Ella
I can feel his hesitation as he lays me down on the bed. It’s soft and cool to the touch from the gentle tropical breeze drifting through the open doors leading to a starlit balcony. A shiver snakes over my skin–whether from the chill in the air or the fact Ryatt’s hands are trailing down my sides, I’m not sure.
Time is hazy. How long has it been since we’ve been together like this? All of the events leading up to our final, and only, stand against Kane are a blur. And here, in Maatua? I feel like the minutes and hours either crawl or flash by before my eyes, making it hard to determine just how long we’ve been here.
But I know it’s been a while since his hands have slid down my thighs, cupping my ass as he scoots me to the very center of the large bed.
Unlike before, when the lust and tension had been a burning flame between us, this feels different. Softer. Gentler.
I realize he’s worried about me, worried about touching me, and my heart threatens to crumble when I involuntarily flinch when one of his hands brushes against my inner thigh.
He rears back, his face going dark with concern–and maybe even rage. His anger isn’t directed at me, of course.
“Wait,” I whisper, pulling him back to me, so his body is sheltering mine. “Just–just kiss me again, please.”
But he doesn’t. He hovers above me, his body tight with tension, and rests his forehead against mine.
“Is it–is it because you can’t feel the mate bond with me anymore?” I ask.
He opens his eyes. “You’re my mate. Our bond might be severed, but it doesn’t change that fact. It doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
“How do you feel about me?”
“You’re just fishing for compliments now, Princess.”
I smile despite the heaviness in my heart. I’ll do anything to keep his mind off what Kane did to me, how he touched me and cut the mark from my thigh with a blade of pure silver.
“Do you remember our first kiss?” I ask.
He eases off me and lies beside me. I roll over to face him. We’re practically nose to nose now.
“In that little cottage in Granite Rise,” he says, smoothing his hand down my arm. “You were so mad at me.”
“You were being such an asshole.”
His mouth ticks into a sleepy smile. “You got under my skin.”
“You still kissed me, though.”
“It was all I could think about for year,” he admits. I’m not sure I’ve heard him sound so raw. “I wanted to kiss you at your brother’s ball. When I saw you for the first time, and you mouthed off at me, that’s all I could think about. That’s all I thought about for years.”
“Did you love me then?”
His eyes are pure silver in the faint moonlight drifting through the curtains. “No.”
I roll my eyes and go to swat him, but he grabs my wrist and pulls me closer.
“I loved you,” he continues, his arms wrapping around me, “the night you killed those hellhounds. But I knew it wasn’t just the mate bond talking the night I found you after you beat the shit out of Petra and her friends.”
The heaviness in my chest lightens at the memory of Ryatt storming into the bedroom at his house at the coven. I’d been washing Petra’s blood from my hands, and the look on his face….
“I knew I loved you the night I went into the water in the lake and emerged to find you kneeling on the shore. The look in your eyes… I just knew you’d have my back, that you cared. That you saw me for who I really was and didn’t care.”
He brushes the hair from my face and kisses me deeply, his tongue sliding along my lower lip until my lips part and he sweeps inside. I moan. I can’t help it. The taste of him is like the sweetest wine and the heat coming from his body warms me to the depths of my soul, breaking through the ice there. My mate. My mate. Even without that silver thread woven by the Goddess to connect us.
“I love you,” I whisper against his lips.
He deepens the kiss to something rougher, more demanding, and I lose all sense of time and our surroundings, and then it’s just me and him, skin to skin.
The red scrap of fabric I’d worn to the club, stolen from my cousin Daphne’s closet, is a shadowed heap on the floor beside the bed in a matter of seconds. Ryatt’s hands graze up my sides to my breasts, which are heavy and ache more than they ever have before. When I wince, he goes rigid.
“It’s not–I’m not hurt,” I rush out, clutching his wrist to keep him close. “It’s because I’m pregnant. They’re just–heavy. And they hurt sometimes.”
“They’re beautiful,” he rasps, dipping his head to brush the words over my neck. “I enjoy looking at them.”
“I’m sure they’re hard to miss now,” I say, a laugh trembling through my chest. It’s cut short, turning to a breathy moan as he cups my breasts and brushes his thumbs over my nipples. Then his lips are trailing kisses over my collarbone, then my chest, then dipping lower.
“Oh,” I breathe, closing my eyes as his tongue sweeps over my nipple. He kneads my breast, then turns his ministrations to the other one. My eyes nearly roll back in relief as warmth spreads through my body, settling between my thighs.
His touch sets my soul on fire. Somewhere, deep down, I feel a flicker of heat that has nothing to do with the way his mouth is traveling down my belly and over my hip bones, no. Somewhere I feel a single fragment of our shattered bond come to life. A single breath of hope.
I’ll do whatever it takes to bring our bond back to its full power, even if it takes a lifetime. That’s a promise.
I suck in my breath and cry out his name when his tongue parts my entrance. He growls with satisfaction, his hands gripping my thighs to hold me still, and I’m totally at his mercy.
My fingers tangle in his hair, my hips arching off the bed as he laps at my core. He pulls away, panting, and meets my gaze. His eyes are heavy with desire–a dark shade of gray that sends shivers licking down my spine. I want him inside of me. I need to feel his strength and possession. I need to feel like I’m his again.
I need his mark, desperately.
He crawls to me, hovering above me with his forearms resting on either side of my head. He kisses me again–wet, sloppy kisses that stoke the fire burning deep in my soul as his cock nudges my entrance, and then he thrusts.
His name is a prayer on my tongue as he fills me, stretches me, and stills.
I find it hard to catch my breath as I look up at him, finding him gazing down at me with so much love in his eyes it threatens to bring me to tears.
“You’re mine,” he says, pulling out slowly before thrusting inside of me again with more force. His hips grind into mind, his cock hitting that spot that sends my head spinning. “Mine.”
“Always,” I whisper.
He kisses me again and doesn’t stop until I’m whimpering around him, begging him for more, begging him not to stop as my body tightens, and white-hot tension curls through my belly and thighs.
Blinding pleasure mounts and explodes. My entire body spasms and trembles until I’m a writhing mess beneath him.
He doesn’t stop or slow. His mouth grazes my shoulders, his lips warm and rough on my skin before I feel his teeth starting to sink into the tender spot between my neck and shoulders. He bites me hard.
The metallic tang of blood fills the space around us.
My body hums as if it’s finally, finally, coming back to life.
But… the bond is still broken. I can’t feel it, can’t sense it like I used to.
Marking me again didn’t work, and that thought alone is enough to make me want to burst into tears.
Ryatt senses this. He comes undone, groaning with satisfaction, but concern lines his features as he immediately rolls off me and crusheds me against his chest, holding me there as we catch our breath.
“Don’t think about it now,” he rasps.
I rest my cheek against his chest and will myself not to start crying.
“I love you, Ella,” he says softly. “I’m so sorry. We’ll figure this out.”
***
Dressed in shorts and a loose white shirt, I walk downstairs with Ryatt in search of breakfast early the next morning. It’s a bright, sunny day. It’s already stifling in Poppy’s massive seaside castle–but quiet. Too quiet.
When we reach the dining room, we found out why.
Poppy is speaking to a trio of warriors, her face flushed and brow furrowed, but her expression lightens when we enter the room.
“Oh, good, you’re awake.”
“Is something wrong?” I ask, stepping toward her.
“No, no. Nothing bad.” She takes a breath. “You need to go to the private dock immediately, though and return to the Isles. I just spoke with your mom, Ella.”
“Did something happen?” Ryatt’s voice is still thick with sleep and the slight hangover he’s nursing this morning.
“They’re angry with us,” I tell him, then turn my attention back to Poppy. “We’ll leave right now. I’m sorry, Poppy. I knew my parents wouldn’t be happy that we stayed–”
“No, sweetheart, it has nothing to do with that.” Her eyes shine with sudden excitement.
I know what she’s going to say before the words leave her lips. My senses go haywire as mingled excitement and worry battle through my chest.
“Maddy went into labor a few hours ago,” she smiles. “She’s doing fine, of course, but it’s progressing quickly–”
“We need to go, now,” I say, turning from Poppy to Ryatt, who nods in agreement.
“I have a yacht waiting for you with breakfast on board,” Poppy says as she ushers us through the castle. She stops us before we reach the terrace that leads down to the private royal dock. Taking me in her arms, she gives me a squeezing hug and whispers, “Everything is going to be okay, Ella. I’m proud of you. Good luck today. Give your mom my love. And Maddy and Isaac, of course.”
“I will,” I reply, backing out of her arms.
I look at my mate, whose face is an expressionless mask.
Twenty minutes later, we’re on a boat racing back to the Isles. Neither of us touch the breakfast laid out for us.
“I told Maddy I’d stay until the twins were born,” I tell Ryatt.
He breaks his gaze from the water to look at me. “She must have known we have to leave soon, then.”
When we reach the Isles, a feeling of dread has settled in my stomach. It gnaws at me as we race toward the house, practically flying up the steps leading away from the private dock.
And then I hear it.
Screams.