The Annihilator (Dark Verse #5)(33)

“Say my name,” he ordered her, and she suddenly blinked.
“I don’t know your name.” It was so ridiculous after everything they'd been through.
His hands paused on her words, their gazes locked as she held her breath.
“Dainn.”
Dainn. Dainn Blackthorne.
She knew his name.
She remembered something he had told her once. “That’s the name you got in the orphanage you were in?”
She could tell he was pleased that she remembered.
“Yes.” His hand began to move again. “The old caretaker named me after death, so I gave it to him.”
An exhale left her. Dainn. Death. Fitting too.
“Dainn.”
A low sound, almost a growl, left him. The reaction sent a thrill down her body, merging with the heat, heightening it to another degree.
“Dainn,” she said again, her voice breathy, remembering the effect he said her voice had on him. Boosted with a sudden sense of power, she spread her legs a bit wider. “Can you taste me on your tongue, Dainn?”
His breaths got choppier, his hand almost pulling his cock angrily now, veins in his neck beginning to bulge. Never, she had never seen a man more powerful and more wild at the same time, and the sight of him like this, knowing she was getting sides of him he didn’t show everyone, made her headier.
A gush of wetness left her, all her senses aroused and teased to a pinnacle. She gripped the counter at her side to keep her hands in place, knowing he would stop if she touched herself. She couldn’t bear it, not for too long. She hadn’t felt pleasure in so long. “Dainn, please.”
Within seconds, with another low sound, he came, strings of his cum washed in the shower and going down the drain. She watched it all, wanting to touch her own breasts, to push two fingers inside herself so badly she shook with it, the wet spot on her shorts getting wetter.
Moments later, once he caught his breath, his eyes flashed open and found hers. Like a jungle cat, sleek and deadly, he took a towel and wrapped it around his waist, coming toward her.
“Do you want me to touch you?”
She nodded vigorously.
The dark slash of a smirk came again. “I won’t touch you, and you won’t touch yourself either. Let it simmer.”
What the fuck? She was going to explode.
“Trust me still?” he asked, his gaze piercing.
She recalled the question he had asked her before when she’d been drugged, a word that had tied them together since the day they’d met. She paused, thinking about it. Did she trust him still? Yes and no.
Her silence answered him enough.
His gaze intensified. “Good enough for now. You know where I’ve been the last few days?”
She shook her head, her arms trembling with the need wracking her body. His arms came to rest beside hers on the counter, caging her in without touching her.
“I found one of the three.”
Her heart stopped.
She knew, immediately knew, what he was talking about. One of the three men who had abused her.
Her arousal began to simmer down at the memories.
One of his hands gripped her jaw, rooting her to the present. "I ended him.” His nose found her nose, brushing it once in a gesture so soft she wanted him to do it again immediately. “I cut his hands off—” his nose went down her neck “—then his tongue—” down her breasts, his breath on her rigid nipples “—then his little dick.”
All parts that had touched her.
She looked at the back of his head, his wet dark hair, and felt her throat tighten. Something blossomed inside her, unfurled, slowly, tentatively, terrified of being hurt again, being abandoned again, but still finding hope. Fucking hope.
“Was it the bald man or one of the other two?” she asked, her voice breaking, and saw him pull back.
His eyes locked with hers. “The one who had the camera.”
Her body shivered with the mixed messages her brain was sending to it, oscillating between arousal and grief and rage and pain and arousal again as his words slowly penetrated her mind.
“You saw it,” she whispered, horrified, humiliated.
He stepped between her legs, his hand tilting her jaw and his thumb tracing her mouth in a move she recognized instinctively as his.
“Every. Single. Second.” His thumb pillowed her lower lip, his eyes intense on hers, his body pressed against hers, everything about him fierce and powerful and so dark she wanted it all for herself. “You didn’t go through any of that alone.”
Somehow, knowing he had seen it, that he had experienced it with her made her feel a little less lost. Knowing he had seen her be used and discarded, and knowing he still wanted her, it made something in her chest go tight in a way her heart bloomed. He had seen her at her worst, witnessed as they broke her, found her in the jaws of death, and somehow, he’d still found her worth saving. Even after all of it, he had brought her to his house and given her a safe space to heal.
Something in her fragmented heart softened.
They looked at each other for a long, quiet moment.
"I'm yours." It was sinking in, truly sinking in, how much his she was. A man didn't witness what he did everyday for her for no reason. He might not feel emotions as he said, but there was something solid, tangible, unbreakable between them, and they both knew it.
His nose brushed hers again. "All mine."
She could pinpoint the moment the course of her life changed six years ago. And sitting there on the countertop, six years later with the same man, with little slivers of secrets and silence, she knew the course of her life was changing again.


Chapter fifteenLyla