by Erica Woods
I shivered, waited for him to speak, for further chastisement. But instead of yelling at me, he crushed me to his chest, burrowed his nose in my neck, and drew a deep breath.
“Hope, my Hope,” he rasped, desperate hands running over my body in a way that didn’t feel intrusive, but rather like he wanted to assure himself I was okay. It was the kind of touch my soul craved, like a light had been lit and shone upon the damaged, shriveled thing. I could feel it stretching inside me, unfurling like a withered flower touched by the sun for the very first time.
My eyes closed, my head fell back.
How did I survive eighteen years without this?
His hands slowed, then stilled. They were back on my shoulders, two heavy weights that felt no more restrictive than the blanket I wrapped around myself at night.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, wanting to soothe him the way he’d soothed me.
Ruarc leaned back and shook his head. “What you said . . .” His voice deepened, his eyes searched mine. “You mean it?”
With a shaking hand, I reached out and cupped his strong jaw. Short, black hairs scraped against my fingers and tickled my palm. Not stubble, not a beard, either.
Just Ruarc.
“Every word,” I whispered.
Before my touch-drugged brain turned back on, before fear and insecurity burrowed deeper in my heart and forced me to run away, Ruarc moved.
The first taste of his lips was a savage, all consuming experience. He wasn’t gentle. He didn’t hold back or hesitate. His mouth descended on mine with such hunger, such passion my mind emptied of all thoughts but him.
His taste.
His touch.
His scent.
I couldn’t breathe. My heart pounded in my ears.
One of his big hands held my nape, the other pressed against my lower back. They didn’t roam. They didn’t touch beyond their burning borders. They stayed excruciatingly still.
My stomach dipped and rose, bottomed out and flew through the air.
His tongue swept across mine, tasting sweet yet dangerous. Wild yet tender.
Firm lips moved. His hands flexed.
His scent was everywhere. Masculine. Untamed. Predatory. He smelled of forest and horses and man.
He pressed closer. A sound I would never forget rumbled from his chest, a snarled, desperate, hungry sound that made heat erupt someplace low and throbbing.
Ruarc licked and tasted every inch of my mouth until his flavor was branded onto the very essence of my being.
And then he shook. Vibrated, almost. The arms I’d wrapped around his neck moved with the bunching muscles of his shoulders.
Wrenching away, breathing heavily, his eyes burned. “A chuisle,” he murmured, his mouth hovering so close each breath was shared. The hand at my nape moved to my face and his touch gentled until each finger slipping over my cheek felt like silk covered wind. His bright, silver eyes glowed with heat, explored every aspect of my face like he was as desperate to imprint the memory as I was.
When he next bent his head, his kiss was a velvet caress. With aching tenderness, he brushed his lips across mine, the touch elusive and fleeting.
Maddening.
I moaned and he did it again. This time his lips lingered at the corner of my mouth where he pressed a sweet, torturous kiss.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe.
“You okay?” A hoarse whisper. His hands skimmed up the line of my arms where they remained curled around his neck. He loosened my hold, intertwined our fingers and brought one of my hands to his lips. Eyes locked on mine, he kissed the inside of my wrist.
My breath hitched.
I didn’t care if I ever got it back.
Ruarc’s gaze slid across my face, tracking every movement, every twitch and jerk like his life depended on it. Yet still he maintained the distance between us.
It was all I could do to not whimper at the loss. I wanted his lips back on mine. Wanted his taste in my mouth. Wanted that big, muscular body wrapped around mine, all that power, all that heat washing over me until we were indistinguishable from each other.
Instead, I nodded.
Once more his eyes searched my face. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but despite the tension around his mouth, the rapid rise and fall of his broad chest, there was a strange, masculine satisfaction hiding in the press of his lips. “Good.”
Tension curled like an electric whip in my stomach. A whip that cracked down my back and froze every cell in my body when Ruarc began guiding me toward the bed.
My heart simply stopped beating.
I’m not ready for this!
Visions of grotesque acts assaulted my mind, put together by my imagination after all the taunts slung by the Hunters. I didn’t know what went on between a man and a woman when they had sex, but I knew it was done in a bed. Based on the Hunters descriptions it was something I wanted to avoid at all cost.
My feet refused to move, my breathing became shallow.
Ruarc noticed my frozen limbs—how could he not?—and immediately stopped. The gentleness he showed then was something I’d come to depend on around him—a gentleness that stood in stark contrast to his scarred visage and towering frame. He pressed another kiss to my wrist and shored my trust with four simple words; “Let me hold you.”
Ugly thoughts dissolved.
This was Ruarc. He would never hurt me.
“O-okay.” I followed him to the bed. He always moved with such purpose, such determination. Almost as if he was angry about where he was going.
The bed groaned under his weight, and if I hadn’t known better I would’ve thought the slight grimace that overtook his face was embarrassment.
“Bed’s too small,” he muttered, waving me closer.
It was true. The bed that had felt so luxurious to me was dwarfed by the massive man in its middle. Ruarc’s strong back was propped against the headboard, his long, powerful legs reaching almost the full length even though he wasn’t lying down. Broad shoulders took up nearly one third of its width.
“How tall are you?” I blurted, staring at his feet.
His big feet. His big, bare feet.
“Tall.” He plucked me up and settled me between his thighs. Strong arms wrapped around my middle and pulled me against hard-packed muscles and flesh so hot I felt his heat through our clothes.
Ruarc buried his face in the crook of my neck and inhaled. “Mmm.”
His mouth moved up the column of my throat, then . . .
A swift, wet caress, my body flooding with heat.
Did he just . . . Did he just lick me?
My heart beat once, hard and fluttery at the same time, and then it stopped. Not for long, maybe two or three seconds. And when it started again it raced.
“Comfortable?” he asked, a smile in his voice.
“I . . . I think so?” I wiggled my rump to test, felt the hard, pole-like thing pressing against my lower back, and blushed so hard I nearly passed out. “Y-yes.”
Ruarc groaned, a thoroughly male sound, then placed his big palm across my belly and held me still. “Good. Now talk.”
“Talk? W-what do you mean?”
A deep growl worked its way out of his chest. “Need to know. So I can protect you.”
The world stopped spinning.
He wants to know about the Hunters.
An icy web of dread tightened around my lungs. “I-I don’t want . . . I can’t . . .” Anything I revealed would either put him in danger or destroy another piece of my battered soul.
The Hunters.
My monster.
The day I—
My throat closed. Just closed. Small sips of air fought down into lungs that suddenly ached.
I was so damned weak!
Before I could spiral into a full blown panic attack, Ruarc tightened his hold and brought one hand up to my heart. There it lay, pressing, calming, melting the suffocating web of
ice and frost and despair.
Small, comforting sounds brushed past my ears until my breathing evened out. Only then did he relax, pressing a quick kiss behind my ear.
“Tell me . . .” He swallowed hard. “What you are comfortable with.”
The reluctance in those hard-pressed words said it all. He wanted to know everything, wanted to push until my soul lay bare before him and all my secrets spilled out into the open.
But he didn’t.
He let me decide.
And because he did, I was struck by the urge to give. To share. To compromise any way I could. Because that was exactly what he’d done.
“I don’t know where to start,” I whispered.
His hand curled against my chest, the myriad of thin white scars moving with the motion. “Tell me why you are scared.”
I instinctively knew he didn’t mean now. He was asking why I was scared when we were out in public, why I didn’t want to leave their property, why sometimes even leaving the house shot shards of terror up my spine. “B-because . . .” I gathered all my courage, determined to push this one truth out before he asked for a truth I couldn’t give. “They’re . . . still looking for me.”
Stillness behind me. His chest stopped moving. The warm puffs of air that had been tickling the sensitive skin on my neck ceased.
“Ruarc?”
A finger twitched. “How do you know?” A silky whisper, violence hidden in velvet-wrapped words.
“I . . . I just do.”
Don’t ask why, please don’t.
The silent plea was answered. Ruarc tightened his hold on me and growled, a drawn out thunderous sound that rumbled from his chest. “Doesn’t matter.” His arms around me shook with strain. “They come, they die.”
I knew his words were meant to reassure—a part of me even believed him—but I knew the Hunters. Knew what they were capable of. If they did come for me . . .
We’d all die.
Ruarc placed a finger under my chin. Tilted my face sideways. Pinned me in place with a fierce gaze. “No one will hurt you as long as I live.”
My breath caught.
Silver eyes burned. “Hear me?” His chin lowered in a stubborn, male way. “No one.”
What if you don’t live?
The thought was so horrible I had to swallow a sob.
“What else?”
Still reeling from his vow—he couldn’t mean it, I was basically a stranger and definitely not worthy of Ruarc’s life—I peeked up at him and scrunched my nose in confusion.
He tapped the tip, lips twitching. “What else scares you, a chuisle?”
Rather than answer, I jumped on the distraction he’d provided. “What does that mean? You’ve called me that before.”
His eyes bored into mine. “You first.”
“I . . .” I had to tell him. It wasn’t like I could hide my intimate fears from him forever. “Uhm . . . what this means, I guess.” I gestured between us. “And, uhm, sex.” Pretty sure my face was crimson.
I turned away so he wouldn’t see the full extent of my humiliation. There was no way I wanted him to think I was some scared, ignorant, little girl, but if I didn’t tell him the truth he might push for more than I was ready to give.
A fierce snarl ripped through the air, startling me into looking back at him. “Did they . . .” The savage fury twisting his expression was nothing compared to his eyes. The luminous silver seemed to swirl, drawing me in, while a murderous glint misted over his pupils until his expression looked strangely blank. “They rape you?”
A violent shudder rippled through me, and for a moment, Ruarc’s face was a canvas of agony. But as quickly as the volatile emotions emerged, they also retreated, and his face became a blank mask.
Squashed against his chest, strong arms became steel bars. Not a prison but a protective cage. A place of safety. A refuge.
“Don’t have to answer,” he whispered against my hair, a shudder wracking his large, muscular torso. “Doesn’t change anything.” The steely bands around my middle tightened until he blew out a harsh breath. “Either way, they’ll pay.”
His unequivocal support was a balm to my sullied soul. I had not been raped, but I had been violated in other ways, and his rasped confession gave me room to dream, to wish, to hope.
I knew he’d turn away in disgust if he ever learned it all, but in this moment, turning his words over and over in my mind, ‘doesn’t change anything,’ I could pretend he’d see past the horrible things I’d done, the monster that I was, and still have murder in his eyes when thinking I’d been hurt.
“No,” I finally said. I had to clear my throat twice before I could say anything else, but I couldn’t let him believe this. Not when the belief made his hand curl against my stomach, the knuckles white and angry. “Nothing like that. It was just . . . words.”
I didn’t add how damaging the words were, or how, when they’d first started torturing me, I’d waited for that inevitable degradation every day. Each threat, each taunt had made the anticipation slowly chip away at my sense of self until I almost wanted it to happen. Just to have it over with.
Of course, after I’d overheard a Hunter curse the fact that rape wasn’t allowed I’d wept with relief. It was the only time during my captivity I’d felt grateful.
Ruarc seemed to deflate behind me. A ragged sigh slipped past his firm lips, and he moved to rest his chin against the top of my head. “They still die,” he said, but some of the feral rage in his voice had given way to hard relief. Oh, the violence was still there, dripping off each clipped syllable like acid eroding rock, but less. As though maybe instead of torturing my tormentors for ten years, he’d limit himself to a few months.
I almost snorted at the strangeness of my imagination.
“A chuisle is an endearment. Directly translated, it means ‘my pulse.’”
It took me a moment to register the abrupt change. “My pulse?” I repeated, tracing the white line of one of the many faded scars slicing across the back of his hands.
“Yes,” he grumbled. If Ruarc was the kind of person who squirmed, I had a feeling he would be doing so now.
My pulse. It was kind of lovely. And it made me consider things. Like the way his lips had felt against mine, the care he always showed me, and the gentle, protective side so at odds with the rest of his personality.
Butterflies danced in my stomach as I eyed the harsh lines of his face.
At some point I’d stopped seeing the rough, savage features as scary, and begun to simply accept them as a part of Ruarc. A part of the first man who’d ever made me feel safe.
Among other things.
The ragged scar tearing through his flesh had become a mark of strength. The broad nose—broken at some point and never healed right—suited his powerful presence. His square jaw was very attractive and I found it suited his unapologetic, forceful personality. The same with the shadow of scruff he never seemed to be without. And his eyes . . .
I’ve always loved his eyes, I thought as I stared into pools of glowing silver that only reflected acceptance and an emotion I couldn’t quite decipher.
“Are you my boyfriend?” I blurted, immediately clapping both hands to my mouth in horror while my question hung between us like a bloated fly.
What had I just said? Where was my brain-to-mouth filter? Had eighteen years of torturous captivity completely eroded my grasp of normal society?
What’s wrong with you, Hope?
“Yes.” It was a grunt.
My eyes snapped to his, watched the hard press of his lips, the way he tossed his head like he was upset.
“Boyfriend . . .” he grumbled. Another emotion flitted across his face. Disappointment? Regret?
I swallowed hard, trying to squash my growing horror. Did he feel like he had to say yes? Did he feel sorry for me? Pity?
Tentacles wrapped around the undigested food in my stomach and heaved. I . . . I was going to be sick. “It—It’s okay,” I forced out. “You
don’t have to—”
The world spun on its axis, and suddenly I was facing Ruarc. He’d put me on my knees between his legs, one hand wrapped around my upper arm, the other holding my chin and forcing me to meet his gaze.
His glittering, furious gaze.
“Too late,” he snapped. “You’re mine now.”
The possessive grip on my chin didn’t loosen until I jerked my head in a small nod. Then, all he did was glare down at me, as if gauging my sincerity, eyes narrowed and assessing.
Hesitantly, I reached up and placed my hand over his.
He startled. Stared.
Next to his, my skin seemed pale. Luminous, almost. And his hand was more than twice mine in size. So rough. So masculine. So strong and capable and gentle.
Ruarc made a sound, a gruff, growly grunt that tickled at my belly, and then his hold transferred from my chin to the back of my neck. There was a hardness to his features, a sharpness that called to mind a hungry wolf when he pulled me close and rubbed his face against the side of my throat.
“Mine,” he growled, and I felt teeth scrape against my flesh.
Heat erupted in my belly. My skin pebbled. But when he pulled back and stared down at me I smiled despite the strange shivers working through my body.
Ruarc . . . Ruarc wanted me.
It wasn’t about pity or feeling pressured or any number of other weird things that had flown through my mind and spread its creeping doubt. No, he wanted me.
Me!
While I struggled to accept the amazing, astounding fact that this incredible man wanted me as his girlfriend—a damaged, fragile creature who jumped at loud sounds and was terrified of leaving the house—Ruarc’s jaw jutted out as though he was preparing for a fight.
“I want names,” he growled.
“Names?” It took me a second to realize what he was asking, and when I did, it was like having eaten a bowl of candy only to be told the candy had been made from worms. “B-but . . . you said I only had to tell you what I was c-comfortable with.”
Ruarc’s expression closed, brows smoothing out from the tense ‘V’ they had been molded into and some of the intensity in his gaze blanketing. With a jerk of his chin he let me know I was right.