I mean. What would you do?”
“I …” Her pretty bow-shaped lips turned down at the edges. “I don’t understand.”
“If I opened these doors, stepped back, and said go … what would happen?”
Her sharp inhale rattled through the room.
The following silence echoed.
At her sides, the shaking hands she balled into small fists hid the truth of her nerves. Not that it mattered because he had already seen them. He wondered if she might lie again … would she make him chase circles that answered nothing and leave him with more questions?
She surprised him.
Shocking.
She was always doing that.
More so than she should.
“I would go home because it’s the only place I know.”
“And?” he pressed.
Her audible swallow had him taking three steps closer to her. He still had quite a way to go to reach her spot, but this gave him room to still breathe.
“And what?”
The sting in her tone had him grinning. A defense of hers, he’d noticed, just happened to be that she got a little nasty. It meant he was hitting a raw nerve and she wanted him to stop. Except he couldn’t—not on this.
“And what would happen after you went home?” he asked.
Arelle’s jaw worked with the words she tried to hold back, but she still spit them out at him, anyway. Like they were dirt she wanted out of her mouth. A truth she wished she could hide. He saw and heard it all.
“I would be forced into a mating with a man who isn’t mine, and who I cannot be mated to. And when the bond didn’t take like they all know it should—”
“They’ll know the truth,” he interrupted, his tone saying calm.
Although how, he didn’t know.
Her chin quivered. “They’ll know it’s already been done. I’ve already mated.”
“When?”
“Eryx—”
“When?”
Arelle glanced away, the anguish saturating her pretty features causing an ache to spread within his chest. Yet, the harsh noise he made that had her stare snapping back to his hid the truth of what he was really feeling.
“You’ll tell me when,” he said. “And you will tell me how.”
“The blood. It mixes. We have to be on the land—it’s always the same way. The struggle between the chosen pair; for some, it’s like a fight—”
“Was it much of a struggle?” he asked.
Her cheeks heated to the prettiest color pink. “Maybe that came after. It wasn’t natural, I think. We didn’t go into that knowing it would happen like others do.”
She had a point.
Eryx only said, “So, keep going. The struggle. And then …?”
“We mix the blood to be one, and then the heat comes.”
He remembered that.
Vividly.
The fire in his chest.
The heat in his cock.
All of it.
“The island,” he murmured.
“I only wanted to help.”
Oh, he certainly believed that.
“Humans can’t mate.”
“You’re not entirely like them,” she said simply.
Not that he needed her to.
He just couldn’t pretend anymore.
Not like his father and the kingdom needed him to.
Nothing would be like it once was.
Not after her.
“And what does it mean, hmm? What does …” His own trembling hands waved between them. “What does this mean now?”
“Don’t you feel it? Don’t you hear—”
“All the time,” he snapped, the invisible pull between them dragging him halfway across the space in a blink. He only needed a few more steps, and he would reach her, but he forced himself to stop. “All the fucking time!”
“That’s what it is. That’s what it means.”
“For how lo—”
“Forever. That’s what mates are.”
He hated that.
Gods.
Something else loved it even more.
The emotions slapped back and forth inside him like a whip cracking over every inch of his soul. She’d done this—she’d bound them. He couldn’t be without this woman, and he constantly t
hought about killing her, too.
What had she done?
Nothing felt right or true.
And yet, nothing felt wrong or false, either.
Another thought drifted through his mind, sharp and cutting. Making his insides clench and sting and bleed as it echoed through his blood.
“You’re mine,” he said quietly.
Arelle tipped her head up slightly, those violet eyes of hers flashing with the storm behind him, and the truth they could no longer escape. “And you’ll always be mine.”
“Mine.”
“Yes.”
“And now, you’ll let me do anything to you, won’t you? Hurt you, take care of you … send you away, or keep you with me. Love you, hate you. Because you’re mine. To do with what I want or not. That’s what this,” he said, a fist hitting against the middle of his chest, “means, doesn’t it?”
“If it’s here, Arelle,” he added, taking those few steps to her slowly and painfully until their noses touched and his fist pushed against the spot over her heart, “then you feel it there. You can’t ignore it either.”
“I can—I have.”
“Before,” he returned.
She didn’t lie.
“Before you caught me.”
“Why?”
He caught her quivering chin between his forefinger and thumb, tipping her head up so their lips hovered over one another’s, and she couldn’t look away when she said, “Because when we make the bond, we speak—it sings. And we’ll hear it forever, too.”
“You didn’t speak that night. You spoke in the stables.”
“I—”
“You did what you did, and then you tried to break it, too.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. The trail it left behind glistened until it stopped at his thumb. He wiped that drop across her warm skin, never once letting her go or breaking their stare.
“Would you do it again?” he found himself asking.
He hadn’t intended to.
“Would it mean saving you?”
Eryx let out a slow, steady stream of air that ached in his chest and rattled on the way out. “Wasn’t that the only reason you did it?”
“Then you have your answer, Eryx. I am who I am, and I cannot change.”
“I hunted you. I only wanted to kill you.”
The smallest of smiles painted her red lips. “But will you? Can you?”
It both infuriated him that she dared to ask that at all and flared his lust into a roaring fire that she seemed to enjoy challenging him. Absolutely nothing was going to quell the rage that lifted hot in his gut or satisfy the ache in his dick that was now so hard it strained against his trousers.
How did she do that?
Enrage him and turn him on all at once?
How?
Eryx’s hand jumped from her jaw to her throat. He squeezed hard enough to draw her right up to her toes, a wicked smile curving her lips at the same time. There was a glint in her eye—a taunting gleam that said you won’t, and he loved and hated that she was unafraid of him like this.
It only infuriated him more and made him hotter.
Damn her. He still tightened his hand on her throat. Willed everything she said to be a fucking lie—tales of crazy people with magic blood that lived in the seas. Hogwash. Bullshit. He wanted it to be nonsense, demanded his hand cut off her air more than he already had and squeeze her neck until the bones popped.
But he just kept staring at her.
She stared back.
He just … couldn’t do it.
As though Arelle could read the thoughts in his mind and feel the desperation in his shaking hand at her throat, she said simply, “I know.”
And since he couldn’t bring himself to kill her like he wanted, Eryx went with his only other option in his current situation. If he couldn’t sedate his need for violence, then he might as well sate the urge to fuck this woman until he felt like he could no longer breathe.
Why waste the entire night, after all?
Arelle didn’t seem at all shocked when Eryx kissed her. She was ready for it—all too willing to part those full lips of hers to give him a taste of what he craved. It took him all but a few long paces before he had her backside hitting the edge of the long table in the center of the room. In a blink, never once breaking the war of their kiss, he had her lifted to the table while she yanked the yards of silk that made up the skirt of her dress up around her waist.
Eryx drew in a hard breath when she widened her thighs, and he finally pulled away from her mouth just long enough to glance down. “Nothing under there again—you know, I think when I do find you’ve put undergarments on, I might cut them right the fuck off. You’ve made it too easy like this.”
“I think you like it.”
“Yes, I think I do, too.”
Her high, already-breathless laughter answered him back before she leaned forward and bit his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. The tangy sweetness that burst across his tongue when he bled, and she sucked his lip into her mouth, had him slamming her down to the table. His hands went between her thighs to spread her wider before his fingers found her soft heat. With nothing more than twisting strokes of three fingers inside her cunt, he had her whining against the table while he pinned her wrists high above her head.
“Yes, there …”
She sounded all broken, now.
Still airless, though.
Her fingers wrapped around the wrist of the hand currently between her thighs, while the other tightened around the edge of the table. Every thin muscle in her neck strained with her hard cry when he told her, “Let it go and give it to me—let me slide into that cunt while you’re soaking wet and it feels like it’s begging me to fill it all up.”
She was beautiful like this.
More perfect than she should be.
Entirely dangerous.
She spent herself by his hands alone—the spasms in her pussy echoing throughout the rest of her body, too. The choked shout of his name had him leaning down close to her, just so he could watch the way her pupils blew wide when she came.
Why did she need to be like this?
“I hate you,” he murmured.
Arelle’s bottom lip trembled when she replied, “You wish you could.”
Fuck.
Fuck her, this, and every other bit of it, too.
There was nothing gentle about the way he ripped down his trousers and freed his cock to his waiting palm. The slickness on his fingers from her pussy smeared to the soft underskin of his erection with the two strokes he managed before he shoved his cock into the tight heat of her cunt.
He wasn’t soft, slow, or anything of the sort. Every flex of his hips came harder. She didn’t even tense when his fingers dug hard enough into her thighs when he widened them again that he left red marks behind.
All she whispered was, “More.”
He gave her that, too.
Arelle strained against the table and his hold when his grip went from her thigh to her throat. Pinned to the table, she still managed to arch into his body when he leaned over her. His next kiss had his blood staining her lips and he felt a dribble slide down his chin.
He hadn’t lied.
He did hate her.
He also adored her like this.
Taking every bit he gave. As wet as the sea. Brazen and wild and begging. Letting him use her to her own end and only asking for more.
This part of her was perfect. It was the rest he struggled to settle.
“Eryx, please—”
Her pussy clenched hard around his cock with his next thrust, and the high cry that cut off her next plea had him groaning thickly. Those pretty eyes of hers rolled back when she came, and her thighs clamped against him to keep him deep. It was just what he needed to send him into a release that had colors bursting behind his clenched lids while her name spilled from his lips in a shuddering breath.
By the time he opened his eyes again, the tremors had passed, but he w
asn’t quite sure he could move. Beneath him, he felt the rise and fall of her chest turn in tandem with his, the longer time passed without either of them speaking.
He waited her out; he didn’t want to speak first.
She didn’t make him wait long.
With her back flat against the table, as still as could be under his hand at her jaw and the one keeping her wrists high above her head, Arelle sighed. “What was your theory?”
Eryx swallowed hard, still searching for the breath that would have to come eventually. “What?”
“When I came to you tonight—you said you had a theory about us. What was it?”
“It was right,” he replied. “The theory, I mean. I was right.”
Arelle tipped her head to the side, those red curls of hers spilling over the edge of the table when her gaze met his. “Do you want to know what would happen if you opened those doors and let me go?”
“You told me what would happen.”
“I lied.”
He wanted to look away.
He didn’t.
“I would come back,” she said, her fingertips running over the flaring gills at the side of his throat. It was only with her that he allowed his neck to be bare. Both a vulnerability and a reminder to others, it was her that he trusted to know. “I have to.”
“Do you still want the sea?”
A nod answered him back. “All the time.”
She looked past him at the large doors leading out to the stairs filled to the very top with the sea. On the offseason, there were a good forty stairs to the bottom. Like this, they could see the sea reaching as high as it would be for the season of storms.
“And yet, you would still come back?” he asked.
Even if he knew the answer …
Arelle smiled. “For as long as you can call for me.”
TWENTY-TWO
Arelle
IN THE TIME that Arelle had been taken from the sea and put in Eryx’s care, there were a few things she had not been allowed to do. One of them was to access any of his private chambers. It hadn’t been permitted in the previous estate, and as he’d made the guards keep her locked in a room, it hadn’t been an option in the House of Miller, either.