Page 96 of Manacled Hearts

“God damn it, Evelyn! How am I ever going to keep my hands away from you now? After feeling how tight, how warm your cunt is? How it responds to me? How fucking ravenous its scent makes me?”

He assaults that spot inside of me with no regard to my cries, my pleas muffled by his palm. He’s lost somewhere between my legs like this is his pleasure, not mine.

“What have you done, Evelyn?”

At that same moment he bears down on my clit and pushes me into that flaming pit, burning the world around me. Pleasure sears me from the inside out and I’m sure I would be flying if he didn’t hold me down.

What have I done?

He releases my mouth and I take shallow, staggered breaths.

How will I go back to how things were? Back to not knowing how his hands truly feel on me?

Was he right all along?

I’m too lost in the aftershock of sensations and burning questions when I realize that he’s no longer touching me, because a deep sigh sounds from the shadows, before steps follow, and the door opens. He’s in the doorway facing away from me, shoulders dropping as he pulls the door behind himself, uttering the same word I whisper to myself.

“Fuck.”

Yes, he was right all along. I can feel it in my gut—there’s no going back after crossing this line. I can’t help but wonder if he’ll try though.

Will he be more successful than I was? I tried to steer myself away from him, my reason not as foolish as his. I don’t care that he’s eleven or whatever years older than me, though he seems so bothered by it. I thought I needed to get over his promise to me.

We’ll get you before anything happens…

He said that before I was returned to that wretched container with the tracker in my mouth. Something did happen, and failing to keep his promise brought so much resentment toward him.

I was blinded. He didn’t fail me at all, I simply chose to ignore what I myself asked of him then. The context. I ignored it because it didn’t fit my vendetta. The need for a vessel to hone my hate was stronger than the actual truth.

Because the truth is that his promise was a response to my plea. And that plea had nothing to do with me or my safety. I told him I can’t fail her—my sister—and he answered by telling me that I won’t, promising he’ll get us out before anything happens. To her. Not to me.

Even now I remember the sorrow in his beautiful azure eyes. He wanted to extend the promise to me too, and the choice of his words told me how much he wished, but he was already unsure if he could even keep the one he made for my sister. It was all out of his control. A sacrifice that was not his to make, but he had to so he could save many. I volunteered for it, knowing the risks.

He gave me exactly what I wanted, what I pleaded for. Madds later told me that it was Finnigan who searched for and carried my sister out. I didn’t ask him to save her, I just told him I couldn’t bear failing her again. So, he made sure I didn’t.

He made sure I kept my own promise to my sister. He made sure I wasn’t a liar. That my soul remained intact. Even if my body didn’t.

And I responded with disdain and blamed him for the situation I threw myself in.

I was a fool.

It kept me away from seeing him for who he is, from my craving for him. And if Finnigan pushes me away because he thinks our age difference wrong, if he villainizes himself for it, then he is a fool too.

There are other differences between us that worry me, that make me feel so inadequate next to him. And sometimes I do wonder if they are the real reason why he pulls away from me so fiercely.

If he has an issue with the fact that I haven’t finished my education because I had to take care of my sister, or that I don’t come from the same social standing as him, or have money… or a home, then he should say that. Because I can move on from shallowness easily, but not from the ridiculous notion of age.

He will need a better reason than that.

Though, I can’t help but ask myself… am I a fool for pursuing this man?

Especially since I have made no final decision about staying in Queenscove?

* * *

I wake up in the morning with surprising ease. My phone says it’s seven o’clock, and my limbs are itching to get out of this bed. Though, my thighs say I need to head into a shower, because I swear I can still feel the dampness he left me with last night.

I dreamed of it, of his hand silencing me, the other between my legs, it was more erotic than I expected. I have similar fantasies, but this… it’s surpassed them all.

---