His fisted my hips up off the mattress to jam that much closer and I fell desperately into an ignorance of self-awareness and the shelter his heavy weight offered.
Dominion.
I surrendered.
Hateful, shameful surrender. He petted my face, brushing the soft hairs at my neck away from the grab hold he’d had. He knew what it cost me, because he received the commerce. He became larger with it, the testosterone gobbling up my despair, his body imparting protection from all else even as it was paired with imprisonment. I’d never seen him so large.
He drove in again. And I fought to scrabble back. To escape him and the bond that grappled at me. A deep growl vibrated, not a sound but something from his chest, something I’d never heard before and it halted my escape. We were both changed with my leaving.
I’d felt terror before. Not mine. But mine now proved harder to hide from. Harder to push away. I tripped away from it now, cotton wool filling my mouth.
He licked up the column of my throat sampling the heightened hormonal lure, contented at my recognition of fear as if in praise.
I hated that praise and was glad to remember the hate, to squash the panic. Everything always a lesson with him. I was flawed, didn’t I know? Why wouldn't I work harder to recognise my own feelings, separate them from the world?
The world never mattered to Carne. Thought it shouldn't matter to me. I turned my face away. We couldn’t grow and this would only hurt us.
Bond us, he disagreed. Gripping my chin, brutish face intimidating.
This will tear us apart. You hurt me, and you wont fix that. Ever. Not with this.
He looked through me. A cold depth plundering his hot rage and controlling his emotions so easily. A glow in his eyes promised retribution and the coding up his side flared, a 3D brand lifting toward me.
He believed he could fix it. His resolve goaded me to modify my rationale. Willingly pushing it upon me, trying to make it mine. Craving, he pushed that too.
He was now irredeemable. I never thought he’d put me under the same strain I banked against everyday. I had to define who I was. So close to him it was proving impossible.
He heard me. Disliked my initiative.
It was short lived. Under him, pinned, my thighs forced wide, too wide to even lay the flat of my feet upon the mattress to push away, he taunted me slowly. Grinding back inside my body, his girth catching, abrading, stretching and finding a spiritual cohesion as I grit my teeth and turned the pain into a pleasure, into anticipation of hurting him in return.
His selfish advance perversely aroused me. Taking him into me without preparation thrust at the boundary between love, lust and hate. I had my jaw locked to keep from inching towards the sweat coalescing along his enticing muscles, closer with every push. That he was a angry was no secret. He suffocated me with it, but the craving caught me, loosened my fight.
I found myself suckling, biting at the top of his pectoral muscle, trying to reach his throat, to tear into it with blunt teeth but he was too large to move anywhere I wanted.
He kept me.
I remembered a time when it made me feel cherished.
The desire was consuming no matter how empty of real affection, how wet my thighs became. It consumed and glutted until our bodies were mangled together in clinging sweat and thickening pheromones that lied to him about my rejection. I was now the one on a precipice. Toeing a line. One he was determined to throw me over.
His rhythm transformed savagely and my core cramped around him, loyal and greedy. My pelvic bone punished as I helped to mash myself more violently to meet his trusts. I couldn’t reach my climax. No matter my fight. He kept it from me. Took his pleasure and doled out ownership.
I knew what he wanted. He let his massive body do all the talking and the language was clear.
I held back. Not ready to give in. So he kept his pace. Using great strength to force what I wouldn't give willingly. My hips bruised deeply from his fingers when he dug in further, lifting my hips high above my chest, bowing my body up, dragging my ribbed channel over his length all the way to the tip and off.
My thigh reach his angry mouth. He closed his jaw and punctured my muscle. It didn’t hurt. It seared me deliciously as the venom entered. My eyes big, his fierce, ready to use any weapon available to him.
I was delirious when he lifted me higher. His tongue was pillowed by my swollen folds when it swept up, teasing either side of my centre. I trembled. He smiled into my body hungrily.
“Tell me,” he demanded, deliberately halting at my entrance. I throbbed. Almost imagining the moment he’d bend back down to drink from me.
I was my own person. I’d not lose myself here in this miasma of bio-energy that promised complete bliss and unity.
I shook my head slowly. Waged war.
He kissed the top of my mound softly in retaliation, brushing the tip of my clit with electricity.
“Oh,” I sunk back down, squeezing my eyes shut against the colour.
Then he devoured me.
So deep. I tried to close my thighs, scared at the ferocity but my muscles strained as the orgasm tore up towards me.
He dropped my hips. Pushed them down hard. Throbbing, pulsing, empty, I stole my mind back.
I tried to crawl away, half writhing, when I saw his face, glistening with moisture. Raw tangible masculine greed.
He tugged me back, blind to my inclination for escape.
He covered me.
Reverence blossomed, trippled along my skin. Every instinct I owned told me to lift my chin. Give him my vulnerable places; beg him.
Yessss, he encouraged my treasonous thoughts.
My entire body shivered with the fight, my core burning up, grasping at air begging me to do anything, say anything just to have any part of him enter me again.
The fight was too great. I wavered.
Then fell.
Tentatively and so warily, prickling with expectancy, I bared my throat.
Tendons tightened. Ashamed anew at the lengths I’d go to for relief. I promised myself I’d never again offer myself so weakly, so pathetically, but it was probably an untruth.
I waited. My pulse thundering. The anticipation now clawing me. I wanted to punch him again for making me wait now that I’d given it all.
I thought he’d smirk but no, this was something Carne took seriously. He was as devoted to my surrender as heathens were to an illegal religion.
His thumb pressed tortuously against the bundles of nerves that betrayed me with its wanton display. He grabbed me closer. Gratified and thanking me for the gift. His sharpened canines scraped close then punctured and connected us, anchored me.
I moaned like a whore. Sold myself for something I worried only He could give me. Relief. Total and complete relief from the emotions, my own flaws, the people on this broken planet and the obligations that tied me down.
Chapter Twenty
Curled over, I stared blankly at the wall. Carne slid the sheet over my shoulder and ran a conciliatory hand down my side. The warmth burrowed under my skin in a trail of unwanted allegiance. He rolled to his back and I imagined his biceps bulged as he rested his head upon his hands.
“How long have you been gone Delilah?”
“Two weeks,” I lasted two fucking weeks.
“I cant believe they let you leave, I at least expected Spartan to-”
“To do what?” I growled. Of course he expected Spartan to stop me. How long had they been in cohorts with the conspiracy to keep little Delilah from the big bad world?
“If you haven’t noticed I’m a grown woman and I’m entitled to a life where I’m not tethered to my tower dungeon, Carne.”
“That’s not why you left and we both know it. When will you stop bottling everything up until it explodes? That’s probably what happened today. I felt that surge D and it had me on my arse it was so violent. It was more than a panic attack wasn’t it?”
“You want me to rant and rave all the time instead?”
I asked with my doll like blankness.
He sighed deeply and simply took his answer.
I would not feel guilt,not for keeping the telekinesis secret, and I would not wait on another re-cooked argument about isolating myself from him; how fucking dreary. Not to mention contrary. How he could lecture me about exposing and allowing my own emotions free reign without truly relating? It left me exasperated. I’d let my feelings to the surface when he did toward others; Never.
We’ll see, he crooned.
My sister’s butchered face floated in my mind’s eye as if the emotion called the very spark that caught and lit my telekinesis.
There was an inevitability to my descent, a premeditation from her face back to a funnel of memories plunging rapidly to a juncture in our lives I’d never processed. The only way to hide was in plain sight, behind actual memories, the harshest ones.
“You came back different after you went away, when we were younger,” I said as I planned my escape. Disguising my intentions with the very real sorrow of the beginning of the end.
“I know.”
“You don’t have to be so calm inside and out all the time Carne, so black and white.”
“It has saved you. From yourself sometimes. It saves you now.”
Telekinetic energy was maturing, using his anchor for a strength it hadn't had available until now. I coaxed it to take what it could now. Not wait. Deceit was unnatural to me but with my sister abducted and the Variant holding her an unpredictable entity, I didn’t need a saviour. She did.
“I don’t need saving Carne I need trust and a life with no leash,” I whispered.
“I try D.”
“Sure you do, except if it opposes your life’s purpose or Onyxeal’s plans... or fucking life in general.
“That’s not true,” he stated calmly, always so calmly, as if I was still five and had no idea how the world worked. As if I had been born solely to be his responsibility, his curse to bear.
“You were never a curse Delilah, a responsibility I resented at one time but even then I always kept the bond tight, to reassure, to remind you you were not alone. I was gone for four years and unlike you, I made sure you knew exactly where I was. I came home for holidays to strengthen your mind and hone your reflexes; to make you strong.”
“You’re such a saint, Carne.”
“Not any more.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He’d said that as if we’d been at child’s play this whole time.
“I wont let you go Delilah, so don’t even think it.” I felt glass shards bore into my back with his glare.
Emotions began to leak toward me, and from me.
“I understand your need to find yourself, but you don’t need to be alone in the search for your family. I will drop everything to help you find your twin.”
And he would. He’d abandon all work, his team and he’d help me. Even though his help would not equate to my own idea on aid, it still compressed my petty selfishness. It was so tempting sometimes to let him take me over. He made ceasing to exist as a separate entity seem so logical. The invitation was entrenched and forever open, like a crevasse in the earth, ever ready to swallow the unwary.
But to merge would steal my identity, imprison me.
“You’ll never understand, Carne.” I strengthened my resolve. “You’ve never been without family. There is a yearning pit in my soul, a loneliness you cannot fill. What if my sister feels the same? You could have cheated us both from a real family simply for selfishness sake and now she may be beyond ever knowing it.
I should have left years ago. I was a coward not to.
“I have kept you from nothing. You are angry Delilah. Can you recognise it as your own?”
“None of it is yours?” I derided, disgusted by the merger still locking me to him.
His constant dissemination forced me to justify myself. “Am I not entitled to anger? Infidelity wouldn’t have been worse! You’re more like Spartan than you’d ever admit. At least Spartan is so fucked up I wouldn’t expect any coherent reason for betrayal.”
“Your perception is skewed Delilah, to identify that sort of disloyalty with my actions -” he began, almost bewildered at my accusation.
I murmured to myself in realisation. “Still, I desperately took the drip feed he offered on her and I hate myself for it.” Shame bit me and torched my cheeks.
“Stars damn it Delilah. Don’t you dare feel ashamed for the inevitable in life - no one thinks less of you because you’ve stayed with me, because you left, because you take information where you can get it. I am your family! I didn’t know about your sister until you did. That gnawing betrayal you feel here,” he suddenly grabbed me, easily lifting me astride his naked chest to press a big hand to the pit of my heart, “is unwarranted. This beats for me! Cant you hear? Your family, your life, is with me. I understand you in a way no one can. You might catch me sometimes with some bizarre urges -” he smirked, encouraging me to recall acting out someone else’s absurd emotion.
I would not be moved.
I jerked in his hold but it had no effect. I looked down upon him, saw a face I recognised better than my own.
He contrived to make me feel safe, coveted, free. I couldn’t tell the difference between his sincerity or indifference because he dolled out only the emotion he believed would best suit his current agenda.
I couldn’t escape.
Defying the bond exhausted me. I wouldn't grow stronger any time soon even if the Tk had a chance to level… This wouldn’t get get easier - leaving again. Escaping Carne and Onyxeal once more seemed an unattainable objective.
I was more than corporeally held. He anticipated any move I contemplated. His shrewd intelligence ran its own corporation and I was the profit margin. Unless I was prepared to throw a death knell when he least expected it I would never win, nor could we move forward.
“Stop imagining my death, Deli.” He accused lightly.
I let my grip soften on his hard pectorals, just like I let the anger go from my fingertips as I evened my breath and showed him the blankness I strived for so he wouldn’t look any deeper. His concentration was palpable, his one true function kept me in his sights.
“Creature of habit,” I shrugged. We were similar creatures.
“You might not have known about my twin, but just like Spartan you wouldn’t have told me about her unless it became a bargaining chip. Tell me differently,” I begged him.
“I wont argue that; you’re probably right,” he agreed solemnly, lifting me upright by my underarms like a limp kitten with his monstrous hands. There was no rush of victory at his at agreement as he loosened his hold and let me fall to his chest.
He’d seen the defeat creep into me.
“You’re not ready for this.”
I almost sobbed as he petted me, running his calluses down the curve of my spine and back up again.
“The onset of telekinesis proves the stress has created an inharmonious balance. You’ll come home and rest, or you can join my team, pair up with Ella and I promise we’ll find this sister as we trail the GMT.”
My lashes crested against my cheeks as he brushed my hair away from my face with one hand.
“No,” I stated determinedly, eyes becoming hard. “You and Onyxeal will have the GMT as top priority. I know Ven. I even understand why it requires prioritisation but mine lie differently.”
“She needs me. I’ll put family first,” I softened and deflated trying to imagine what a family of my own would look like. Then, I saw her misshapen and broken face again.
I screwed up my own face.
My thoughts conjured the atrocities she could be enduring right now and there were many more depravities than could be inflicted by simple physical means and I had no doubt the man holding her was capable of them. I lifted and looked Carne full in the face, braver than I felt.
“Now, thank you for the new bed but get out of it and plimba ursu!”
I slipped from the mountain like
snow as he stood and let a chuckle slip past his seriousness. “I thought you’d forgotten those sorts of slurs.”
The sheet slid lovingly down his ripped abdominal, half hard cock and massive thighs, brushed in masculine trails of hair.
“I’m not going anywhere right now, Delilah, even you don’t really want that. We’ll be home by the end of the week. Resign yourself. Now, I’ll make you dinner.”
“You can make whatever you can from the kitchen,” I said smugly as I pulled the sheet up protectively as I rolled like a crocodilian. I just had to wait him out. He had no intention of allowing me on his team no matter his proclamations. He’d have a cache of logical reasons to stymie my involvement.
“I had food delivered. Driver-less lock box. Your favourite it is then: Porridge,” he called from down the hall.
“You’re such a bastard,” I gagged at the thought of porridge and put the sheet over my head.
“Just leave,” I pleaded very seriously now.
He stopped mid hallway and turned to march back. So the full effect of his deep voice, it rolled into me. “No more. Never again will I offer space, Delilah. Never again will I allow you anonymity. As a child our bond was ignored, as teenagers I bit my tongue as you allowed others to believe us siblings. As adults I’ve left you sequestered from one side of my life entirely. No more. No more privacy, no more solitude.” I could feel the air cut as he swiped his strength through it angrily.
“You think I don’t know you’ve been a hairsbreadth away from splintering with the effort it takes to hide from the world if I’m not anchoring you?” the bear said, close now.
He bent low to kiss my forehead through the flimsy barrier. I wiped off his kiss despite the fact it never touched me, though his promise touched me with cold fingers.
Variant: A Sci-Fi Romance (Variant Trilogy Book 1) Page 13