Page 89 of Delivered to the Devil

“He might have been the one to drag the orgasm from your body.” Janos pauses and leans close to my ear again. “But I’m the one you came for. I’m the one who held you. I’m the one you clung to. It was my scent, my touch, my grip that ignited the fire inside you.”

Fuck, I can hardly think. Yet, his words hit some fundamental part of me, ringing truer than anything ever has. Gabor might have been the one to take the orgasms physically, but mentally, I was always with Janos. I never came during the weeks he kept a distance and refused to look at me. Gabor simply couldn’t make me because Janos wasn’t there with me.

The realization is a relief greater than any other. But it drowns in the burning need to breathe as the oxygen in my lungs grows scarce.

“And now you’re going to come for me again.”

Janos’s words barely register. I’m thrashing blindly beneath him as I try to turn my head, straining to access precious air. But all I achieve is painful tugs at my scalp.

He starts the punishing thrusts anew, and my world reels at the cusp of something. Death? Mind-numbing pleasure? I don’t know. My body stills, and for a moment, everything is quiet.

But then Janos rips my head up. Air whooshes into my lungs, sending shock waves through my body, colliding with the painful thrusts. An explosion of pleasure rips through my body like lightning from an open sky, making me arch and convulse as a scream tears from my lungs. And like with every strike of lightning, the roar of thunder follows.

Janos’s thrusts become jerky as he growls behind me, shooting his cum inside me.

“Oh God,” I moan, and if I didn’t believe in a God before, I do now. A tall and mighty God who holds the power to break me just as he holds the power to free my soul.

Rolling onto his side, he takes me with him and wraps me tightly in his arms, whispering close to my ear, “Why are you here?”

He has torn me apart. I can’t even hold on to the most vulnerable parts of myself, so I let the words out into the open. “I can’t stand being without you. You’re the only place I want to be.”

He turns me to gain eye contact, and this time, he doesn’t need to force me. I give him access to everything through the intimate connection of our eyes—the vulnerability, the fragileness, and my desperate, all-consuming need to be with him.

He stares at me for a while, taking it all in before he speaks. “If Gabor finds out you’re here, he’ll finish you. Maybe both of us.”

It’s not a threat or even meant to scare me. It’s a fact.

I shake my head, unable to deal with the lurking danger right now. Something else is more pressing. “Why did you send me away?” Tears gather in my eyes as all the uncertainty and feelings of abandonment resurface.

He gives me the same confused look András gave me when I asked him why he took me away from Janos.

“Why did you make András get me out?” I say.

“So you wouldn’t die here... So you could be free.”

I stare into the room behind him, feeling utterly lost. It’s only then that I notice something deep red that I seem to recognize. But it can’t be. I rub my eyes several times before my vision clears up. And there’s my red armchair, the one Janos sat in so many times, watching over me. Seeing it here, in his bedroom, gives me the courage to say what I tried to say when he left me, and what made me come back.

“Don’t you understand?” I say, staring directly into his eyes. “I don’t want to be free. Ican’tbe free if I’m not with you.”

The lines of his severe face soften, and his eyes go gentler. But it only lasts a moment before his expression hardens. He pulls away, gets out of bed, and starts pacing the room. I push up to sit and pull the comforter around me to hide my scarred upper body.

“Don’t you get how dangerous it is for you to be here?” he says, frustration lacing his words. “He’ll kill you if he finds you.” He runs his hands through his hair, and even though I’ve known it for a long time, it’s only now that I realize just how much the thought bothers him. “I can’t protect you here. Not from him.”

I squeeze my eyes shut as I grip the sheets. They’re as soft as the white ones Gabor always provided for me in the apartment he forced me into. But when I open my eyes, I’m relieved to find that these are a deep blue instead of a pristine white. This isn’t Gabor’s apartment. I’m not in his claws right now. And even though that may only be temporary, the relief is potent. But there’s also guilt. “I’m sorry,” I mutter, fumbling with the blue fabric.

Suddenly, Janos is over me. I fall back onto the mattress, and he crawls over me like a dangerous animal, gripping my neck. “Don’t you dare say that again. It’s fucking me who should apologize for not getting you out that night. I knew what hewas going to do days before it happened, and still I let him go through with it.”

“You didn’t know how bad it would get,” I say.

He shakes his head. “I knew he was about to lose control. It always happens at some point. I usually manage to stop him before it gets that far. But with you...”—he shoves the comforter aside to reveal all the ugly scars across my torso—“I can’t think straight.”

It’s not a grand declaration of love, and it’s not even words that tell me he cares about me—at least not directly—but they’re everything and more than I need to hear.

I lean against his chest, and just like that night when he fucked me in the hall, he cups the back of my head with a tender hand and holds me close.

“I’m not letting you go again,” he murmurs into my hair. It’s as much of a promise to himself as to me. And with that, I know that I’ll do everything in my power, go through it all again, if it means I get to stay with him.

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