Chapter 481: Coming together

"I want you to know something, whether this works or not. If it doesn’t, you will swear and promise to remain blindfolded every moment you’re with me, and we’ll continue our lives as normally as we can." She looked up at him, making sure he understood how serious she was.

"I won’t be me with—"

"Promise me." Viola cut him off before he could finish. "If I were in your place, and I wanted to kill myself just to get away from hurting you, how would you feel?" she asked.

The question made Sebastian pause.

He had never thought about it that way before. In his mind, dying had been the only way to keep Viola and their unborn child safe from him. But imagining Viola making that same choice, choosing death because she was afraid she might hurt him, made his chest tighten.

He finally understood how it must feel for her to watch him willingly choose death rather than stay and fight for their life together.

And somehow, that realization made him feel like even more of a coward.

"I promise," he finally said, his voice quiet but firm.

A warm summer breeze stirred the leaves around them, carrying their soft rustling through the forest and lifting strands of Viola’s hair around her face.

She stepped closer and leaned forward, pressing a gentle kiss against the bruise on his cheek.

Then she pulled back.

Without hesitation, she raised the sword and made a small cut across her palm, watching the blood begin to pool against her skin.

"Part your lips," she told him.

She let the blood drip into his mouth, watching his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. When he was certain he had taken enough, he caught her wrist and gently pulled her hand away.

"That’s enough."

He tore a strip from his ruined shirt and, without being able to see, carefully wrapped it around her injured palm before holding her hand in his.

"I can’t believe we just fought and you beat me up," he mused, his lips curling into amusement despite everything they had just been through. "I can barely feel my cheeks."

Viola bit the inside of her cheek as she looked at his bruised face. "My wolf told me beating you up would wake you." Her expression softened with concern. "Are you okay?" she asked suddenly when she saw his face scrunch up as if he was feeling discomfort.

"Stand back."

Sebastian pushed lightly against her shoulders, trying to get her to move away from him as pain shot through his body after her blood began to settle in, but Viola immediately swatted his hands away.

"Open your eyes," she said calmly.

When he didn’t, her annoyance flared again. He was already pushing her away, despite the promise he had just made to her, and it frustrated her more than she wanted to admit.

"I didn’t know you to be a coward, Sebastian. How long do you plan to stay like this? I can’t run a pack this size without you, and I certainly can’t do it while carrying your child!" Her voice rose with every word. "I should be resting through all of this, and instead, you keep pushing me away. Now open your eyes!"

"Don’t say that to me! Can’t you see I’m trying?" he yelled, his voice strained with pain and frustration. "I don’t want to be the reason—"

"Then open your goddamned eyes and stand up for your family!"

The anger that had been building inside Viola seemed impossible to control lately, and this time, she let it spill over completely.

He took the jab square to his pride, and suddenly it was too much. It was all too much, the wanting and not having, the constant battle between the part of him that wanted to hold on to her and the part of him terrified of what he might do to her, the needing and not taking.

A red mist swam before his eyes, and his whole body seemed to expand as he reached for her blindly, catching her arm and swinging her against him.

Viola was unprepared for the blurring speed with which he moved. She didn’t even have time to take a step back. Suddenly his grip was tight and painful around her arm, and with one motion he pulled her into his hard body, nearly knocking the breath from her.

His mouth came down on hers, hot and ravaging, not waiting for her compliance but simply taking it. His teeth raked over her bottom lip, and when she made a shaky sound, response or protest, she couldn’t say, he used the opening to push his tongue into her mouth.

Her heart lunged wildly in her chest as she realized he was out of control, only not out to kill her but to take her. His arms tightened around her, lifting her off her feet, and his mouth claimed hers with bruising force.

Elation swirled through her, and she wound her arms tightly around his neck, kissing him back. He brought her down to the ground and reached for his shirt, tossing it beneath them as a cushion against the hard earth.

In one smooth motion, he slid her backward and dropped onto his knees, then he was pushing her down onto the shirt and lowering himself over her body.

Dimly she realized that once you’d unleashed a tiger, it wasn’t so easy to get him back under control again. Of course, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Sunlight sifted through the leaves, dappling his gleaming skin, and his expression was fiercely primitive as he pushed her thighs apart with his knee. He looked wild and magnificent, and she made a soft, needy sound as she reached for him.

It had been so long that Viola didn’t care where they were, and now, with her wolf heightening every sensation tenfold, she couldn’t have stopped this even if she’d wanted to.

He tore what little remained of her clothes, and she didn’t care. The seam of her bra gave way beneath his twisting fingers, and the taut curve of her breasts thrust nakedly up toward him.

He sucked hard at one, belatedly aware of how much fuller they had become, the soft weight of her breast filling his mouth in a way that made him crazy. He wanted more of it, wanted to draw the whole peak deeper, to feel the tight bud against his tongue. So he did, nursing greedily, his lips sealed tight as he flicked and rolled the stiffened nipple, then scraped it lightly with his teeth before sucking harder again.

She moaned, the sound low and broken, her fingers tightening in his hair.

While his mouth stayed busy, his hands shoved the torn remains of her trousers, now little more than a ruined skirt, up to her waist. His fingers hooked into the delicate waistband of her underwear. She lifted her hips to help him, and a sharp rip of lace cut through the quiet as he tore the scraps away completely, tossing the shredded fabric aside into the bush.

He moved his mouth to her other breast, sucking the nipple in, while he worked at the fastening of his own pants. He grunted as the zipper gave way, releasing his throbbing length, and shoved both underwear and trouser down in one motion.

Sebastian no longer cared about the damn spell, whether it still lingered somewhere beneath the roar in his head, whether it might rise again to stop him from wanting her, none of it mattered anymore.

He wanted her, and he would have his wife, come hell or high water.

His entry was hard and fast. Her body shuddered under the force of it, her hips lifting to meet him. He groaned aloud as her body took him in, the exquisite feel of her turning his unbearable ache into unbearable pleasure.

Viola sank her nails into his back as she arched up, driven by a sudden explosion of heat. Coiling tension wound through her body until she thought she’d go mad, and she fought against both him and the tension, crying out as her body strained, half to throw him off, half to pull him deeper, her legs tightening around him.

If he was wild, so was she. He pounded into her, and she took him. Her hips hammered up to meet his, and he rode her, wrapping his arms beneath her to pull her hips tighter against him, driving himself in deeper.

A great, rolling surge overtook her senses without warning, and she cried out, a raw, primal sound slicing through the clear air. He kept thrusting into her, and it happened again, the second wave following the first so closely she barely had time to catch her breath, more powerful than the last, tossing her even higher.

She bit down on his shoulder, sobbing and moaning with the force of her pleasure, and suddenly she felt him grow even harder, even bigger inside her, his whole body beginning to shudder and heave.

He threw his head back with a guttural cry that tore up from deep in his chest as his hips jerked through the spasms of his release.

•••

A/N

Thank you mbmclawhten for the magic castle!!!