Page 29 of When Day Breaks

We aren't supposed to hold guilt over much, over anything really. She only feels it as deeply as she does in this moment because her vampirism wasn't formed out of a normal transition. As smooth and peaceful as I tried to make her final night, as gentle as I was with her when we consummated, I couldn't have known that her demons and her dreams were fighting a war that turned against her in the end, causing her transition to be heightened with the symptoms of her feelings and twisted into the curse that was unavoidable for someone like her.

But it was me who made it all a reality. If she had never met me…

"I led you astray, just like your family did. You desired one thing because you were deprived of it for so long. But I forced the burden you've carried to manifest itself because I was too afraid to fight my demons alone." My truth is that I was too stubborn to face my darkness alone. I needed hers to emerge to justify my needs. I wanted her hatred to resonate with mine so that I might find solace in knowing that I am not alone in my aversions for those who make a mockery out of me. My life wasn't meant for anything other than to take back what was taken from me, condemning everyone to whatever destruction I left in their path because they were in my way.

"You don't have to be alone, Rivian," she murmurs, obviously trying to discern my own grievances.

I appreciate her attempt at sentiment but I don’t want it to be her job to try and comfort me.

I lower my voice before I try to give her an answer. "I didn't allow myself to believe in something as lethal as-"

"Stop." She turns her head slightly to look back at me, her eyes burning holes into mine in an apparent plea to quit with my aspersions.

She thinks I didn't trust her enough to let her give me the things I pretended I didn't need and part of her is right. I didn't trust that she wouldn't do to me what I watched everyone else in my life do but also, I couldn't trust myself not to ruin it all.

She turns back around, the water still warm between us as she takes a deep breath.

"You don’t want to be alone and I don't want to be a monster, Rivian." Something I can't pinpoint slightly shatters inside of me at her words. But it's strong enough for me to physically feel it, almost in resemblance to the day my mother was taken from me.

"You're far from, Cyn." I try to reassure her, knowing that her actions don't stack up to the actions of those I've witnessed. She didn't act out of pure evil. She was acting on what was expected of her given the situation she's in.

I find myself inadvertently caressing her upper arms on either side of her body. An unconscious act of soothing her as she rests against me. An act I find dangerous once I realize I'm doing it, but I don't stop because part of such is comforting to me as well and I see how her body responds to it.

"What happens when this little magical herb wears off? What if I can't control myself and I-"

I cut off her words, tilting her head back to face me before I pinch her chin between my thumb and index finger. Her mouth parts on a gasp and she looks up to me with glossy irises andwet lashes. I can see her freckles so vividly from this angle and having her so close is unnerving to my reprieve, no longer wanting to hold back the desire to touchher.

"I will be right there," I whisper to her, making sure to hold my eyes on hers. "I will do whatever I can to fix this."

"I don't know if I can ever forgive you for what you've done." The smooth timbre in her raspy voice quakes as she speaks a truth I don't want to hear. But I knew it would be spoken soon.

I let go of her chin, allowing her to turn back forward. I can't stand the look of sadness that swims in her eyes. It haunts me.

"I know," I respond as I let the regret I feel grip my tone.

A few beats of silence in the rain pass by. I feel Lucynda push herself into me as far as she can get while trying to go undetected. I try my best to pretend to not notice but my body reacts to her. I can feel my dick pulse with the need as she presses the small of her back against it. I've tried so hard to suppress the desire I have for her but fuck, it's not easy.

But her attempts to get my attention right now aren't like those from the Gilded Hollow; where we used each other as a distraction, as a relief to the frustration we both had felt in the moment and for the sake of feeling power over each other.

No. This is genuine and even more threatening to my reserve, needing to breathe air that isn't hers because all I want is to ravage my wife. My fingers still on her arms, noticing how her skin pebbles under my touch and little hum escapes her throat.

"Lucynda," I warn. Whether she's doing it consciously or not, she has to stop satisfying my senses or I won't be able to stop myself.

"You can touch me, you know." Her tone isn't teasing. She is trying to ease me into her wants, and I would normally tell her to be direct, to use her words to ask for her needs. But she's telling me that Icantouch her, that she wants me to, but she needs me to want the same thing as well.

"I don't know if that's a good idea, Lucynda," I say to her, not oblivious to the fact that I technically already am touching her as my fingers sift through the water then back up her arm. This time, trailing warm water up to her shoulder and watching it trail forward down the front of her body. The bubbles have since dissipated so I watch the little bead of water fall right over her nipple into the bath water.

"When you look around at your empire," she starts, her fingernails now gently scratching up and down my shins at her sides. "Look at all the guards and the power that you claim you need, at the control and all the wars that start because you condemn yourself to this burden of needingrevenge, the one and only thing that matters above all of that is someone you can trust and someone who can trust you back. I'd say that right now, not a lot of people can trust you, Rivian. And it’s obvious that you don’t trust us either."

Somewhere in the midst of her sirenic voice leading up to my ears, listening to her words and letting them sink into my mind, I allowed my fingers to fall from her arms down to her sides, slowly traveling up to the dip at the top of her thighs.

Her breathing slows as I touch her gently, continuing my perusal of her body.

"I don't want to use you for your trust," I whisper in a heated, dark tone. I am too lost in my senses for her, needing to fulfill them all in order to satisfy the ache I've been carrying since she entered the bathroom.

"And I want to trust you to not use me," she responds as her own fingers slide up to my thighs before returning back to my shins. "Not to hurt me,” she adds.

Her voice is just as impassioned as my touch, now trailing upwards of her stomach to locate the curve of her breasts; still covered by the water but visible for me to see.

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