The sound of her screams when I nearly topple out of my SUV almost have me falling to my knees on the gravel driveway. We broke every traffic law known to man getting here, and I felt like a little piece of my already black soul wilted and died with every agonizing minute that passed.
I just needed to get to her.
That’s all I knew when I discovered she’d been taken to the cabin, and that’s still all I know now as I sprint toward the open front door. I’m so focused on the gut-wrenching sounds of her terrified screams that I barely register that the guard kneeling over the mangled body of Bogdan announces that the Russian psychopath is still breathing. Good. I have plans for him and he doesn’t get to die on me yet. I promised his father that he’d get to say goodbye to his son too, and I’m a man of my word.
If her screams weren’t currently wreaking havoc on my insides, I might be able to feel a sliver of relief knowing she had the foresight to bring Cerberus with her, but right now, I’m incapable of feeling anything but sickening dread.
Ignoring the disaster that’s become of my sanctuary away from the city, I sprint through the house. I reach the hallway leading to the basement door as her cries go quiet and another piece of my very being withers away.
No!
Due to the frenzied speed in which I fly down the wood staircase, it’s beyond my knowledge how I make it down without eating shit.
The relief I was hoping to obtain once I had her in my sights doesn’t come when I find her on the concrete floor. No, my terror only grows until it steals my very ability to fucking breathe.
Pinned beneath her slumped-over, half-naked and exsanguinated brother, is my hysterical wife. I don’t know how many years it will take for the visual currently being seared into my brain to not cause pain, but I know it won’t be anytime soon.
Tiernan, pale and unmoving, traps Rionach to the ground with his dead weight. In her blood-soaked hand is a dagger-like neck of a broken liquor bottle. From the open gashes on Tiernan’s mutilated jugular and torso, she’s plunged her makeshift weapon into him numerous times and she shows no signs of stopping. Weakly, she raises the glass to stab it into his side again.
“You’re a monster,” she chokes out, but her breathless words are barely audible from where I stand. “A monster. I’m your little sister. Why would you do this… why would you do this to me?”
The tip of the green glass barely penetrates Tiernan’s flesh this time.
She doesn’t have anything left. Her brother took everything out of her.
“Princess,” I call to her and silently beg that she’s hearing me. “I’m here, baby. I’m here.”
Taking Tiernan under his arms, I lift the dense weight of his lifeless body from Rionach and drag him across the room away from her. The only thing that stops me from absolutely losing my shit is the fact that his dick is still tucked into his pants. She stopped him before he could get that far.
Freed from his grasp, she doesn’t move, and she’s in the same position when I return to her side.
In the puddle of her brother’s blood, I fall to my knees beside her. The way her dark floral-print dress is hiked up around her waist and her lace panties are askew have my vision momentarily turning red. The guilt eats away at me because I wasn’t here. I promised I would protect her and keep her safe, but I wasn’t here when she needed me.
All because of fucking Igor and Niall and the trap they’d orchestrated for me in the city. They’d laid the bait and like a dumbass, I’d almost walked directly into it. If it weren’t for the helping hand I’d received from an unexpected source, I wouldn’t be here for her now.
Tiernan’s death by Rionach’s hand was brutal and bloody, but I’m pissed he’s already gone. I wanted to make him suffer for longer than he got. I wanted to draw it out for days until he begged to be released, and more importantly, I wanted both Niall and Tiernan to watch each other die.
I take her blood-splattered face between my hands and peer down at her. Those precious gem-like eyes stare back but they’re unfocused. Unseeing.
“Baby, please talk to me,” my plea is nothing more than a broken whisper. I feel broken seeing her in this state. Something irreparable is cracking inside of my chest as we speak. “Are you hurt? There’s too much blood, princess, I can’t tell if any of it is yours. You have to tell me if you’re hurt.”
Almost trancelike, Rionach’s hand lets go of the broken glass and reaches for me. My heart stutters beneath my sternum when she trails a featherlight touch down the side of my face. She transfers sticky blood onto temple and cheekbone, but I don’t give a fuck. The only thing I care about is that she’s here and she’s breathing.
I don’t pray because I’m almost positive if there is a god, he had forsaken me a long time ago for my vast and colorful sins, but when I learned she’d been removed from our home and brought here to them, I prayed I would get to her in time.
I prayed, I pleaded, and I bargained.
“You’re alive.” her bottom lip, also splattered in blood, wobbles.
And then she breaks.
Before my very eyes, my strong, living, breathing, wildfire of a wife crumples in front of me. Her body heaves and violently shakes as tears pour from her beautiful eyes. The sound that comes out of her, a heartbreaking wail, nearly tears me in half and permanently engraves itself in my mind. For twenty years, my nightmares have consisted almost exclusively of Igor Koslov and the hellhole he kept me in, but I already know her wail will be accompanying the demons from my past in my dreams.
I take hold of her in a grasp that is nowhere near gentle enough for my liking. The desperation I feel to have her pressed to my chest, to have her heartbeat pound against mine, overrides my desire to be tender with her.
In the next breath, I have her off the ground and in my lap. Her legs and arms snake around my torso and neck like vises as she buries her tear-soaked face in my shoulder. The combination of her sobs and the adrenaline shooting through her veins has her entire body uncontrollably trembling.
All I can do is hold her tightly and breathe her in.
“I’m here, princess,” I murmur into her ear after pressing my lips to her wild hair. “I’m here and I’ve got you. Nothing else is going to happen to you. Ever. I can fucking promise you that, Rionach. You’re safe.”
Her only acknowledgment that she’s heard what I’ve said is her arms tightening around me and her face burrowing deeper.
“You’re safe and you’re mine. You have been since I saw you standing on the roof during New Year’s Eve.” I’ve been waiting to tell her the truth, and I can’t think of a better time than now to do it. When it can possibly help pull her back from the darkness she’s been forcibly thrust into. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you looked surrounded by all those fireworks? Seeing you up there, so free—so alive—it did something to me. It changed me. I’ve never wanted something or someone more than when I saw you. I’m a selfish bastard, I know, but I can’t bring myself to regret making you mine. I’ve never believed in something as trivial as fate, but, princess, you are the other half of my twisted soul.”
The unyielding hold she has on my neck loosens as she pulls back. Tears still fill her eyes and leave streaks through the blood staining her cheeks, but her sobs have slowly started to settle. For the first time since I’ve found her, the bleary expression in her green gaze is clear. She’s here with me and she’s hearing what I’m saying. Thank fuck.
“I knew I craved you that night on the roof. I knew I wanted you when you walked down the aisle to me. And I knew I needed you when I told you about the ghosts from my past that still haunt me, and without hesitation, you told me you’d help keep them at bay.” As gently as I can, I pull the strands of her dark red hair out of the dried blood on her face and tuck them behind her ears. “I need you in a way I’ve never needed another person, Rionach. I’m unable and unwilling to go through this life without you because you’ve broken and altered me in ways that can’t be undone. What happened today will never happen again—it can’t happen again—because I don’t think I will survive it. I won’t survive it because on top of everything else, you’ve done the impossible and managed to make me fall in love with you.”
More tears form in her eyes but this time they’re for a different reason. Wordlessly, she threads her fingers through my hair and drops her forehead against mine. She holds me to her as if she’s trying to commit the sensation to memory. Peace settles over me like a warm balm to my shredded, dark soul.
“Say it again,” she whispers as her nose skims down mine.
I hold her fiercely against me so she understands the gravity and the truth of what I’m telling her. “I love you, Rionach Banes.”
Her breath catches in her throat. “No one has ever told me that.”
My mother wasn’t around for long, but she made sure that I heard her tell me she loved me every single day. This additional reminder of how Rionach’s parents failed her only makes my hatred and bloodlust for them grow deeper. “I’ll tell you every day, princess.’
Fingers still in my hair, she pulls my face to hers and presses her mouth to mine. It’s a messy and desperate kind of kiss, but it’s exactly what both of us need. She clings to me and opens her mouth obediently when my tongue trails along the seam of her perfect plump lips. I lick into her mouth and savor the taste of her.
Within a minute, she breathlessly pulls and removes the black jacket that had already been halfway off her shoulders. Past the point of caring, she discards it behind her in the puddle of crimson red. Her thin fingers taking hold of the fabric of her dress next have my fingers locking around her wrists and stopping her.
“Rio—”
“Please,” she pleads. “I need to feel your touch instead of his. His hands… I can still feel them on me. Please, Emeric, touch me and wash him away.”
How could I possibly deny her this? Or anything? She has me so wrapped around her little finger that I would bring her the moon if she asked.
With her hands free once more, she pulls the floral dress over the top of her head and tosses it on top of her jacket. She rises up onto her knees to remove her panties, and I shake my head. I’ve never felt particularly bad for destroying her lacy undergarments but with this pair, I truly couldn’t give a single shit as I rip the thin material at her hips. After Tiernan forcibly tried to remove this thong from her body, I had no intentions of allowing her to keep it. Destroying it now ensures this.
With her body free of clothing, her red-stained fingers grip the material of my white dress shirt and pops each of the buttons with one unforgiving yank. Her warm hands are on my chest within seconds. They trace soft lines until she reaches the trail of hair below my navel.
Rionach wastes no time attacking the zipper and button of my slacks and taking my stiffening cock out. Her deft fingers stroke me until I’m throbbing and the slit at the head has a pearl of precum forming. Green eyes that are still red around the edges lock with mine as she swipes the droplet up with her thumb before sinking the digit into her mouth.
The way she hums in contentment almost has me grabbing her hips and bringing her down onto my pulsating length. It goes against my nature to do so, but Rionach is in complete control here. She’s calling the shots and this one time, I’m her willing servant. She can use me any way she needs to if it helps eliminate some of the tangible tendrils of fear still circulating within her.
Taking hold of the thick base of my cock, she rises back onto her knees and runs the weeping crown through her slick pussy lips. Her movements are slow and border on torturous, but still, I continue to grant her full control. I’m unable to stop the heady groan that slips through my lips when she presses the head of my dick against her warm, beckoning entrance.
Fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips, I drop my forehead against her bare shoulder and fight the urge to thrust upward to meet her halfway as she slowly starts to sink down. The tight and quivering muscles of her pussy envelop me and welcome me inside inch by glorious inch until she is fully seated on my shaft.
Taking hold of my face, she forces me to look at her again. Her pale skin is streaked with her brother’s blood and her eyes are swollen from crying, but she’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve seen.
“I need to see your face,” she says softly. “I need to see your face so I know that it’s you fucking me.”
Inky black and violent wrath surges within me. “It’ll only ever be me fucking you, princess. No one else. Do you hear what I’m saying? You are mine and mine alone. Your body, heart, and soul belong to me, just as mine belong to you. As long as I’m breathing, no one else will ever touch you or this pussy again, and even in death, I will find a way to escape the underworld and eviscerate the poor sap who dares to try and touch what is mine.”
Excruciatingly slowly, she lifts almost completely up, leaving only the overly sensitive and pulsing crown buried inside. Her lips part in a silent gasp when she rocks her hips down and welcomes all of me back into her wet heat.
“I hear what you’re saying,” she answers just mere millimeters from my lips. “I hear you and I feel you.” Against my mouth, she quickly adds, “Only you,” before she kisses me again.
On the blood-soaked concrete floor of my cellar, my wife rides my cock until my touch is the only one she remembers.
