CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“FUCK, I NEED...I NEED—” Kas grunted like a wild beast. “Goddammit, please.”

This couldn’t be happening.

This can’t be happening!

But it was.

It had.

He’s inside me.

He was inside me against my will. His cock driving so deep, so hard, my entire body throbbed with possession.

He rode me as if he was a maniac.

He touched me and fucked me full of delirium that could never be cured.

And for a breathless, atrocious moment, I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. All my belief that I was strong—gone. All my assurances that I was worthy—obliterated.

Every precious, powerful part of me had been snuffed out in a single almost laughable moment of truth.

He was so much bigger, so much stronger, so much more than me.

I’d tried to fight.

I’d tried to wake him.

And it hadn’t taken him any effort whatsoever to pin my flailing limbs, crawl on top of me, and mount with a single thrust.

Oh, God.

He groaned as his hips rocked up, grinding into me.

That one primal motion shoved me back into all the lessons I’d been taught as a girl. I was valuable, I was fierce, I was deserving of protection, kindness, and most of all safety from monsters.

And this was not it.

This man, with his tarnished, broken heart was coated in demons. He was hurting me. Again. He was driving me out of my mind. With every touch.

This was different from sleeping with him on the cliff. Different from any sex I’d ever had. Different because this was not consensual. The power was entirely one-sided. The violence in his thrusts not full of heady desire but panic borne from nightmares.

His cock filled me, leaving no space inside. His body crushed me, leaving no air to breathe.

He was everywhere.

In my body, my mouth, my soul.

With every rut, he carved off another piece of me.

No!

I fought.

I clawed at his back and thrashed side to side. “Get off me!”

But it was too late.

He was on me, in me, devouring me.

Ever since he’d licked me by the river and woken me to his kiss, my body had stayed primed for him. I’d walked back with a secret. I’d been wet. I’d wanted him. I’d stayed wet because living in this house with him, where the walls dripped with mutual lust and the carpets hissed with blinding electricity, I was always ready for him.

Yet another thing against my will.

But I’d never imagined this.

I hated him.

Hated what he’d done and hated my body’s reaction.

I burned with the need to hurt him as much as he was hurting me.

Every thrust twisted me into something violent and full of rage.

I never thought he’d be so trapped in his nightmares that he couldn’t wake, couldn’t see, couldn’t understand just how much he was destroying me.

“Kas, stop!” I moaned as his hips pulled back, then shoved forward, faster and faster, fucking me like an animal on the library floor.

“Shit.” His voice wasn’t his. It was throaty and stony with black memories. “See how it feels?” He licked at my oozing tears, driving deeper and harder into me. “See how it breaks you?”

Sadness crashed over my rage, lashing barbed wire around my throat. In a split second, my emotions switched from violent anger to exhausting grief.

What is happening to me?

Why couldn’t I hold on to my fury toward this man? Why was it impossible to hate, all while he did so many things to justify it?

“It takes everything,” he groaned. “Every piece of you.”

I gasped in time to his aggressive thrusts, driving in, spearing deep, taking every inch of my misery to somehow patch up all of his.

He dropped his forehead to the carpet by my ear, crushing me with his body as he rutted into me like a savage. His voice caught, wavering with sadness, madness, and everything in-between. “You’re different. God, I want you—” He choked and looked up, something dark and dangerous covering his face. His jaw set cruelly. His long hair wild and tangled. “I want you, and I took you. See how fucking agonizing it is not to have a choice?”

And that was the problem. The crux of why I couldn’t hate.

Because I did see.

I saw it every minute of every awful day, and it stopped all my loathing in its tracks because...I finally knew.

He gave me explicit enlightenment on just how much he’d suffered.

How a single act that ought to be drenched in pleasure and togetherness could be used as the worst weapon of all. An act that ought to bring lovers together had been used against him to smash him apart.

That was the honest to God truth. The only reason I struggled so much with what I should feel toward this man and the reality that I’d gone past pity, past empathy, and I’d stepped entirely into his world.

I’d seen where he’d slept as a slave. I’d witnessed a man scream in his sleep. I’d uncovered a boy who’d given his body to monsters in order to protect his family as much as possible.

He’d sacrificed himself for those he loved.

And now, he had nothing left.

I clawed at his back, my heels kicking his ass as he surged again and again into me. “Please!” My tears caught in my barbed-wire-wrapped throat. “Please, stop, please—”

“That’s right. Beg.” He rutted harder. “You said you always love it when I beg. Let’s see if I can learn to like it too.”

His speed increased to outright war.

He punished me for trying. He proved I was an idiot for caring.

But beneath it all, he proved he was unreachable, even for a girl who wanted so, so much to help him.

He kissed my cheek, softness in his viciousness.

And I spaced a bit.

My mind detached.

I didn’t want to be here anymore.

I couldn’t hate, and I couldn’t forgive.

I didn’t know what that made me. Weak or kind? Brave or stupid?

This wasn’t just a physical overtaking. It was emotional too, leaving me stripped bare and questioning everything. Questioning society and laws and the very foundations of humanity.

“You feel special...more,” he grunted. “You feel...” He gasped as if he was the one being tortured. He cried out as if someone hurt him. He jerked above me with a keening cry.

His pain brought me back.

It locked me to him even as he rode me harder.

And my body reacted.

It sparked, it welcomed, it didn’t follow the same rules as my mind. All it knew was it was being claimed by a male who made me feel, who made me wet, who’d crawled into my head, my core, my heart.

And I forbade it from doing such things.

If I allowed a climax to happen, that would open dangerous doors in my mind to what sort of sex I enjoyed—forcing me to admit confessions I wasn’t ready to face.

“This can’t be happening.” I spoke to the books. I implored leather bindings full of fantasy and fiction, seeking a way to save him and myself.

I couldn’t allow myself to find pleasure from this.

Never.

I couldn’t allow him to do this.

Even in his sleep.

I needed magic to cure us. I needed something bigger than both of us.

But the printed words were useless.

It was just us.

Me and him.

Joined in unholy matrimony.

“Kas,” I cried. “Fucking stop!”

He reared up onto his elbows, sinking his hands into my hair, holding me still as he drove into me. His eyes were drenched with grief, with the blackest despair. “I can’t. I can’t stop. I can’t stop until it’s over.” He kissed me as his hips surged upward, sinking every inch inside me, claiming every part of my battered heart, ensuring I knew just how cruelly he’d been tortured, just how much he’d endured.

He’d endured all that he could.

He’d endured until he’d broken.

And this was him, shattered beyond salvation.

His tongue tried to enter my mouth.

I kept my lips tightly closed.

But it didn’t make a damn bit of difference.

He wouldn’t let me say no to him.

Just like no one had let him say no to them.

His cock buried deeper into me, his balls slapping against my ass, his body locking mine against the carpet.

And he kissed me.

Hard.

Vicious.

Dirty and deep, filthy and feral.

His tongue worshiped me even as his body defiled me. He was still in there, chained in the pits of his mind, screaming for someone strong enough to pull him into the light.

Was I strong enough?

Could I be brave enough to forgive, even while this man took away all of my control?

He whimpered into my mouth.

He nipped at me, clung to me, his violence threaded with utmost sorrow.

And this time, it wasn’t my body that reacted. It was my soul.

A wiser being than me. A celestial power that couldn’t be touched by flesh or fornication. A knowing entity that said if I could survive being locked in a valley and chained to a beast, I could survive a shattered man with no one.

He’d shoved me past my hate, and wisdom had evolved me past rage.

I understood him too much to condemn him.

I gave in.

I went limp.

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.