Silver Lining

by Skye Warren

  I’ve been trapped in this cell with the prince instead. A stranger.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Elijah

  She’s pushing me.

  Holly doesn’t lay back down. She tips her head back and glares at the ceiling.

  That’s good.

  Because I can’t let her see. I can’t let her see how close they are to the surface—my guilt, my shame. The violence that sits at my core. It wouldn’t take much to bring them out into the open. It never has taken much, and they’re like monsters now. They chew at the marrow of my bones and threaten to burst out of my flesh.

  Her breathing is uneven now, hitched and angry. How could I not react to her? It’s been abject misery, tending to her without having her. The misery is almost powerful enough to override the aching lust at the core of me. Goddamn it, I want her. I want so much from her that I can’t have. Too much from her. I’ve taken too much already.

  I let my hands ball into fists and release them.

  I don’t want to hurt Holly.

  I can’t hurt her.

  She’s already injured. She was shot trying to save me from an inevitable fate. Does she realize how much this eats at me? By the end of all this, I’ll be nothing but a flayed heart. I’d rather take a hundred bullets than mar her smooth skin.

  Memory intrudes, shouldering its way past weakened defenses. In that apartment I wasn’t a man anymore. I wasn’t a soldier.

  I was a child, three years old, watching my mother die in front of my eyes. I couldn’t save her then. I can’t save Holly now. The bullet wound might be healing but the threat that looms outside these walls can’t be stopped. It can’t ever be stopped.

  Holly shifts closer to the edge of the cot, and my hands come up. Force of habit. I stop myself from touching her at the last moment as she eases herself onto the floor. “Don’t do this.”

  “Don’t do what?” Her legs tremble with the effort of standing, and there’s high color in her cheeks, pain she tries to hide, but it’s so clear. It’s sketched all over her brown eyes like lightning across a dark sky. “Don’t move? Don’t talk? Don’t be a person?”

  “Don’t hurt yourself.” It’s not often that I feel even an echo of desperation. I learned not to feel that a long time ago. But I feel it now, like a distant wave.

  “You’re hurting me,” she whispers, and my heart clenches. Stops. Starts again.

  I don’t know how to tell her that we won’t survive.

  The right combination of words will never come. We’re sinking, drowning, and I’m going to smile and nod and reassure her all the way to the goddamn ocean floor. I’m not going to tell her that we’ll probably die. “I never said I knew how to love.”

  Her eyes flash, surprise in the lift of her eyebrows. “You love me?”

  “Why the fuck do you think I’m pushing you away?” This hurts more than the guilt and the shame. It’s an awful, tearing truth and it feels like sandpaper leaving my lips. It feels like fire in the lungs and steel through my gut.

  “I thought it might be the other thing.” Both corners of her mouth turn down, vulnerability flickering through her expression and disappearing.

  “Hate?” Every muscle reaches for her. Longs for her. My palms ache. “Yes, I think I hate you too. For making me want you. For making me weak. And most of all, I hate you for putting yourself in danger.”

  Holly takes a quick step forward, too fast, and the hate detonates into fear. I grab for her without thinking and pull her between my legs. She gasps.

  “That hurt.” She steadies herself with her small hands on my shoulders, and I’ll be damned, I’ll be fucked. She sounds wondering. Relieved. Not like I’ve just done the unthinkable and kicked her when she was down. “Finally.”

  “Finally? Finally?” I’m so pissed at her, so righteously enraged, that I do the only thing I can think to do and wrestle her into a kiss. Damn her for being so reckless. Damn me for putting her in a scrap of cloth that’s barely a bra so I can see her peaked nipples pushing up the fabric. Damn us both to another circle of hell.

  Holly kisses me back hard, groaning into my mouth. I have to be killing her.

  I stand her up again, trying to push her away, but she digs her nails into the backs of my hands. “No,” she says. “No.” Then she reaches for me again.

  “I’m hurting you.”

  “Yes.” She follows this with a bite and I bite her back, then soothe the bite with my tongue. It’s been torture, not kissing her. Not taking her mouth. Not taking her. I’ve taught her plenty of lessons about the way she should behave, the way she should not fucking push me, and she hasn’t learned a single one.

  With the taste of her on my lips my restraint shatters. It’s been weak for days. Weak since I brought her down to this crypt knowing that we were never coming out alive. I have felt every second pass us by. All of them. Ticking down to the moment when death takes us and wishing I could do this to pass the time.

  I sink my teeth into the flesh of her shoulder and this time the noise she makes is so dirty, so filthy, that I do it again just to hear it. “The fuck is wrong with you?” I murmur into her skin.

  “You’re what’s wrong with me.” She rakes her nails under the collar of my shirt. Four bright lines against my skin. I hope she scars me. I hope I never stop feeling her touch, not until I draw my last breath. “Hate me even more, sweetheart. Make me feel it.”

  “I hate you so fucking much.”

  “More than that.” I try to catch her by the wrist but she’s determined to get to my pants.

  Which she does.

  To my belt and my zipper, and then she’s fumbling with the waistband.

  Damn us both.

  I help her.

  I help her because I don’t want her to move any more than she has to. At least that’s the excuse I give myself. There’s no good reason to be pulling out my erect cock when she’s injured. It’s a dangerous game with open wounds. Get too carried away and they’ll reopen.

  If she’s not careful, she’ll do real damage, and all the time I’ve spent keeping her in that goddamn bed will have been for nothing.

  The truth is I help her because I want her too much to stop. I need her too much.

  If this is the end, and it is, then I’m not shuffling off the goddamn mortal coil without having her one more time. I’m already so hard it hurts when Holly swirls one finger around my tip.

  This should be slow and gentle. I should hold my breath and try not to touch her. She should be ready to tap out when it gets to be too much, and it will get to be too much. Sex is always too much when you’re recovering from a bullet wound.

  I can’t love her that way.

  Not now.

  Not ever.

  Holly’s eyes light up when I pin her wrist in a firm grip and guide her closer. “Don’t fuck around,” I warn her. “Not unless you want to suffer the consequences.”

  She bites at her lip. “I do want that. I thought it was obvious.”

  Fine. Never mind the bullet wound, never mind fucking anything. An animal surge of adrenaline and need pulls my muscles tight. I’m dying of the need to fuck. Worse than that. To rut.

  I’m an animal right now, and Holly doesn’t mind.

  She sighs with what sounds like relief when I shove down her pants. Her panties. I kick them as far away from us as I can get them, and then I pull her into my lap. Spread her thighs wide. And notch the tip of me to the core of her, where she is very, very wet.

  Goddamn it, she’s slick and hot and tight, and the minute I touch her there, I’m lost.

  I fuck into her like she’s not hurt. Like we’re in those woods in France. Like the worst of everything is still ahead of us. Holly sinks down onto me with a hiss, hands braced tight on my shoulders, and I would take a thousand bullets to keep feeling the sweet grip of her pussy every minute for the rest of my goddamn life.

  If I feel it another second now, this will be over.

  I won’t have that.

  It’
s torture to lift her off me and onto the cot. It feels like hell. Holly protests, fighting me when I shove the pillow under her head and fighting me when I push her down on the bed.

  It takes a lick between her legs to settle her down. To shock her into some semblance of submission. It’s not enough for me, fuck, it will never be enough, but a long lick makes her shiver and clench.

  She digs her fists into the sheets and rocks her hips up to my face.

  It’s twisted, how hot it makes her to be fucked rough. It’s twisted and it makes her dangerous to me and more dangerous to herself.

  And it doesn’t matter anymore.

  We’re a runaway train and we won’t survive the crash, but I’ll die with the taste of her on my tongue.

  Holly calls me a bastard when I tease her hole. She calls me worse when I find her clit and worry at it with my teeth. She keeps saying something, over and over again, her voice so breathy and senseless that I don’t know what the hell she means until she gets a grip on the words:

  Why did you stop, why did you stop?

  Stop what?

  Stop fucking her.

  I told her I don’t know how to love her, but the truth is that I do. I know exactly what she wants. I shouldn’t give it to her. For a man like me, wrestling with the brutal morality of this is an exercise in shame and lust. Jesus, who wants to hurt a woman the way I want to hurt Holly? What kind of man would want that?

  The kind of man I am.

  I want it so much that my skin feels too tight. I want it so much that I’m devouring her for the sole purpose of making it last longer for me. She’s right. I am a bastard. An asshole. The devil himself.

  I lift myself up to kiss one of her hip bones. Once I’m there I bite her too. “I’ll hurt you,” I tell the bite mark. “I’ll take it too far. You need to rest. You need—”

  Her fingers twist in my hair. Holly shouldn’t have the strength to bring me up over her but she does. “If you say that I need to rest one more time—”

  “What, you’ll run away? You won’t get far.”

  “I’ll die,” she promises, and a strange light in her eyes tells me it’s true. Maybe the truest thing she’s ever said. Her hips buck up into the air, fucking into empty air.

  It has to be killing her.

  And here she is, telling me that she’ll die without my dick.

  A desperate joy bursts like a firework in my chest. She wants me. She wants me so much she can’t stop her hips from moving. She can’t stop her hands from digging into my shirt. She is still, even now, making small noises in the back of her throat that tear down every bit of my reserve.

  There’s none left.

  It’s gone.

  “I’ll die without this,” she says again, and I believe her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Holly

  I don’t think Elijah knows how hard his fist is punching into the flimsy cot.

  He doesn’t know, he can’t know, what he looks like right now—like all of him is barely contained in his body. I’m witnessing a one-man brawl. I caused a one-man brawl.

  I needed it.

  Still do.

  He doesn’t know what he looks like but I know what I must look like. Needy. Wild with it. Hungry for all the dirty things that you’re not supposed to want out of a man.

  I admit it. I am needy. I need for him to look this way, with his glittering eyes and gritted teeth. I need for him to see me as a woman and not some wounded creature to be pitied and tended and soothed. Not some pathetic person to be spoken to with extreme patience at all times.

  I need him to fuck me.

  More. Again. Despite everything. If I’m going to be trapped forever in a medieval basement with Elijah then I want something out of it, damn it, I want him.

  My last painkillers are wearing off. They burn away into a clarity that reminds me of a sunrise over water. It paints everything in vivid colors and sharp detail.

  His eyes. His hands. The hitched rise and fall of his breath.

  Elijah’s standing there in a tangle of pants, so hard his cock is leaking at the tip, and he finally looks like he’s supposed to.

  Like he’ll ruin me all over again. I’m the one with a fist in his hair but he’s the one with all the power. He could take himself away from me right now, and I believe what I said—if he doesn’t fuck me, I’ll die. Maybe I’ll die anyway. That’s the way the world works, isn’t it? Sometimes you get kidnapped outside an airport.

  Sometimes you get shot. Sometimes you do the shooting.

  Every day you wake up and roll the dice.

  His green eyes narrow. Something flashes through them, bright like gunfire, and he curses under his breath. I see the moment his self-control dissolves. It’s the same moment his muscles bunch and he leans down to drag his teeth along my naked collarbone. It’s a different kind of pain, sexy and glancing, and it makes me arch up toward him again.

  This time Elijah doesn’t deny me.

  The cot is low, low enough for him to spread my legs with his big hands. He looks down between them to where I’m completely exposed. His eyes are a match, and I’m kindling. I’m ready to burn into a massive flame.

  I need more.

  Elijah takes himself in his fist and gives himself two absent strokes, jaw working. A flash of fear caresses the back of my neck. He really could hurt me.

  He was honest about that.

  A vicious fucking might actually damage me beyond repair.

  But I’m already damaged beyond repair by him. I can’t go back to the life I had before—not really. The last six months are proof. All those colorless days in my apartment and with my agent and doing all the mundane things from my mundane life tumble through my mind while I grit through this final wait. A lifetime of ordinary boredom when I could be doing this.

  I can’t take it, I can’t take it—

  The words are on my tongue when Elijah thrusts into me, all at once.

  It’s pure pain and pure pleasure, meeting each other like opposite storm fronts. He means to shield me from the worst of him like this, he tries his best, but it’s not enough—this isn’t enough. Not for him, and not for me. Three deep thrusts and he’s crawling up over me, onto the cot, fucking so hard it takes the air from my lungs.

  It hurts. It hurts bad enough that I moan in agony.

  It’s perfect.

  Every time his hips meet mine there’s an answering jolt of pain in the wound. The pain is nothing compared to how good it feels to be taken. Elijah’s body is all tension and take. Mine is all give. This is how it’s supposed to be, this, this, this.

  Pleasure coils tight at the place he’s using me now. He lets his head fall forward, his face in my neck. Lips on my skin. If he hadn’t already stolen my breath with his body I’d lose it now. Every shallow tug on my lungs is supercharged with him. On fire with him.

  I want him to burn me alive.

  Being burned by him, being fucked and used and taken by him, is a thousand times better than lying here waiting for the pain to pass. Who does that?

  Who just lays down and lets things happen to them?

  Not me.

  I didn’t do it when I got kidnapped. I didn’t do it when London found me. I don’t know what I was thinking, trying to fit myself back into my old life when I’ll never fit there again. The only place I fit is here, with Elijah, no matter how many times he tells me I won’t.

  His body tenses over mine and for a moment I think he’s going to come, fast and hard, then leave me here, wanting, needing.

  He lifts a hand. His fingers circle my throat. And a burst of energy knocks me back into my body. The painkillers tried to displace me but they failed. Like everything else, they failed. I lock my hands around his wrist and his eyes fly open, a low growl escaping him.

  “Are you trying to stop me? You should try to stop me, goddamn it. Fight me off.”

  I’m on the forest floor again, tired and beaten and back in France. The ghosts of his hands on my wrists press into bo
ne. “Say please.”

  His eyes widen, the green flaring bright. “You want me to beg you to stop me?”

  He has to remember the way he said this to me that day in France. I know he does from the tick of his pulse in his jaw and the way his pupils blow out.

  “Yes.”

  He kisses me hard, vicious, almost a bite. Still fucking. As animal as I’ve ever seen him. It came to this because of me. I wanted the beast, and I got him. “Stop me.”

  “That’s not begging.”

  Elijah gives me three more hard thrusts and then we’re moving. He’s in control the way he is always in control. I hold my breath, bracing for tearing pain. It doesn’t come. Somehow, he’s maneuvered my injured self and his broken heart onto the cot so I’m on top.

  I’m on top.

  I splay my hands flat out on his chest.

  It should be impossible, riding him like this, completely impossible. My core isn’t strong enough. I’m dying, I’m dying. But I’m dying because it feels so good. Because Elijah hasn’t let up. He’s braced his hands on my hips, holding me up so the full pressure of my body isn’t on the wound. It’s all on him. On the thick length that’s stretching me from the inside.

  “Say please,” I tell him again, even though I’m the one close to begging, a shudder running up from my core all the way to the top of my head. I clench around him and he hisses.

  “Stop me. Make me stop hurting you. Now.”

  “How am I supposed to stop you?”

  “You have to.” From this vantage point he’s so handsome. He’s still so powerful, even lying underneath me. It hasn’t diminished his strength at all. “You have to. I’ll be the death of you. I’ll tear you apart. I’ll hurt your wound. I’ll fucking kill you.”

  I lean forward for more contact on my clit and get it. I’m swollen, oversensitive from wanting him and not having him. This new tug is an electric pressure that borders on sweet pain. “You’re already the death of me. I’m not the same anymore. Ever since I met you, I’m not the same.”

  He lets go of my hips and lets me sink down onto him, his palms traveling up and up and up until his fingers are tangled in my hair. “Fuck, oh God, Holly, I—”