He broke away from her slowly, reluctantly. She gave a soft grunt of discomfort.
He’d been brutal. But he hadn’t missed, even in his drive to completion, that she’d reached her own peak. It hadn’t been last night’s dazzling explosion, but at the height of the tempest, she’d embraced him. He’d made her confront the truth that she could no more deny him than he could deny her.
Her body had opened to his. While she’d kept her mind and heart closed.
He told himself her body was all he wanted.
The declaration sounded laughably hollow. The feverish encounter had b
itten more deeply than the fleeting demands of flesh alone ever could, however much he wished it otherwise.
She took a shuddering breath as he settled at her side. He fought the urge to stroke the damp black hair back from her brow. She wouldn’t welcome his tenderness, he knew with piercing regret.
They lay in tense silence for a long moment. Then, without glancing in his direction, she rose from the tumbled bed, gathering her ruined dress around her.
She looked sad, crushed, used. She looked beautiful and as necessary to him as breathing.
Exhausted as he was, he reached out and caught at her crushed skirts. “Where are you going?”
“To wash,” she said desolately.
“Stay with me.”
“Yes.”
He frowned. Such easy agreement seemed unlikely. “Yes?”
She looked at him fully. Her eyes were flat and lifeless as he’d never seen them before.
He’d summoned passion from her. But at what cost?
“If I run, you’ll only find me. So I will stay.”
“Good.” He let her go, hating himself as she hated him, however tightly she’d clung to him as she’d ridden out her climax.
When she raised her hand to brush back the heavy fall of hair, he noticed a ring of bruises circling one slim wrist.
“I’ve hurt you,” he said, loathing himself even more.
She glanced at the marks without interest. “They’re from last night. They don’t matter.” She turned away, her head bowed under the tumbled mass of hair. “Nothing matters.”
He’d fought like a madman to crush her defiance. Why, now that he’d succeeded, did such grief slice into the heart he denied he possessed?
Chapter 14
Kylemore crawled into the dark hollow in the bushes where he’d always been safe. Outside, the monster rampaged closer and closer, then it began tearing at the protective wall of branches and brambles.
When it found him, it would kill him.
He shrank into the darkness, trying not to breathe. The monster already knew where he was, but maybe in the blackness, he could disappear.
But of course, he couldn’t disappear. The monster reached out its terrifying white hands and twisted them into the front of his torn and soiled shirt.
Kylemore whimpered with horror. Thorns at his back dug at his flesh, preventing escape, even if the impossible happened and the monster let him go. He whimpered again, despising his weakness, despising his stupidity in getting caught.
The monster gave its mad laugh and tugged him forward.
More pain awaited, he knew. The monster would cut him into pieces and feed him to the dogs, just as it had promised so many times before. Before, when he’d managed to escape.