Page 217 of Anathema

Gaze trailing to mine, he sat upright, and I pressed the cloth to his face. He kept his eyes on me all the while, as I dabbed the cool cloth over his forehead, to his cheek and neck.

In the quiet between us, my thoughts got the best of me, and I imagined him never waking from that spell. Being alone in this cottage, day after day, with those creatures pacing in the yard. Waiting for the opportunity to get inside. The rims of my eyes stung with the threat of tears, and I quickly looked away, dipping the cloth for fresh water. I cleared my throat, “I didn’t know if you …” The words refused to come forth, as I fought to hold back my emotions.

Massive arms wrapped around me, dragging me down to the bed beside him. His body still shook as he held me against him. He didn’t move, just breathed, and I didn’t fight his suffocating grip, but let him hold onto me. Quiet tears of relief spilled down my temples.

“I thought you’d left me. For good.” My voice cracked on the last two words, and I blinked back more tears. “Where did you go?”

He didn’t answer immediately, but curled his fingers into me, as if I might try to get away from him. “Hell,” he finally rasped, his voice painfully dry. “I was in Hell.”

I raised my unwrapped hand to softly caress his unmarred cheek, tears forming again. “I was so scared.”

He pushed my hair away from my face, staring down at me. Without warning, he slanted his lips over mine, and I shuttered my eyes when he kissed me. A comforting warmth surged through me, the overwhelming sense of calm and safety melting my bones. He threaded his fingers through my hair. Breaths hastened. With a grip of my thigh, he pulled me against him, caging me in his merciless and rigid embrace.

Lungs begging for air, I turned to break the kiss, but he tightened his hold, keeping us locked together. The need for air pounded against my chest, drowned by the relief that he was here. Alive and awake and kissing me.

When he finally broke away, he held my face in his palms, both of us fighting to catch our breath. “Even now, I question what is real.”

“I’m here. I’m real.” I gripped his arms, and his fingers curled into my hair.

He crushed his lips to mine again, in a more fervent kiss than the last, his hands fisting my hair. He kissed me with ruthless possession, plundering my mouth with his tongue. Angry and violent, as if he didn’t believe me. As though he were searching for clarity in our joined lips. His leg muscles flexed over my hip, drawing me into him, pressing his groin against me.

So caught up in a tempest of conflicting emotions, I mindlessly reached down to his unlaced trousers, slinking my hand to the tip of his erection.

A tight grip held me in place, and he broke from the kiss. “Don’t.”

Humiliation burned hot across my face, and I drew my hand back, remembering the scars there. “Oh, god, I’m sorry.”

As difficult as it was to move in his steely embrace, I turned away from him, the loathing I felt for myself thick in my throat.

What was I thinking?

Hands banded around me, drawing me back, as he crushed me against his chest. For a moment, he did nothing more than breathe against the back of my neck, while my head punished me for my thoughtless stupidity. “Forgive me,” he said, and I frowned.

“Forgive you?” Tears wobbled in my eyes. “I’m the one who touched you without asking.”

“And I am yours to touch, Maevyth. I crave your touch more than my next breath.” His fingers dug into my belly as he held me tight to him. “I saw visions, though … fucking horrible things. Things I can’t get out of my head. Even now, I see and feel everything. As if it lives inside of me.”

“What kinds of things?” I whispered, trying to imagine what could possibly be worse than what Elowen and I had uncovered when she’d drawn back his trousers.

He shook his head. “I will never speak them aloud.”

A needling guilt scratched at my thoughts. “I saw the scars. The metal piercings.” I swallowed back the humiliation in my throat and turned to face him. “We tried to bring your fever down. To undress you and … I saw. You’ve suffered.”

“I was young. Defenseless. I’m no longer that boy,” he said roughly, as if I thought him weak for what had happened to him.

It crushed my heart to imagine what he’d been forced to endure. The gut-wrenching stories those scars told. No, I didn’t think him weak. On the contrary.

“You must have been exceptionally strong.” I ran the pad of my thumb across his lips. “And in so much pain.”

He kicked his head to the side, rejecting my caress. “Do not pity me.”

“I can assure you, it isn’t pity that I feel for you, Zevander. I feel many things right now, but pity isn’t one of them.”

The cutting anger in his eyes dulled when he turned back to me. “What do you feel?”

I thought about it for a moment, the words messy and scattered in my head. I stared at his chest, the scars and muscles and sweat that stirred a yearning and curiosity inside me. A craving for things I shouldn’t have wanted from a man who’d suffered so much. This virile creature who made me feel safe. Who made me feel like I was home, even as we lay in a cold, dark hovel in the thick of hell. One who’d clearly been mistreated and abused.

Even if the nature of my attraction wasn’t rooted in selfish desires, but a longing to steal away his pain and give him pleasure, to make him feel good and worthy, a prickling shame persisted, strangling my words. “I don’t want to say for fear that I’ll sound like everyone who’s ever harmed you.” I lowered my gaze, not wanting to look at him.

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