Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter Fifty-FourEvaline

Chapter Fifty-Four

Evaline

T he world blurred around me, but all I saw was him. My hand flattened over his chest as I studied him as if it was the first time all over again.

My eyes trailed up from his chest to his thick neck. To his strong jaw that was speckled with his usual amount of scruffy facial hair. Past the scar nicked through his bottom lip. His nose, the bump in the bridge of it, and finally up to his eyes.

I realized I was holding my breath, and that we’d made it indoors.

I knew he was taking me to our suite, to a room that we had been unable to share for so many weeks, but I still searched his eyes.

And even though he didn’t look back at me, even though he kept his gaze forward, intent on getting us privacy, I was sure, I could see gray.

Charcoal gray, again.

I heard a door open, then close, and then he was in front of the fireplace, sinking down until we kneeled in front of it together.

The room was dark, and as he reached for my face, fire ignited in the logs. He jolted, still not used to my Fire Casting.

The light cast a soft glow against his cheek, and I sat up on my knees while he sat back on his. I pressed my fingers against his face, turned it, every which way I could, and he held his breath. But no matter what I did, there was no trace of those crimson, Vasi eyes.

“It’s real?” I whispered, still unable to believe it. Convinced I was still in Mortithev, or that perhaps Vasier succeeded in sending me to the Night and I was dead, thinking that all of these moments were true.

“Yes, sweetheart,” Maddox breathed, gray eyes turning glassy as he looked back at me.

My face crumpled as I cried through my smile, and I threw myself forward until my lips were pressed against his.

I missed you. I breathed down the bond.

His response was immediate in my mind as his hands tightened on the back of my neck, on my jaw, holding me close.

I’m so sorry.

I shook my head and pulled away, far enough to look into his eyes and know they were still gray.

“Stop,” I whispered. “Don’t apologize.”

My mouth slid over his again, and his hands fell down to my waist, but then he was pulling away slightly, shaking his head.

“But I—”

“I know it was Gabriehl,” I cut him off. “And I know that you were bled dry. He crafted the perfect scenario for you to go too far. You have to know that you can’t be blamed.”

He swallowed and tilted his head forward to rest his forehead against mine.

“It was too far. And it was a mistake. He was baiting me, and I let him. I knew he was trying to make me angry, and I fell right into the trap.”

I shook my head. “It’s okay,” I whispered, my hands falling from his cheeks and sliding down his neck.

He shivered. “I left you alone,” he whispered, then his eyes widened as he raised a hand to close over my right wrist. “I broke your wrist.”

“We both know it wasn’t you.”

He shook his head, and more tears filled his eyes, falling down his cheeks.

“It was horrible, Eva. Watching all of it—your pain when he broke it, your pain when you saw me, how you withered away—while I was hidden away in my own mind. To know you were suffering and there was nothing I could do to stop it.”

I pulled back and forced his teary eyes to meet mine.

“But you did stop it. You came back,” I whispered.

I wanted to know how he’d done it, but all I really wanted to know in this moment was one thing.

“He’s gone?” I whispered. “For good?”

Maddox’s throat bobbed. “He’s still in there, but locked away, like he always was before.”

I nodded, tried to hide my disappointment that he wasn’t totally gone, but smiled anyway.

“You did it.” I shook my head. “All on your own, no matter how many things I tried to do to help.”

“No, not on my own. Your blood helped, and Wyott and Cora and the others, they would come to talk to me. They reminded me of who I was, and it all helped me to take control.”

I reached forward to kiss him again.

I love you. I whispered down the bond. Please don’t ever leave me again.

I felt the way his brows furrowed against mine, and the soft press of his lips.

Never, again. It’s you and I, always.

I nodded and pulled myself up into his lap, planting each knee on either side of him despite the many skirts of my dress that tried to force us back from one another.

Always . I promised back.

His lips trailed down my jaw, down to my neck, and he rested his face against my shoulder and wrapped his arms around me.

“I missed you,” he whispered against my skin.

I clenched my eyes shut, face pressed against the side of his.

“I missed you so much it hurt,” I said, and couldn’t help the waver in my voice.

His arms tightened around me even further, and I didn’t know how it was possible.

“Wyott told me all of it,” he said softly after a moment, and I felt his thumb caress the bare skin of my shoulder. “Everything that you did, to bring me back.”

I nodded against his hair. “I’d do it all again. I’d take all the same risks,” I whispered, and he pulled back, brows furrowed.

“No.” His eyes were fierce as they searched both of mine. “Never again. From now on, neither of us risks anything for the other. Because we will do everything—fight, live, die —by each other’s side.”

I smiled and nodded. “I promise.”

He smiled, and then his eyes dilated. He looked down between us. “You’re covered in blood,” he murmured, as he ran his hand down my shoulder, my arm, down to my wrist.

“I don’t care,” I said before I kissed him.

And this kiss was different than the others tonight. It was still soft and sweet, but there was more urgency, an undercurrent of intent. We had been apart for too long. Too much had happened—there had been too many risks to our lives—for us to ever again forget what we meant to each other. How much we wanted, and needed, one another. And that intent, deep below, sprung to the surface as I slid my hands into the collar of his shirt, and pulled.

He groaned against my lips, but his own hands sprawled on my shoulders, on my back—bare from the dress. When his fingertips brushed the edge of my corset, he tugged the ties and then grasped the back panel and tore through them, just as he had on our first night together.

I took a deep breath from his lips as he did so, and he filled the space with his tongue.

My moan was stifled by his lips, and even with the corset removed I couldn’t completely breathe, but I didn’t care. If breath was the cost of not removing my lips from his, from not having to spend a second more with the pain of never knowing if I’d feel them against me again, then I’d pay it, happily.

Maddox seemed to be just as desperate, hands dipping into the back of my dress to shove it down and away from my body. Fingers sliding down my spine, pressing into my skin to hold me to him.

I fumbled over the buttons of his shirt, the entire row of them down his abdomen, but I was too impatient and too unwilling to pull away to see them properly, and finally pulled the panels apart until the buttons popped away, some hitting my own chest, others snapping across the granite floor.

Maddox chuckled against me but dutifully shrugged the shirt off.

My hands slipped over his skin, over his arms and chest. I felt the ridges of a few of his new scars, the ones he’d gotten during his torture in Mortithev.

And I was reminded that I was happy I’d killed that Vasi.

Time may have ticked by fast, or slow, I wasn’t sure. All I could see was the firelight across his dark skin and the way it twinkled in his gray eyes. All I could hear was the roar of the fire and the heft of our breaths.

Maddox rose up onto his knees and brought me with him.

“Stand,” he muttered against my lips and I did as he bid, hands falling into his hair as he pulled the loosened dress down my torso, and his lips followed its trail close behind.

My head tipped back until my face was presented to the heavens, and I couldn’t help the whispered prayer that slipped through my lips.

“Thank you, Gods.”

He shifted the dress down past my hips, and again his lips followed. He kissed down the column of my thighs, and when the dress was piled around my knees, he slowly and silently curled a hand around the back of my leg, lifting my foot free of the pool of fabric. He held my knee up, kissing along my inner thigh, then down my calf, taking my holstered weapons off as he went, tossing them out of the way.

My breaths came fast with anticipation and I held onto his shoulders for balance as he set one foot down outside the cage of the dress, and then did the same with the other. When I stood naked in front of him, save for the blood that still coated my arms, he looked up at me.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he whispered, resting his chin against my stomach. “Not like this.”

His eyes drifted to my breasts that hung above him, and then back to my eyes, then to my lips.

“I thought I’d die in Mortithev,” I whispered back to him, then watched as pain twisted his features and hatred flashed in his eyes.

He tilted his head, placed a kiss on my stomach, and moved his hands to my hips. He guided me until the cushion of the chaise hit the back of my legs.

“I want to never take a moment with you for granted,” he said and though his voice was soft his eyes tracked me with a desperate hunger as I lowered myself to sit, and he kneeled before me.

“Me either,” I whispered back, barely able to control my breath at what his next move might be.

Standing on his knees while I sat before him, his eyes were at my level, and he moved forward to press his lips to mine.

“I love you,” he whispered against them.

“I love you,” I murmured as he pulled away.

Usually our hunger for one another was uncontrolled, and heady. And while I saw that hunger in his eyes, that desperation in the shake of his voice when he spoke, his movements were slow. Deliberate.

Agonizing.

He pulled back and maintained eye contact when his hands met my knees and pushed them apart.

My heart thundered in my chest, my breaths shook from my lips, and my mind went light with all the want that raged through me.

Slowly, his eyes slid from mine and lowered to look at me, look at what sat between my legs and how it begged for him.

His hands shook where they clenched my thighs and I watched as his tongue darted out to slide along his lower lip like a starved man prepared for a last meal.

My body was coming undone just by the sight of him, I couldn’t wait for all of the foreplay.

“Please, Maddox,” I whispered. “Don’t make me wait.”

My hands were pulling at his shoulders, and while he straightened and leaned forward to kiss me, he did not take off his pants, or pull me from the seat.

Instead, he slid his hands up to my hips as his lips moved against mine.

“You don’t know how long I’ve agonized over this, over whether I’d get to see you again, touch you again,” he murmured against my lips. “Over the images the Vasi showed me, of what he wanted to do with you,” the growl in his lips slipped through easily and I trembled at the sound of it. He pulled back, just enough to show me those gray eyes, and how they darkened with lust.

“Please, don’t make me go faster. Don’t make this short. Don’t make me surrender the thousand kisses I want to lay across your body, or the hundred moans I want to hear slip through your lips. Please, let me take my time, because for so long, I thought there was none left.”

Tears were crawling down my face by the end of it, both from love and desperate need, but I only nodded and held my breath as his hands on my hips tightened, and he pulled me to the edge of the cushion.

Maddox wasn’t exaggerating about the thousand kisses, because I was falling apart at each of them and he hadn’t even touched me where I needed him to yet. He started on my calves, lifted them, and turned to each side, kissed up and down them, and then up my thighs, hands following behind. He switched, and it felt as if hours had passed when he finally settled himself between my legs, exactly where I desperately wanted him, but even then, he looked up at me first.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Maddox,” I pleaded, looking down at him.

His lips only lifted into a smile, his eyes only went a darker shade of black, before he tipped his head forward and his tongue met my clit.

The anticipation had built up so dangerously high that at the one slow slip of his tongue, I nearly came undone.

I threw myself back against the chaise, tried to hold onto it for support, as he lowered himself and pulled my thighs over his shoulders until the only space left between them was enough for just his head.

He swirled his tongue around my clit, watching me, but then—mercifully—he lowered until his tongue slid along my entrance.

His eyes clenched shut and a growl ripped through his chest. It vibrated all the way up into where his lips, his tongue, met my skin.

“Oh, Gods,” I gasped out but couldn’t pull my eyes away from the sight of him, at the way a black curl bounced over his forehead with his movements or the way the halo of firelight that cast behind him made him look like a God.

“They’ve given you enough gifts,” Maddox said, eyes lifting to mine again as he pulled away only far enough to speak. “Tonight the only gifts you will receive are from me, and the only name you need to remember is mine.”

His words caused another swell of moans to bubble up from my mouth, and the immediate flick of his tongue pulled a gasp from deep in my chest.

His tongue moved against me, inside me, before he touched a finger to my entrance, and my entire body shuddered as he slid it in.

“Maddox,” I gasped out, and his immediate rumble of satisfaction sounded against my clit.

It had been so long since he had touched me, so long since I’d felt anything that was so close to life and so close to death, yet was somehow neither. It took only a few strokes of his finger expertly moving against that spot inside of me, and I was unraveling around him.

He didn’t slow, he didn’t stop, he only continued and looked up at me as I shrieked through the orgasm, thankful that this room had soundproofed walls.

As soon as I finished he rose, slipping the finger in his mouth, hungry eyes still watching me as I twitched and gasped and melted into the chaise below me.

The heat of that gaze ignited another fire in me quicker than I thought possible, and with it came renewed strength. I sat up and reached for him, winding my hands into his hair. I pushed him down and climbed on top of him so that he was forced to lay back, to sprawl out on the rug, on my dress, its fabric a bed of crimson beneath us. He pulled me tight to him, and my lips were on his before we hit the floor.