She didn’t resist, and because he watched her with eyes that had gone to black, she lifted her legs to wrap him, around his hips, and, closing her eyes as if in ecstasy, cried out again and again.
Cold, sharp, vicious—gods, she wanted to scream for him to stop. And feared if she did, he wouldn’t until she lay dead at his feet.
She thought of the slave woman in the collar, and held on to him as if enthralled. She would die before she served meat and wore a collar like an animal.
Then something changed, and instead of pain and fear, she felt a terrible pleasure rising through it. Dark and dangerous, it conquered her. Wild with it, breathless from it, she gripped his shoulders, looked into those black eyes, and said, “More.”
When he was done with her, he tossed her on the bed. She felt slightly ill, her body throbbing as her burned hand had, and wished only for the oblivion of sleep.
Then he climbed on top of her, hiked her hips high as she moaned.
She screamed when he sodomized her. And though she feared he would tear her in two, that dark pleasure broke into her again until she wept with it.
Until she craved it.
He used her over and over, tirelessly, brutally, until she thought the endless pains and pleasures might kill her.
When after the long night he ordered her to leave him, she stumbled naked back to her room, her body bruised, tiny gouges bleeding.
And understood now that she knew those pains, those pleasures, she would rather die than live without them.
* * *
When Brian woke, he lay a moment longer in the warm bed with Marco beside him. He had duties, and would never shirk them, but thought how lovely it would be to stay, to wake together.
Another time, he hoped. They would have other times.
Quietly, he rose.
He would use the shower—a much fancier sort than any he’d found on his visits outside of Talamh. Marco had shown him how it worked, and together they had shown each other what interesting things could happen inside a glass box under a hot rain of water.
He’d imagined himself falling in love at some point. In the future. Eventually.
But he hadn’t known what it could be, not really. He hadn’t known the lightning strike, the floating on a quiet river, the wild flight among stars, the simple rest.
Love was all of that and so much more.
He’d found someone he wanted to join hands and walk with for the rest of his life.
Whatever god, whatever fate had put Marco Olsen in his path, he would be forever grateful.
He dressed in the dark before brushing a light kiss on Marco’s cheek.
“I’ll come home to you tonight,” he whispered, “and every night I can.”
Carrying his boots, he walked downstairs.
Though Marco had told him Breen rose early, it surprised him to find her in the kitchen in the first breaths of the new day.
“Good morning to you.”
“Morning.” She lifted the mug in her hand. “I made coffee.”
“Thanks for that, but I don’t have a liking for it. I’d make myself tea if you’d show me how this thing works.” He tapped the stove.
“Sure.” She turned the burner on under the kettle.
“Ah, well then, that’s simple enough.”
“I’m no Marco, but I could scramble you some eggs.”
He smiled at her, this key to so much who offered to make him breakfast. “It’s kind of you, but I’m hoping you won’t think of me as a guest here.”
She smiled back at him. “Okay then, you can scramble your own eggs. Bread, bread knife, toaster.” She pointed as she spoke. “Butter and jam in the fridge—along with eggs. The cottage is Marco’s as much as mine. You’re Marco’s so it’s yours. That’s how things work for us. If you’ve got this, I need to check on Bollocks. He’s already out and in the bay.”
“I can manage, thanks.”
She went out to drink her coffee in the air while her dog romped in the bay, while the mists rose over it and the waking sun shot tiny rainbows through it.
Keegan had left only moments before Brian came down. He’d taken no time for coffee or tea. He would, he told her, come back to resume her training, but had duties first.
So did she, she thought. A duty to the work she’d chosen, a duty to the dog and dragon who’d chosen her as she had them. A duty to the two worlds she knew, and the people in them.
Keegan left so quickly, and with so much, obviously, on his mind, she hadn’t told him about the dreams.
She didn’t know what to tell him anyway except they’d been dark, disturbing, scattered, and full of screams of pain, moans of pleasure.