Rune’s deep voice barely made it through my panic, and not even his warmth was holding me there with him. Not even our link...
Oh god, I was going to die. I couldn’t breathe, and my eyes stung as tears filled my vision. It didn’t stop as I was thrown back to barely jogging through the town with my chest and sides on fire. Screams, wails, and death rattles reached my ears as I searched for Hluti and the others as Rune told me to. But I wanted Rune, not the others.
“Rune!” I wailed with a painful wheeze at the end. I stumbled through the wreckage in the direction he carried me after the explosion. I couldn’t let him die from the hellhound. I didn’t want to lose him!
“Come back to me.”Rune’s voice was muffled like I was under water and sinking further down into the depths.
I ran through the destroyed town, screaming for him while the hound’s howls echoed with his shout.
“No, you don’t,”he snarled as something inside me fisted the very essence of who I was and yanked me to break through the surface of my mind torturing me.
ChapterEighteen
Warm lips crushed onto mine, ruthless and demanding as his tongue speared into my mouth. He tasted like strawberries again, with the same hint of the unknown berry. It became my favorite taste, and one I would always associate with Rune now. Every strawberry-flavored anything would make me think of him.
Was that Pavlovian of me?
His fingers tangled through my hair at the scalp, yanking to add a spark of pain that brought me back to him in the present.
My back met something rough and cool as Rune settled between my thighs, never ending the kiss. He shifted as he captured one of my legs, hiking it higher to hook over his waist. It gave him the perfect angle to grind against me and for me to feel everything. Even through the layers of our clothes that prevented him from entering me, I still could feel every groove of his erection against my soaked pussy. He flexed his hips to rock against me, creating delicious friction for both of us.
A whimper escaped me as I buried my fingers into his soft hair. I drew him closer, needing him on a primal level. I needed to know he was really here and wouldn’t let me go. That he wouldn’t allow me to fall into the dark recesses of my mind. Or die again and be stuck in the In-Between like a lost ghost wandering an abandoned house’s hallways.
“Never,” he growled into my mouth. He leaned back to look at me with all-black eyes, curling his lip in a snarl. “I’ll never let you go. You’ll never slip away from me again, Isa. I’ll grab you by your fucking soul again and jerk you back to me. You hear me?”
My lips parted, and my stomach flipped around oddly. He didn’t give me a chance to respond before slamming his mouth against mine in another brutal and angry kiss. If it weren’t for our link, I would’ve thought he was furious at me, but he was livid with himself. Enraged with the world for making me suffer.
Through his mind-drugging kisses and filtered thoughts, he allowed me to hear that he would make them all pay for my every scream and tear I’d shed. He vowed that he’d force them to scream and shed tears as he punched through their chest to fist their heart and shove it down their throat to choke on as they died.
I didn’t know why his confession warmed me, but it did. My heart stuttered over a beat as my stomach did a funny flip. I was one more promise away from jumping his bones. Already I was wet for him.
What was wrong with me?
I was so upset over everyone hurt and dying, but now excited over Rune killing everyone who hurt me.
“Because I care about you and your happiness. Because I give a damn about you and protect you from the world, elskan mín. You know I’d give you anything and will always fight and defend you. I’ll give you the heads of your enemies and anyone who has wronged you.”
He ended the kiss to look me in the eye as he roughly worked my clothes off. He was flawless as he yanked them off. It incited my excitement and lust as he stripped me. When I was undressed and splayed naked beneath him, he looked me up and down with hooded eyes as he removed his armor and clothes. As he tossed them to the side, I noticed we weren’t in the town anymore, but at a tropical pool of water with a beautiful waterfall that created rainbows from the misted spray. The sky was clear of clouds, with a bright sun that was at its highest.
I wasn’t sure how I didn’t hear the waterfall until now, but the thought was gone as Rune slanted his mouth over mine again and palmed my breast, which barely filled his large palm. I whimpered into the kiss, raising my hips to grind against him. My stomach flipped as I rocked my core against his throbbing erection, smearing my arousal on his dick.
He groaned, flexing his hips against mine to slide his erection between my wet folds. His hand glided from my breast to my throat, gripping me with care to not hurt me but firm enough to show he was in control. Bringing his head back, he gazed down at me with dark eyes full of a barely held back animalistic need to pin me down and rut me.
“Do you trust me,elskan mín? Do you know I wouldn’t ever hurt you in a way both of us wouldn’t enjoy?”
His hand around my throat tightened to show what he meant. What he wanted to do. Through our link, I knew exactly what he meant, and he was asking for my permission. For my trust.
Oh god, I loved this man because it might help me. He could encourage me to overcome or start the process of taking back my power from the trauma of what happened in my apartment after our date. It wasn’t just that event but everything that transpired afterward.
With Rune’s roughness and his dedication to pleasing me, he showed me it was okay to surrender to him, that I didn’t have to fear getting hurt. Or that he could even help keep me from being thrown back into my home on the couch withhim, screaming at the sound of a zipper or from certain words.
“Yes. Always,” I whispered.
Slowly, he curved his full lips into a pleased smile. “Good girl. If you need me to stop, tell me out loud or through the link, and I will.”
I briefly caught his thought that he’d listen intently to me through our link to see if I were thrown back into the past. But he was worried he would be so far gone into losing himself into me he wouldn’t notice until I screamed. He wanted to let go and unleash what he was capable of on me, which might scare me but help me. I wanted that, though. I desiredallof him because I knew he’d never hurt me out of spite or hatred.
No... Ineededit and knew deep in my bones it would help me. That was what I told myself anyway, for me to believe it, or else I was doomed to be a tragic wreck for the rest of my life.
