Echo (Black Lotus #2)(58)

I feel numb when I tell him this, caging off the emotions I fear. The horror splayed across his face is hard to look at, so I keep my head down, but he picks it up. Moving closer to me, with his hands on my cheeks, he angles me to look up at him. My jaw is locked tight while I continue to hold myself together.

“Why?” he scolds harshly as he holds me in his hands. “Why didn’t you tell someone? Why did you let that happen to you?”

His words rankle my nerves, but instead of blowing up at him in a rage, I narrow my eyes, and seethe, “You don’t know shit. You had a home, you had a family, you were safe. So don’t you dare sit here and question my actions. You don’t know fear like I do. I may be f*cked in the head, but one thing I do know for sure . . . I didn’t let those things happen to me. What happened wasn’t my fault, so f*ck you for blaming me.”

I jerk away from him and stand up, but he’s quick when he meets my moves and grabs my arm. He pulls me back to him, and when I try yanking out from his hold, he tightens his grip.

“Let go of me!” I yell, but he says nothing as I struggle my arm free. I don’t wait another second and start walking down the hill away from him. I don’t expect anyone to understand my childhood, but to think a little girl would allow someone to debase her like I was is f*cking crazy.

“I’m sorry,” his voice hollers down to me, but I keep walking. “Elizabeth, stop!”

I do. I instantly stop the moment I hear his voice break. When I turn to look up at him through the trees, I exhaust in a softer tone, “I was just a little kid.”

With hurried steps, he makes his way down, and when he’s standing before me, he says, “I’m sorry. My words came out wrong. I’m just angry.” He grabs on to me. “I’m so f*cking angry when you tell me these things. I feel helpless.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to take it away from you. Because somewhere inside my hate for you, a part of me still cares.”

Staring up at him, I know better than to leech on to the goodness and hope of what he just said, so I ask, “Which one is it? Do you care more than you hate?”

I watch the tension strain through his eyes, and a moment passes before he answers, “No.”

His honesty burns and sinks down inside of me. I question why I’m even here if he hates me so much. I feel like a game to him, but I don’t even know what he’s gaining from playing with me like this.

Shrugging out of his hold, I take a couple steps back from him before demanding, “Take me back to Isla’s.”

“No.”

“It wasn’t a question, Declan. I’m leaving,” I tell him and then turn my back and rush towards the house, fuming mad.

I move quickly, doing my best to avoid ice patches, when I hear his heavy footsteps behind me. Looking over my shoulder, he’s moving fast, but I’m too angry to face him right now, so I pick up my pace and start running from him.

“Elizabeth, stop!” he shouts from behind me, but I don’t, and with each of my strides, my armor cracks.

His words just reminded me how alone I am in this world. Foolish of me to think maybe he wanted me here for the sake of wanting to be near me.

When I finally reach the house, I make my way around the back, but he catches me. His hand locks around my elbow, and when I stumble over my feet, he swings me around to face him and loops his arm around my waist. I cry out when he picks me up, lifting me off the ground.

In a flash, he has my back pressed against the side of the house, his body pinning me to the stone. With him flush against me, both of us panting heavily, I don’t fight him as emotions overflow between us.

He doesn’t speak, and neither do I, and before I know it, without thinking, my arms wrap around his neck. Our eyes are locked, never straying. He rests his forehead against mine, and my heart beats uncontrollably when he moves his hands to my pants. With our heads pressed together, staring into each other’s eyes that reveal the unfamiliar emotions we’re both experiencing, his cold fingers press against my stomach as he unzips my pants. He shoves them down, and I fumble, kicking off my rain boot, and working my one leg out of my pants as he unhooks his slacks.

The foggy vapors from our heavy breaths swim between our mouths, and suddenly, his hands wrap behind my knees, lifting me up. I lock my ankles around him, and the instant I feel the heat of his cock against me, a couple tears escape and fall down my cheeks.

He grips himself in his hand and presses into my folds, wetting his dick as he runs his burning tip through the slick warmth of my *. My arms cling tightly around him when he barely pushes the head of himself inside, teasing me, tugging at my opening. Clenching my thighs around him, a few more tears fall when he finally pushes himself inside of me.

I moan in carnal heat when he buries himself in my body. My heart leaps at the connection that soothes all the friction away. I’m finally pacified and free. I revel in knowing he has the antidote to clean the rot in me. I’m like the angel of martyrdom and he’s the bezoar that purifies.

“Tell me you’re not leaving,” he says on a heavy voice that edges on violence, and I yield to him, saying, “I won’t leave,” because I’d do just about anything for him in this moment to keep his touch.

And with my words, he takes my mouth in a savage kiss as he begins f*cking me with powerful, deep strokes. His eyes blacken in primal lust as he takes me, driving me back against the wall with each of his urgent thrusts. The sounds of my moans mixed with his heady pants fill the air around us.