Page 117 of Ashen Torment

Again.

He turns his face toward me, and it’s him.

Evander.

The Viscount of Rochefort.

The emblem of composure is beneath me with his mouth agape, black hair disheveled, a look of defiance and those blue eyes.

Those eyes, looking at me as if they knew everything.

The heat gathers in my stomach and my breathing grows labored. My cock swells even more.

“Say something...” I snarl against his back.

But he is silent.

I thrust again. I feel him clenching around me. My jaw tightens to the point that I feel my teeth grinding together.

“Talk to me,” I say, stifling my moans.

But he is silent still.

The pleasure explodes without warning, straining my body, arching me; my hands sink into his hips with excess. My pelvis jerks once, and once more, as if I could exhaust myself of everything, of him, and yet in vain. My throat opens in a moan that remains voiceless.

Only a choked gasp, a heavy sound, like a lament. His face remains before me even when I close my eyes, even when I reopen them. Indigo eyes, fixed.

My fingers stay clamped on the wrong skin until it turns white.

A little more. Just to feel something.

Anything.

He doesn’t go away.

He is still there.

At the back of my tongue.

Behind my eyelids.

Under my fingernails.

The body turns slightly and Clara lets a smile bloom that pierces me. “It was pleasant. Whoever you believed me to be, it matters little.”

I freeze. The sentence stops between my ears and in my chest, and for an instant, everything stands still. My hands run through my hair, fingers gripping tight, trying to gather my wits.

“Forgive me,” I mumble.

I straighten my coat with quick gestures, the high collar brushing my jaw, and I head for the exit.

“Wait!” Her voice detaches from the gloom, warm, caressing, but I do not turn.

Le Rêve remains behind me, pulsing like a sick and conscious lung. I button my collar up to cover my throat, trying to protect myself from the heat that still envelops me, from the burning that grips my skin. My hands are damp, sweat along my forehead, my sex still tense, hypersensitive.

The memory of the scene seems to cling to my skin, impossible to shake. The Viscount’s face is still vividly there.

I just imagined lying with him.