Chapter 91 Chapter Ninety
ARA
“Our wedding?! Thayne, we just escaped a torture chamber. Your father wants to own me. Mine wants to trade me. We were almost killed like ten times today—”
“And that’s exactly why,” he cut in. His eyes burned from resolve.
“They expect fear. They expect hesitation. They expect us to hide, to stall, to break apart.” His thumb brushed my wrist, right over my pulse. “They won’t expect me to lock this in.”
My breath hitched. “Lock… what in?”
“Us.” His jaw set. “You. The twins. My claim.”
I shook my head, overwhelmed. “This isn’t strategy, Thayne. This is—”
“War,” he finished calmly. “And marriage is my shield.”
“You don’t marry someone as a tactic,” I whispered.
His gaze softened, just a fraction. His eyes were both dangerous and intimate at once.
“I don’t,” he said. “I marry you because I already chose you. Long before either of our fathers decided to make us collateral.”
Silence wrapped around us, thick and trembling.
“And if I say no?” I asked quietly.
He didn't answer.
I refused to believe Thayne saw me as anything other than a prize to be won. A strategic move. A ticket into the land of his dreams, power, legacy, and revenge neatly wrapped in white lace and vows.
The thought hollowed me out.
It hurt so much that when the boat finally slowed, I didn’t notice at first.
The engine dropped from a roar to a low, dying hum, the vibration beneath my feet softening until it became nothing more than a faint tremor.
“Aurelia.”
Thayne’s voice cut through the night air like a butcher's knife but I couldn’t answer. My heart was still slamming against my ribs from everything he'd said a few minutes ago.
Shock pinned me to the bench of the rocking boat, the cold spray of the river stinging my cheeks.
“Aurelia, look at me. Now.”
The command snapped like a whip. I knew obeying would only feed his control, so I stared harder at the black water, my lips pressed tight.
There was a beat of silence, then a growled, “Fuck it.”
I thought he’d shove away from me, leap overboard, or even leave me in the boat.
Instead, his hands shot out, hard, fast and possessive. One arm locked around my waist like iron, yanking me flush against his blood-slick chest.
The other arm wrapped around my throat, his fingers firm but not cruel, his thumb pressing just beneath my jaw, forcing my face up to his.
He was drenched in crimson, streaks of it drying across his sharp cheekbones, splattered over the corded muscle of his forearms.
It should have terrified me. But it didn’t. It made him look savage, untamed and dangerously beautiful.
Heat flooded low in my belly, shooting down to my core as I fought away images of him fucking me in this very boat.
His eyes burned into mine, wild and unyielding.
“You want to know what I almost said back in that torture chamber?” His voice was gravel and smoke, his breath hot against my lips. “I wanted to tell you I’m so fucking in love with you it’s eating me alive. Every second, all I think about is dragging you into me, burying myself so deep no one could ever doubt you’re mine.”
His grip tightened on my throat, but not enough to hurt.
My pulse thundered beneath his palm.
“I love you, Aurelia.” The words tore out of him like a vow and a threat all at once. “I want to brand my name on your skin. I want to kiss you until your lungs burn and you’re begging for my air. I want to fuck you so hard, so completely, that the life we made inside you feels every desperate beat of how much I need you.”
Oh my God. Thayne just said he loved me!
His forehead dropped to mine, both of us breathing raggedly, the boat swaying beneath us like the world itself was tilting.
“Say something,” he rasped, fingers flexing against my throat. “Tell me you feel it too, or tell me to let go. But don’t fucking ignore me again.”
“Prove it,” I whispered, the words scraping out like a dare, my voice trembling with everything I refused to hide anymore.
Thayne’s eyes darkened, his pupils blown wide until only a thin ring of black and a thinner shade of green remained.
The hand at my throat flexed, his thumb dragging slowly and deliberately along my racing pulse.
“Oh, Ara,” he growled, the sound of my name rolling off his tongue like a blade wrapped in velvet. “Don’t tempt me like that. Not after everything we just crawled out of. Right now, gentle isn’t even in my blood.”
I leaned into his grip, just enough to feel the delicious threat of it, and let my tongue trace my lower lip, tasting salt and river mist and him.
“Who said I want gentle?” I breathed.
The sound that tore from his chest was half-laugh, half-snarl. In one brutal surge he hauled me closer, crushing my body to his until the hard, wet heat of him branded itself through my soaked clothes.
His mouth crashed onto mine without warning, no softness, just raw, starving need.
He kissed me like punishment and prayer at once, teeth scraping my lip, tongue thrusting deep, claiming every gasp I gave him.
I kissed him back just as viciously, my nails digging into the blood-streaked muscle of his shoulders, dragging him impossibly closer.
His hand slid from my throat down my spine, fingers splaying over the small of my back before gripping my ass hard enough to bruise.
He yanked my hips flush against the rigid length straining behind his trousers, grinding once so I felt every thick inch of what I’d unleashed.
“Feel that?” he rasped against my mouth.
“That’s what you do to me. Every fucking time.”
I rolled my hips in answer, drawing a guttural curse from him that vibrated straight to my core.
The boat rocked dangerously beneath us, but neither of us cared. His free hand shoved under my shirt, his calloused palm skating up my ribs to cup my breast, thumb flicking over the aching peak until I moaned into his mouth.
“Still want proof?” he demanded, pinching just hard enough to make me arch. “Because once I start, Ara, I’m not stopping until you’re screaming my name loud enough for the whole goddamn river to hear who you belong to.”
My lips parted, ready to surrender, ready to beg him to take everything he’d promised, when the night ripped open above us.
Whump-whump-whump.
The heavy, rhythmic thud of rotor blades sliced through the darkness, close enough to rattle the river and send cold vibrations straight through my bones.
Thayne froze against me, his hand still fisted in my shirt, his hips still pinning mine to the bench.
His head snapped up, eyes scanning the black sky quickly.
“They found us,” he whispered, the words barely audible over the growing roar.
My heart, already racing from him, now slammed with pure terror. I twisted in his grip, searching the darkness for the searchlight I knew would come any second.
“How?” The question tore out of me. “How did they find us this fast?”
Thayne’s jaw clenched, his blood-streaked face going hard as stone. The heat between us didn’t vanish, it twisted and sharpened, becoming something edged with danger.
His fingers dug into my hip, anchoring me even as the chopper’s floodlight swept the river a quarter-mile upstream, painting the water in harsh white.
“I don’t know,” he murmured. “But they’re not taking you from me. Not tonight. Not ever.”
The light swung closer, the roar deafening now. He yanked me down with him, flattening us both to the bottom of the boat, his body a heavy, protective shield over mine.
His mouth brushed my ear, hot and urgent.
“Hold on to me, Ara. Whatever happens, you hold on.”
The searchlight sliced across the water, inches from our hull, and I buried my face in his blood-slick neck, heart pounding so hard I felt it in my teeth.
We weren’t done, it was obvious now. We were just getting started.