He snatches my hand from the back of his head and presses it to his cheek, my calloused palm abrading his jaw, igniting the connection between us. Then, he whispers against my core, his voice ragged and broken, “I won’t hurt you.”
The crash breaks across me, tearing apart my sense of self, every inch of my body coming alive, breaking through a boundary I didn’t even know existed until I’m screaming as wave upon wave of deep pleasure wash through me.
Long, pounding waves.
Tightening my muscles, clamping my core around his fingers, sending my back into an arch while the sharp brush of his bristles scrapes my palm, somehow, the deepest pleasure of all.
I tremble through it all, and even when the waves finally fade, I come back to myself still connected to him, my palm to his face. He slides his fingers gently from my body, slipping his arm around my hips, the sweaty strands of his hair brushing my stomach.
My legs feel boneless. I’m certain I would have crumpled to the floor if it weren’t for his free arm keeping me aloft.
“Thyra.” He speaks my name quietly. One corner of his lips tugs upward. “I didn’t hurt you.”
The inflection at the end of his speech sounds like a question.
Trying to bring my pounding heart under control again, I breathe out my response. “Not at all.”
Quietly, he plants kisses across my lower stomach and, everywhere his lips touch me, the silver material parts anew.
I soak in his gentle touches, accepting the way he works his way upward, nudging his mouth against my stomach and toward my right breast.
He reaches my upper right ribcage and then, suddenly, he becomes still, and the tension returns to his voice. “This is an iron burn.”
My breath catches when his free hand feathers the scar across my upper right rib. Last night, when I pulled off my wet shirt in the bathing room at the cabin, I had covered my breasts with my arm, and I guess, given his height and the angle he was looking down from, he didn’t see my scar until now.
“Yes.”
“How?” The tightness of his voice speaks to his rising anger, and I sweep my hand beneath his chin, bringing his focus up to me.
“It was years ago, and it doesn’t bother me anymore.”
His lips thin. “How?”
“Highborn traders,” I speak quickly now and without reservation. “They’d sometimes come to the coastal villages where we stayed. There were never more than two or three of them at a time, and they didn’t usually cause any trouble, but we were always cautious. One time, when I was twenty years old, three Iron Fae brought sweet liquor to trade.Fights broke out among the villagers. I couldn’t get back to my father fast enough. One of the Iron Fae cornered me and?—”
I gasp as Antony’s arm closes hard around me, but I take comfort from his embrace, enabled to continue speaking past the memory.
“It was dark. He pinned me up against a wall. He made a show of dipping his blade into a pouch filled with iron dust before he cut me with it. The pain was…” I close my eyes. “And he…smiled and…told me…”
I breathe out shakily.
“What did he say?”
I press my lips together. “That he enjoyed my screams and hoped to hear them again someday.”
Antony is like stone, his arm clenched around me, his body straining against the shackle on the wall, as if he wants to whisk me up into his arms and carry me away. To where, I’m not sure.
“Then he let me go and walked away.” I close my eyes, reminding myself that I conquered these memories years ago and I won’t let them dominate me now.
“Where was your father?” Antony demands. “Why didn’t he foresee it?”
I shake my head. “He found me moments later, and we left the village that night. He never understood why his power didn’t warn him.”
Just as he had no warning of his death.
Antony speaks through gritted teeth. “Please tell me you heard this Iron Fae’s name.”
I slip my hand to the back of Antony’s neck, focusing on breathing in and out. “If I knew, I would tell you in a heartbeat.”
