119
“Are you certain you will not regret this?”
Varkas asked, his voice drawn tight and strained.
Fearing that the slightest hesitation would drive him away, Talia nodded at once.
He stared into her eyes for a long moment, as if trying to pierce through her, before finally gathering her waist in one arm and rising. Talia instinctively gripped the fabric of his clothes.
With a succession of sharp snaps, two gold buttons clinging precariously to his chest broke free and rolled across the floor. While her eyes reflexively traced them, her back met the yielding surface of the bed.
Talia looked up at him, her gaze clouded with dread. Having lowered her onto the mattress, Varkas stripped off his parted tunic and tossed it aside. The flickering light licked greedily across his bare chest and shoulders, carved as smooth as marble.
For an instant, her heart struck a frantic, violent tempo.
Talia hastily averted her eyes. Varkas took her cheeks in both palms, lifting her head to force her gaze back to his.
“It is not too late. If you command me to leave, I will go quietly.”
The question shredded what little remained of her pride.
Talia forced resolve into her reddened eyes and glared back at him.
“My mind has not changed.”
So please, stop asking.
As she swallowed the plea in her throat, his hand drifted down her neck. Talia went rigid at the contact.
Keeping his cool gaze fixed on her face as though weighing her, Varkas traced her clammy skin down to the top button at her bodice. He lingered there, as if giving her one last chance to turn away, before slowly easing the loop free.
The gown parted, exposing the soft swell of her chest.
His blue eyes, shadowed and sunken, rested heavily upon her. It felt as though her heart might tear through her ribs at any moment.
Biting her lip in shame, Talia caught his wrist as his hand moved toward the second button.
“The lights… put them all out.”
He did not move, merely looking down at her. Talia raised her voice against the stare that seemed to lay bare her withered, cowering soul.
“Did you not hear me?”
Only then did Varkas straighten and walk the room, pinching out the candles one by one.
As deep shadows fell, his silhouette blurred into the gloom. Yet it was not dark enough to suit her.
She jerked her chin toward the hearth.
“That too.”
The man, having observed her in silence, stepped to the fireplace and dropped the iron screen into place.
Dense, absolute blackness swallowed the chamber. Talia drew a shuddering breath, her voice muffled and strained.
“Now… come here.”
No sound followed.
Straining her dilated eyes into the void, Talia felt her lips tremble piteously.
“Varkas… Where are you?”
The prolonged silence choked the air from her chest.
Had he turned his back on her and walked away?
Just as despair clawed at her throat and stole her breath, the bed sank beneath a sudden weight.
Glimpsing his outline, Talia reached out desperately.
She had no strength left to guard her dignity. She wound her arms around his corded neck, drinking in his scent like air. She needed proof that she had not been abandoned in the dark—that he was here with her.
“Hold me. Now.”
When the worst of the panic subsided, she managed to whisper the words against his ear. The man, rigid as stone, gently pressed her down against the bed.
Talia looked up with trembling eyes into the dark shape hovering above her. A hand, searingly hot, brushed against her chilled skin.
As she flinched, startled by fingers gathering the front of her gown, her skirts were drawn up past her waist.
Realizing his intent to undress her, Talia gasped in near-hysteria.
“No! Do not take it off!”
The dark shape above her went completely still.
Talia seized his wrist, her voice urgent. “Just leave the dress on.”
“…Are you telling me to take you like this?”
His low, raspy voice brushed her ear.
Talia choked back the sob rising in her throat.
“It does not matter. I only… I want it like this.”
She could not bear his touch without the armor of her heavy skirts around her.
Swallowing everything else she might have said, she pulled his shoulders down with all her might. After a brief hesitation, Varkas exhaled a rough breath and shifted over her.
A wet tongue pressed between her lips. As she mechanically took in the kiss, parting for him until it nearly bruised the back of her throat, his searing breath filled her lungs.
It felt like breathing fire. Dizzied by the heat, she clung closer to his neck, only to feel a broad palm wedge its way between her thighs.
Talia parted her knees in haste, terrified his skin might graze her legs. His long, calloused fingers pressed against her most tender flesh. In an instant, a sharp jolt of revulsion crawled up her spine.
Talia broke the kiss, gasping, and shook her head weakly.
“I do not want that. Don't.”
“If I do not prepare you, you will tear.”
The quiet murmur brushed her ear, soothing yet relentless.
Talia shook her head all the harder.
“It does not matter. Just do it.”
“…Not until you are ready.”
Murmuring low against her temple, Varkas began to move his hand with deliberate care.
Her stomach twisted as her nails dug into his stone-hard shoulders. Cold sweat broke across her skin, prickling every pore.
The shame of having him touch the most sordid part of her was suffocating. She had never wanted him to know such ugliness even existed on her body.
Shivering, Talia lost all patience and urged him in a harsh, broken whisper.
“Enough. It is fine now… just do it.”
“Not yet.”
“I do not want… to wait anymore. Quickly, do it now.”
A moment more and she felt she would lose her mind. Before she could voice the thought, the hard muscle beneath her hands locked taut.
The dull scrape of a belt buckle reached her ears, and then his waist pressed flush against her thighs. Talia strung every tendon tight as a bow.
A heavy, unyielding weight bore down at her core. She tried instinctively to pull back, but the pressure only drove inward with greater force.
A crushing ache bloomed through her lower abdomen, parting her lips in silence. No cry came. Like a landed fish, she could only draw shallow, soundless gasps, rolling his name silently over her tongue.
Varkas. Varkas. Varkas.
Like a drowning soul clutching at reeds, she repeated it without end while he drove deeper.
A ragged sob tore through her lips at the searing ache, as if she were being split in two. At the sound, Varkas halted his thrust.
In the dimness her eyes had adjusted to, his face came into faint view, drawn tight as though enduring something agonizing.
At that sight, a pain far heavier than any bodily wound crushed her chest. The sight of him bearing this act like a penance hurt a hundred times more than the invasion of her body.
Talia bit her lower lip, smothering the cries caught in her throat.
Please, do not look at me like that.
Do not wear such an awful face.
As she swallowed the unspoken words, the man looking down at her with hollow eyes began to draw back.
Sensing him pull away, Talia seized his back in desperation.
“No. Do not stop now.”
There was no cause to feel wretched. No cause to suffer. She was merely using him for her own ends.
Reciting the thought like a charm, Talia swallowed the pain and tilted her hips up to meet him.
As the union deepened once more, their sweat-slicked flesh pressed together without a gap. The faint sound of grinding teeth reached her, followed by a blunt, unrelenting cadence.
Talia endured each heavy thrust with everything she had. Her belly burned, as though she were holding a brand of white-hot iron within her.
It felt impossible that a man who was always as cold as ice could burn this hot.
Clinging to his solid, damp frame through ragged breaths, Talia blindly dragged her nails down the taut cord of his back.
Her vision swam with the dizzying acceleration of his pace.
Tossed and battered like a shattered skiff in a tempest, she lost all track of time until the brutal rhythm finally came to its end.
END