Page 74 of Eldritch
Be a man, his head chided.What man wouldn’t enjoy a woman’s hands on him?
Except, he hadn’t asked for those hands to touch him. They’d touched him without permission—against his will. Then they’dlaid him across silk and fine fabrics, as if that would erase what they’d done. That was what troubled him most. No matter how he tried to justify what’d happened, the truth lingered like a thick, black sludge at the back of his throat.
He was glad it was dark when he’d finally woken. That everyone had fallen asleep. Darkness was easier. Safer.
He forced himself to breathe, even if every breath was wrought with the lingering pain of what he refused to face.
I’m not a victim, he assured himself. Almost believing that. “I wanted this,” he said into the universe, the tears in his eyes betraying his words. “I deserve this.”
I deserve this.
He covered his eyes with his palm, forcing himself to remain silent when a sob punched at his chest to be set free.
Be a man.
Don’t break.
He clenched his jaw, choking back the urge to do just that.
It was in that silence that he felt the warmth across his palm, and when he pulled it away from his face, a scar remained, outlined in faint, almost imperceptible lines across his calloused skin. Nothing he would’ve noticed himself, until he ran his thumb over them and felt the fine ridges of the glyph he’d memorized in Caligorya.
It was real.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ZEVANDER
Present…
Lying rigid on his side, Zevander stared toward the window across the room, beyond which the dim rays of dawn highlighted the silhouette of distant trees.
He hadn’t slept a wink.
Sometime in the night, he’d heard a whisper, spoken in a scathing voice that took him back to the days when closing his eyes had merely shuttered out the horrors around him. The words reverberated in his head, and Zevander gnashed his teeth, screwing his eyes shut, as though refusing to look would quiet her.
“You were born to suffer,” General Loyce whispered again, and Zevander breathed hard through his nose, as tendrils of frost curled around his ribs, growing tighter with each breath.
Think of Maevyth. Moon witch.
Behind him, she let out a long, untroubled sigh and shifted, her skin brushing his back. It’d been a few nights since he’d previously shared a bed with Maevyth, but still a bit rattled byAleysia’s awakening, she’d asked him to lay with her until she’d fallen asleep.
Just as he’d dozed off, that wretched voice had torn through his head like rusted blades left in a field of neglected memories. A stretch of his youth he wished he could carve out of his mind.
He’d lain awake ever since.
He forced his thoughts back to the moments earlier in the evening and that kiss and the touch of her hands. Like fresh air in his lungs. Contentment, if something so ruined as his heart could feel such a thing. He recalled Maevyth sprawled out on the table, her trousers yanked to her knees. Her fingers in his hair and toes curled into his thighs.
How desperately he wanted to slip backward in time.
Warm breath brushed over the nape of his neck, her quiet snores telling him she was still lost in dreams.
He envied how easily she trusted. How she could lay beside him, so vulnerable while deep in sleep. At his mercy.
Fantasies of burying his face between her thighs and bringing her to climax had him leaning closer to the edge of the bed, as if that small bit of distance between them would cool his desires. He dug his fingers into the mattress, clenching his jaw.
Cold rain. Spilling guts. Elowen’s stew.
He forced himself to imagine something else. Something that might stem the rush of blood to his cock. Because as much as he longed to hear those soft moans and his name spilling from her lips, he wouldn’t take from her without permission. Even if the mere touch of her hands would settle his restlessness, would drag him out of his head and give him a moment of peace before they ventured out, he refused to take from her.
