Chapter 127: Edriks Past Come To Light

He drives into her hard, deep, relentless, his hips snapping forward with a force that shoves her up the mattress inch by inch, and the sound of his skin slapping against hers, the wet obscene noise of how soaked she is for him, fills every corner of the room. His balls slap against her with each punishing thrust, and she can feel the stretch of him, impossibly thick, dragging against every sensitive inch of her walls.

"Edrik, Edrik, don’t stop, please don’t stop."

"Not stopping." His voice is guttural, barely words anymore, his big body curling over hers, one hand braced beside her head, the other gripping her thigh and hitching it higher around his waist so he can get even deeper. "Not until you cum for me. Want to feel it. Want to feel you fall apart on my cock."

She’s close, so close, the pressure building unbearable and bright behind her navel, and she doesn’t bother holding back the sounds anymore. She doesn’t bother being quiet for Thorne’s sake or anyone’s sake. She just lets herself moan, loud, open-throated, every slam of Edrik’s hips punching another cry out of her.

"That’s it." His forehead drops to hers, sweat-damp, his breathing ragged. "Let them hear you. Let him hear exactly what you sound like when I’m fucking you this good."

The filth of it, the rawness of him saying it out loud, is what breaks her.

She comes with a scream that she doesn’t even try to muffle, her whole body seizing around him, her back arching off the bed, her nails dragging four stinging lines down his back as her release crashes through her in wave after wave. Her cunt clenches around him so hard, so tight, that his rhythm stutters, his hips losing their rhythm entirely as he chases his own release into the grip of her.

"Dove, fuck, Dove." Her name tears out of him, raw and broken, and he slams into her one last time, burying himself to the hilt as his cock throbs and pulses, spilling deep inside her in hot, thick spurts. His whole body shudders over hers, arms trembling where they brace his weight, his hips twitching with the aftershocks as he empties himself into her, filling her up until

she can feel it dripping slick and warm where they’re still joined.

Edrik doesn’t move for a long moment, just breathes hard against her throat, both of them shaking, both of them spent, his heart hammering so hard she can feel it against her chest where he’s collapsed half his weight onto her.

Slowly, carefully, he pulls back enough to look at her, and when he finally eases himself out of her, they both groan at the drag of it, at the sudden emptiness, at the mess of them both smeared slick between her thighs.

He doesn’t let the distance last. He gathers her up against him, careful even now, even wrung out and trembling, and kisses her, slow this time, deep, nothing like the desperate heat of moments before. It’s soft. It’s reverent. His hand comes up to cradle her jaw like she’s something fragile despite everything they just did to each other.

"I meant it," he murmurs against her mouth, lips brushing hers with every word. "Every bit of it. I’m yours." He pulls back just far enough to look at her properly, his thumb tracing the curve of her cheekbone, and there’s something so open in his face now, stripped of all the careful walls he usually keeps up. "And I’ll protect you. Both of you. Always. No matter what it costs me."

She reaches up, touches the new mark over his heart, still faintly warm beneath her fingers, and feels something in her chest loosen, something that’s been pulled taut for longer than she can remember.

"I know," she whispers back, and she does. She believes him completely, the way she’s never quite let herself believe anything before.

He kisses her again, lingering, unhurried, and when he finally settles beside her, pulling her into the solid warmth of his chest, she can hear his heartbeat slow gradually beneath her ear, steadying into something calm.

He’s quiet for a long time after that, just breathing, just holding her, and she thinks maybe he’s drifted off until she feels his chest shudder beneath her cheek, a breath caught wrong somewhere in his throat.

"There’s something I need to say." His voice comes out rough, scraped raw, nothing like the low growl from minutes before. "And I need you to let me say all of it before you say anything back. Because if I stop now I don’t think I’ll ever get it out."

Dove pushes herself up on one elbow so she can see his face, and what she finds there makes her stomach drop in a way that has nothing to do with the ache still pulsing low in her body. He looks terrified. Edrik, who put his fist through a man’s ribs without blinking, who stood in front of Thorne’s gun like it was nothing, looks like a man standing at the edge of something he can’t see the bottom of.

"Okay," she says softly. "I’m listening."

He doesn’t look at her right away. He stares up at the ceiling instead, jaw working, and when he finally speaks it comes out slow, like he’s pulling each word up from somewhere deep and unwilling.

"I’ve been scared of this conversation longer than I’ve been scared of anything the Yukaza ever asked me to do." A humorless huff of breath. "That should tell you something, considering some of what they’ve asked me to do."

She doesn’t say anything. She just waits, her hand resting flat against his chest, feeling the thud of his heart pick up speed beneath her palm.

"I kept thinking you’d figure out what I am and that’d be it. That you’d look at me the way people look at something they found stuck to the bottom of their shoe." His throat moves as he swallows. "I’ve done things, Dove. Things I can’t take back, things I don’t even let myself think about most days because if I start I don’t stop. I’ve hurt people. I’ve hurt people who didn’t deserve it, because that was the job, because refusing wasn’t a door that was ever open to me. And every single day I was scared that one morning you’d see it on me. That you’d look at my hands and see what they’ve done and you’d hate me for it. You’d be right to."