Chapter 15: Losing Battles

I didn’t know how I make it to my room, or when the heated sensations got worse. Only that my legs carried me there on pure instinct, heart pounding so violently it drowned out everything else, including my raging thoughts. I slammed the door shut behind me and locked it, twisting the knob with shaking hands and aching soul as if that thin barrier could protect me from him. From myself.

I leaned back against the door, chest heaving, and slid down until I was sitting on the floor. What had I done.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it, his hands were still on me, lingering in my damned memory like a salvaged imprint of something sacred and primal.

I squeezed my eyes shut and saw him anyway. The way he looked at me. Like he could take me apart piece by piece and still have the patience to stop halfway. How could he? That restraint unsettled me to core, it undid me emotionally. That was what made my stomach twist and my thighs ache and my thoughts spiral into places I didn’t want to admit.

I wasn’t shaking because I was scared but because I wanted it. I wanted him to lose control and do whatever he promised. To take me against that desk, ripping through me, pounding into me, my core fluttered at the memory.

The realization hit me harder than anything. I curled inward, arms wrapping around myself as if I could contain it, as if I could cage the heat spread through me before it betrayed me completely. My pulse thudded between my ears, reminding me how close I’d been. How close I still felt.

Why hadn’t he taken more? Why did he stop?

I pressed my palms against my chest, feeling my heartbeat race beneath them, grounding myself in something real and present. My skin was hypersensitive, and the way the fabric of the sundress brushed against my throbbing nipples, dragged through my body, sent jolts of electricity through me.

This was dangerous.

Some part of me had leaned into the fire willingly. Had offered itself up with reckless abandon and words and a trembling mouth, just to see what he would do.

I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, my jaw tight.

Get control.

Get control, Kaela.

But it never had been something I was taught to keep, only knew how to surrender, only how to endure.

And Azran had seen that. Had felt it when I almost begged. Had turned it back on me until I didn’t know where my fear ended and my desire began.

I stayed there on the floor, breathing through the heat, through the ache, and the confusion clawing its way through my throat. I scrambled to my feet and fled to the bathroom.

The light was too bright as I switched it on realizing the sky outside was dark now. I avoided my reflection as I turned the shower on full cold, steam less water crashing down my skin as is tripped out of my clothes hastily, fabric clinging to skin that felt too sensitive, aware and stepped under the spray with a breathless gasp.

The cold should have helped me but it barely provided any comfort.

Even though water ran over me, down my shoulders and my chest, between my legs, but the heat inside me only intensified, pooling in a place I didn’t know how to ignore. I braced my hands against the tiled wall, head bowed, breath uneven.

Stop.

Stop this.

I tried to ignore the intense building between my legs, but it was impossible. As if fish without water. The cooler water sluicing down my body only seemed to make the inferno inside me burn hotter. My breath came in short gasps as I braced myself against the tiles, fingers curling and uncurling with a mind of their own. My body ached, throbbed, demanded attention I didn’t know how to give it.

I should stop this, I reminded myself desperately, even as my hand slid down my belly, over the curve of my hip, teasing along the sensitive skin of my inner thigh.

Stop touching yourself like this. It was wrong, Kaela.

But wrong felt so incredibly right in that moment. Wrong felt like the only thing that could possibly quench the thirst building inside me, the hunger that cried out of satisfaction. My finger brushed against my slick folds, and I gasped, head falling forward as a fresh wave of pleasure washed over me. I was so wet, so ready, and the knowledge that it was Azran’s touch that had brought me to this state only fueled the fire inside me.

“Azran,” I gasped, the name falling from my lips like a prayer and a plea. “Please, I need… I need…”

But I didn’t know what I needed, couldn’t put a name to the emptiness that gnawed at my core. I could feel the phantom sensations of Azran’s hard-on, thick and hard and perfect. I wondered and imagined it slipping inside me, stretching me, filling me in a way I’d never been filled before. The thought made me moan, made my hips back against my hand as I rubbed myself with increasing desperation.

I’d never touched myself this way and the am I didn’t know for two day, had the power to make me want to please myself.

I wanted it. I wanted him. I wanted his cock inside me, wanted him to take me, claim me, make me his…

But reality crashed down on me like a bucket of icy water, and I froze, fingers still buried deep inside me. As much as I wanted it, as much as my body screamed for his touch, I knew it was wrong. Wrong to want the man who threatened me, wrong to crave his domination, wrong to fantasize about being taken by, the man ho wanted me to carry his brother’s child. Wrong, wrong, so damn wrong.

With a shuddering gasp, I pulled my hand away, staring at it in horror.

I sighed in dejection, feeling a deep sense of shame wash over me. I quickly washed my hands, scrubbing them vigorously as if trying to cleanse myself of the impure thoughts and actions. The water sluiced over my skin, but it could not wash away the guilt that clung to me like second skin.

I squeezed my eyes shut and he was there again. The scent of him filling my nostrils, and the roughness of his palms. I hated myself for it. Hated how quickly I let myself fall, tangled with the desire. This was different. This shame was mine. I turned the water colder, gasping and forcing myself to stay rooted in the present. My hands fell back to my sides, fingers curling into fists as I rode out the sensations until my breathing evened out.

I stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around myself as I stared at my reflection in the mirror and hated myself more. The face looking back at me was flushed, eyes haunted, and lips swollen form biting them in the heat of my desperate arousal. I hardly recognized myself anymore, hardly knew the wanton creature gazing back at me with such deep need and shame.

What was wrong with me? How could I want him like that? Want to let him…

I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the thought, the shame of it still burning through me like acid. With a strange sob, I turned away from the mirror, unable to look at myself any longer and quickly dried off and pulled on a simple lacey nightgown, as the fabric felt rough and uncomfortable against my over-sensitized skin.

I slipped into the bed, and pulled the sheets up to my chin, curling into myself as the etars began to fall in earnest. I cried for the girl I sued to be, the girl who would never have entertained such shameful thoughts. I cried for the impossible situation I found myself in. trapped between desire. And I cried for the aching emptiness between my legs that refused to be ignored, no matter how much I tried to pray it away.

Please, please forgive me. I don't know what's happening to me. I don't know how to stop this...

I knew there would be no forgiveness, no absolution for a broken girl me and I had crossed a line, and there was no going back. All I could do was try to hold onto my crumbling sense of right and wrong, even as everything inside me screamed at me to give in, to surrender to the darkness growing inside me. Keeping the secrets and past at bay and surrender.

With a final, shuddering sob, I let the tears carry me under, into a restless and dream-filled sleep.