Please, please, please...
I couldn’t breathe.
My head pounded.
My body throbbed.
I was two seconds away from hurling up our meagre breakfast. If I’d killed her now? If I stole the only thing in my life that granted a second’s worth of peace? If I hurt the one person who actually tried to help me?
Christ, I’d do a hell of a lot more than just self-harm.
“Shit, Gemma!” I ducked under the water and swam until my entire body burned. I grabbed the shore and hauled myself up, ignoring my staggers, my injuries, my goddamn concussion and fell to my knees beside her.
I went to shake her, to snap her awake, but at the last second, I froze.
If she was dead...God—
I pulled back, hesitant to discover my worst nightmare. Staying back, I reached shaking fingers, softly, reluctantly.
“Gemma...” I grazed her cheek, dripping wet beside her.
Nothing.
Gritting my teeth, I dropped my unwilling fingers to her throat. Her skin was mottled from my strangulation. I snarled as I waited for her pulse.
Please. Fucking, please!
There.
Thud-thud, thud-thud.
Not faint, not flickering. Strong and bold and the entire embodiment of the brave girl who continued to fight me head on.
I collapsed, giving in to the swirling pain inside my skull.
Thank God.
Just asleep.
She’s just asleep.
Why she hadn’t woken and why she lay so disturbingly still didn’t matter. If she was half as exhausted as I was from the past month of existing together, I could understand her body had finally reached its limit.
I was very familiar with that limit.
I’d reached it multiple times over the years when trying to prepare for winter all by myself. I’d reached it while living at Fables and having to serve for fourteen hours straight. Sleep wasn’t a luxury when you were worked to the bone and terrified to your core. Sleep was a necessity that could only be ignored for so long before it snatched you anyway.
Slowly, my panic receded and I lay on my back, soaking in the sun, grateful for the heat and comfort. Funny, that I’d lay on this embankment a thousand times over the past eleven years, yet this was the first time I’d felt...safe.
Some days, I’d spend all day here, just watching the clouds scatter and letting dozy oblivion keep all my memories locked away. Sometimes, I even found true peace. I could breathe better out here. I could relax instead of staying on my guard inside that prison turned home. Yet, no matter how many birds came to investigate my prone form or wildlife slinked out of the grasses to sniff me after I’d been still for hours on end, I’d never felt so content.
The only difference between this autumn afternoon and all the rest, was her.
Gemma Ashford who slept so silently and still beside me. Whose mind was currently unattainable and her body so bare and blisteringly beautiful. The girl who somehow managed to give me slivers of happiness inside my eternal hell.
I sighed.
My body relaxed.
My cock remained hard, my belly tight with desire. It would’ve been a physical impossibility to lie beside her nakedness and not want her. But in the companionable silence between us, the peace she gave me was infinitely more precious. A peace that was so damn rare. A peace that I’d never tasted before.
It was different to sleeping beside my family in the dormitory.
Different to sleeping on my own.
Sleeping beside her was like being gifted her trust even while I knew I could never earn it. The pressure in my chest increased with something I couldn’t name, followed by black fear that she’d wake and figure out she was still unbound and leave.
As much as my thoughts had softened and I was suffering new emotions I would never confess to her, I was still far too selfish to let her go.
With a groan, I sat up, grabbed the length of chain by her ankle and clipped it to the padlock around my waist. Relief came swift, thanks to the evidence of our joint imprisonment, and sleep came for me too.
Quick and heavy and too hard to ignore.
I closed my eyes as she sighed beside me, nuzzling her cheek into the grass.
* * * * *
Time skipped or I must’ve dozed longer than I thought because when I opened my eyes again, the sun had skated farther across the sky and the clouds that’d danced above us had now vanished, leaving behind a perfect blueness. An endless saturation of soothing horizon.
I stayed lying down, blessedly free of the headaches and the wooziness of my concussion. Slowly, I turned to my side, resting my face on my arm as I watched her sleep.
Her lips were slightly parted, her eyelashes feathering on her cheeks, and dried hair splayed out and blending with the golden grass. She looked so innocent, but at the same time, all I could remember was the way she’d scratched me, attacked me, and fought me back as we’d come together in the storm. I’d imprisoned her to use for sex. Yet somehow, on that hilltop with thunder booming, it hadn’t been sex that’d undone me. It’d been her. The way her legs wrapped around me as I sank inside her. The welcome on her tongue as she kissed me back.
No one—not a single person in my sorry excuse of a life had granted me such acceptance. An embrace that went above just physical gratification and helped erase all the shit that’d been done to me.
I would always be grateful for that, even if she did infuriate me for making my life a thousand times harder.
Her vow that I would never touch her again, never feel that welcome again, suddenly burned through me. My temper sparked as my gaze slid from her lax face to her firm breasts. I got why she never wanted to fuck me again, but it didn’t mean I would permit it. She couldn’t give connection to a desperate man and then revoke it when he’d done something wrong.
It only made him more desperate. More manic. More dangerous.
You can’t deny me, Gemma. I won’t allow you to.
My rage smothered my guilt for hurting her. I’d housed her, fed her, clothed her. The least she could do was open for me.
So...take her then.
My headache returned as my cock swelled and my mind filled with thrusts and slapping skin. My balls tightened and I could already feel the euphoria of climaxing.
But if I took her, she’d hate me. She’d do more than just ignore me for a week, she’d happily stab me in the back to run. And as much as I wasn’t afraid of death, I was afraid of being alone again. What if I was alone in death too? What if I returned to the purgatory I’d endured for the past eleven years—a ghost with nothing and no one?
I shivered.
Cloying fear drowned out my lust, leaving me knotted and frustrated and struggling to get hold of myself—to follow boundaries instead of being a monster.
She continued to sleep beside me, unaware of how close she came to being taken against her permission. I drank her in, unable to tear my eyes off her nudity.
Her nipples were flat and small, her skin turning slightly pink from the sun. The muscles she’d honed from a lifetime of climbing were stark with definition from the weight she’d lost. The darker blond hair between her legs glittered in the light, and for all my willpower of keeping my hands to myself, I couldn’t.
It just wasn’t possible.
I swallowed a groan.
Christ, I want her.
I could use her right here, right now. I could take her and wake her up as my cock sank inside her. I’d make it feel good for her. But...then our fight would begin anew. Our animosity would grow. Our hate would blot out the fledging friendship we could have.