Chapter 49
Chapter 49
The water Aston had been sprayed with was a physical assault, in recompense for his assault on Aria, but it wasn’t enough.
Aston didn’t feel punished enough.
He stood under the spray of his shower, his forehead pressed against the cold tiles, his body shivering.
He didn’t use hot water.
He didn’t deserve it.
His skin was still humming, a low simmering vibration in his groin and his teeth.
He was dousing himself in water as cold as he wished his heart was, but the rounds his blood was doing under his skin kept him sufficiently warm.
Every time he blinked all he could see was her, her blown out eyes, her swollen lips, his marks on her body. His marks. He had done that.
His unworthy hands had touched and squeezed and prodded and his lizard brain wanted more, so much more.
Aston Beaumont was a man of restraint. For as long as he could remember, he had always been unflappable in his restraint.
Not with Aria.
Damnit.
Not with Aria.
The poison hadn’t made him want her, it had only stripped away the lie that he didn’t.
He reached down. His movements were mechanical, practical, just like everything he did.
A low groan climbed up the back of his throat. It wasn’t enough. He wanted to feel Aria, he wanted to see Aria.
He closed his eyes and she came into his inner vision again. He could feel the phantom heat from her body, he could feel the slick heat from her mouth.
His hand moved faster, a more guttural groan echoing in the bathroom.
Aria.
He had never been so enraptured by anyone, anything, in his life.
He wanted to go back, pick her up, and finish what he had started.
Her soft moans, her drawn out sighs, and her fingers tangled in the back of his neck. He wanted to be wrapped in her arms again, he would wallow in every basement he could find if it meant he’d hear Aria saying his name again, saying his name like a precious thing she needed to find.
He came with a grunt, hitting his other fist against the wall.
He stayed frozen like that, the cold water still streaming down his body.
Ten minutes later, he stepped out, a towel slung low on his narrow hips. He caught his reflection in the mirror.
He looked like a Beaumont, like the monster Arthur had bred him to be.
But his eyes caught the side of his jaw. A faint smudge of Aria’s subtle lipstick still remained visible.
He smiled, the action entirely unbidden.
He had felt the place smoother than the rest of his face in the bathroom and it had been saved from the vigorous scrubbing he had done after.
He started to dress, the cotton of his shirt feeling like the roughest sandpaper against his oversensitive skin.
He was still pissed.
At himself. At Zaphen. At the conditions that had caused that disaster to happen.
He had wanted to take her, in the basement. He would have shot himself in the head after.
He had ignored all her calls for him to stop like a common animal, just because Aston’s famed wall-like restraint was like a torn piece of tissue paper in front of the resplendence that was Aria Griffin.
He didn’t know exactly when he started having thoughts, but he knew already that he was too far gone.
Arthur was brilliant.
He wasn’t sure how the man knew, but his granddaughter was Aston’s greatest enemy.
Others fought him with their fists and their weapons and they all woefully lost.
All she needed to do was exist, and he would be subdued.
Nobody had ever succeeded in controlling Aston, but Aria didn’t even need to try.
He chuckled self-deprecatingly, swiping his damp hair back and blasting the hot air of the dryer in it, ignoring the sharp sting it generated on his forehead.
When it was dry enough not to interfere with his thoughts, he walked to his desk, his hand hovering over the tablet where he’d been cataloging his next move against the Piccorin family.
It wasn’t like he was going to use them. He hated that she’d used the Vanguard three to clear her name. Not because of the risk but because she was smart. She was a Griffin, through and through. She had played the game perfectly, and he hated that he found it attractive.
He hated that he was jealous of a mosquito like Devan Piccorin.
His jealousy wasn't a slow, gentle thing.
It was violent, messy, bloody.
He’d spent days on end tracking down enemies he’d been slow on, killing more than he needed to, torturing more than he needed to.
He was efficient, only killing his targets and leaving the rest to suffer on their own. But “the rest” he would have left to suffer might turn out to be as pestilent as Devan, so he simply went on a spree.
He was jealous of a stupid man from a stupid family. The bastard had been in the same school with Aria for months on end. Zaphen too.
They didn’t know how lucky they were, how lucky he could have been, and she was protecting them.
He knew that Aria didn’t want them. He’d seen the purity with which she looked at her son and her grandfather, the purity he knew no one else was worthy of possessing.
He and those men were in the same boat, his more torturous. He could see but he could never touch. Only in his dreams could he feel her against him again.
Till today.
Aston was going to be tortured for the rest of his life with the memories from today, he just knew it.
“Damn you, Arthur,” he said, clicking his tongue.
Aria was fire, and he had spent his whole life in the darkness.
He was ravenous.
When he would finally claim her, there wouldn’t be any poison or drug to blame. It would be her choice, and he would make sure she never recovered from it.
Aria was his.
Aria had to be his.
He was entirely unworthy. She deserved the most perfect man, the most perfect prince to her royalty. But Aston was nothing if not selfish.
He opened the door and walked out of the room, steering in the direction of the kitchen.
He’d left the Eastwood pest half dead in the bottom. Maybe he’d release him. The man had bitten him as Aston stared at Aria’s retreating figure, the poison he’d kept in the back of his tooth piercing through Aston’s skin.
It still hadn’t been enough. It was nothing Aston couldn’t fix with a little meditation. But he had climbed upstairs and Aria was right there.
The subject of his obsession.
If the poison was exerting at 20 before, Aria’s presence geared it up to 500. She was his poison.
He wouldn’t have it any other way.
He needed a drink. Something amber, something that burned, something he could swig from and drown himself to sleep with.
He couldn’t sleep raw right now, it was impossible.
He’d just wake up with a chaffed dick and Aria’s name on his tongue.
He descended the stairs, his movements silent and lethal. He could smell something that promised to be a pure delicacy wafting through the house. Louis? It couldn’t be. The man wasn’t awake at such odd hours. It seemed less likely that he’d wake up to cook.
When he reached the kitchen, he stopped.
Aria was there.
She was standing by the large stove, the hum of the overhead light casting a soft, golden glow over her. She had changed. Gone were the soft pajamas. Now she was wearing a pair of simple, soft grey shorts and a thin, oversized white t-shirt.
It was the most normal thing in the world.
It was a death sentence.