Steam billowed, fogging up the bathroom. Scalding hot water burned my skin a bright red. I scrubbed and scrubbed every inch of me with a worn bristled brush. I couldn't wash him from me, couldn't scrub his vile touch from my skin... Touching me there...

Spread your legs and let me in—

My breath became more frantic, the tears never ceasing—I poured myself into the motion of scrubbing hard at my flesh. The basic bar of harsh soap stung my raw skin. But I didn't feel the pain. I only felt Danne's hands pawing at my body. No matter how much I tried to get the feel of him off of me, it still remained, like a brand, a tattoo.

Something hard, leaking stickiness, pressed against my stomach—

I hadn't been able to get away. How stupid had I been to think that I could keep myself safe? That nothing and no one could touch me if I didn't want them to. That I was strong enough to fight back even without my magic. Danne had ensnared me, tasted me, and I hadn't been clever or smart, and certainly not strong enough to get myself free.

I'd been so close, so close to losing myself completely within those minutes of his body trapping mine against the floor of the limousine. Those fingers of his violently ripping my panties—

If Graysen had arrived one minute, one second, later—

An anguished sob tore from me.

A voice, softly spoken. "Nelle?"

I jerked, whirling around, and stumbled into the corner of the shower to collapse, sliding down to huddle into a trembling ball. The brush slipped from my shaky grip and clattered dully onto the plastic floor of the tub.

Earlier, I'd discovered the cabin's water was heated by the kitchen's fire range using a clever series of pipes. Graysen stepped into the full force of the water, ignoring the face he was dressed. He flinched at the searing heat but kept moving toward me. Concern creased his features.

The spray from the showerhead diluted the dried blood crusting his hair and the tainted water dripped down his face to splatter and swirl at the bottom of the tub, rivulets of red running between my toes. His outward wounds were healed but mine were inside of me. I'd carry them with me forever.

He leaned over, pushed the handle to stop the water flow, and crouched in front of me. Pushing aside the strands of messy wet hair that had fallen across my eyes, his thumb brushed over my cheekbone gently before his fingers cupped my chin to tilt my face up. And yet...I couldn't look him in the eye. I lowered my lashes and stared askance at the cracked yellow tiles and the shadows the glow of candlelight sent skittering across the shower walls.

His fingers made a trilling motion beneath my chin. I knew what he wanted...me to bring my gaze back to his.

When it became apparent I wouldn't, he sighed softly and gathered me into his arms. Picking me up, he carried me from the bathroom, tugging a towel from a shelf on his way out. I was nothing but a stiff doll, letting him place me back on my feet beside the bed and rearrange my limbs as he carefully dried my body and towel-dry my wet locks of hair. I caught a glimpse of myself in a dusty mirror, at the patchy rawness of my skin, at the tear-blotched face and dead eyes.

He picked me up again and lay me on the soft, lumpy mattress, tucking the blankets around my body. I watched from the corner of my eye with detached interest as he undressed, peeling the sodden adamere armor free and tossing it into a messy pile on the bathroom's wooden floor, until he stood completely naked. So different from Danne's soft body, Graysen was all hard muscle, lined with ink, and scarred with hate.

Fresh tears heated my eyes as I stared through a watery haze at those whip marks.

Me...I'd done that to him.

He roughly dried himself, slung the towel around his hips, and picked up his clothes, wringing them out. Then he left the bedroom, and I heard his movements out by the fire, hanging the armor out to dry.

When he silently padded back in, unease wound around me like the creeping of ivy, thinking he was going to get into bed with me. I didn't know if I wanted anyone near me, touching me.

Instead, he pulled a spare blanket from a cupboard, wrapped the threadbare tartan around his shoulders, and sat down in a wooden chair by the window, settling in for the night to keep watch. The bastard-sword leaned against his outer-thigh and silver moonlit rays glanced over his broad shoulders, casting his face in darkness. I couldn't see his expression, but his eyes glowed bright and fierce.

There were candles burning on the windowsill and on top of the utilitarian chest of draws. He'd also pulled the curtains open to let moonlight flood inside.

Light. He knew I needed light in the darkness.

"Sleep, Nelle," he said quietly.

I didn't think I could sleep. But I did.

Exhaustion tugged me under and I fell into inky darkness. Darkness and fear—

Fat wet lips, teeth that clashed against mine, a tongue that speared.

And that stench, his excited panting breath washing over my face, into my mouth, pinching my nostrils.

A broken laugh at my fight, my struggle.

Fingers pawing at me—

Violently twisting and thrusting—

I thrashed and flailed to get free. A strangled sound, more animal than human—horrible wet rasping sounds came from somewhere. Me! That was me!

I tried to suck in oxygen. I couldn't...I couldn't...I couldn't get free of the arms pinning me down. "LET ME GO! LET ME GO!"

Someone was shouting my name, "Nelle!" from somewhere afar. So familiar, his voice was familiar and safe.

"Nelle, you're dreaming! It's a nightmare!"

I pried my sticky eyes open.

Graysen...it was Graysen.

He leaned across my body with his hands clasping my arms, trying to shake me awake.

I heard it—

A deafening noise, like jostling wood.

A groaning. A yawning. A cracking.

But that wasn't Graysen shaking me. It was the bed...the walls...the entire room shuddering and quaking.

Windowsills creaked.

Glass warped and buckled.

And still, I fought Graysen. Fought him until I had nothing left. Until I was heavy-limbed and whimpering with fatigue, and my dark might extinguished. The fierce tremors faded and died.

"I've got you, Nelle. Breathe. Take it slow and steady." He took my hand, pressing it to his chest. My fingers spread across the rough flesh of the wyrm branded above his heart. "Feel my heartbeat." He slowed his heartbeat down. A steady pulse, sure and true. And this time, it was my heart that synced with his. "I've got you," he kept whispering, his eyes wide and locked on mine.

I was here, in the cottage by the lake. The panic loosened its claws on my senses, and I dragged in a breath along with Graysen's indelible scent of cedar that soothed the tightness inside my chest. "I'm okay, I'm okay," I rasped, my throat raw from screaming. The bitter embrace of the dark dreamworld still trying to pull me back under. The cloying memory of Danne's depraved excitement still wrapped itself around me like a filthy blanket, and a shudder worked its way down my spine.

Graysen climbed into bed and drew me into his side. "Brave, sweet liar," he murmured. An arm slid underneath my waist to band around my back, the other wound higher, his hand gently clasping the nape of my neck to press my face gently into his chest. He hooked a leg over mine. He was caging me in and I needed him too.

I curled into him. Hands that only moments ago pushed, shoved, and hit out at him, clutched at him desperately. He murmured soothing words that meant nothing and everything, stroked my hair, and held me tight, while my hot tears fell and wet his chest. I cried until there was nothing left. Until I was nothing but bone and sinew, barely held together.

"Tell me what he did. Did he—"

I shook my head furiously. I sucked in a ragged breath and let it out, and I told Graysen what Danne had done, my voice hitching and the words breaking apart, how his hands had touched and tasted me. The whorls of inked wyrmfire and Ukkenskrit tales flexed and strained as leashed rage locked the muscles in his arms and chest taut. But after I'd told him everything that happened in the limousine, after a long stretch of silence where the only thing that could be heard in the shifting shadows of the bedroom was our breathing and his hand whispering through my hair, his voice was soft and gentle. "Don't let it break you, Nelle."

"I think it already has." I think Danne Pelan already did.

"What he did, what he was going to..." and even Graysen couldn't finish that vile sentence, instead clearing his throat. I wasn't sure if he couldn't voice those thoughts or wanted to spare me. But we both knew what Danne was going to do to me, what he was trying to push inside my body. "Danne was dead the moment he thought he could steal you." He brushed the tears from beneath my eyes, one at a time. "You saved me, Nelle."

A bitter laugh croaked from my throat. Me? I'd simply let Danne go. That was nothing, just a conscious decision to unfurl my fingers. It was nothing compared to what Graysen had done for me. He'd thrown himself off a cliff, even knowing his mother's blood gift might not have been enough to save him. He'd been prepared to give up his life to save my own.

"You saved me," I replied, sniffling.

He huffed a laugh. "No, lovely, wicked Wychthorn, I owe you my life. If it weren't for you...for that fury you burn with—"

I reached up the placed my hand across his mouth, I didn't want to hear how close I'd come to losing him completely.

I was empty. My mind was foggy and it was so hard to even think. All I could do was feel. I hated what I'd felt. Hated that it was Danne's touch still on me and not Graysen's.

"Make it go away," I whispered, brushing my mouth along the curve of his bicep, tasting his skin with my teeth.

Graysen's arms banded tighter around me. "How?"

"Make me feel...something, anything. Burn his touch from me." I squeezed my eyes shut, only to flick them wide open as soon as Danne's face, twisted with foul thoughts, filled my mind. I tipped my face up to meet Graysen staring down at me, the golden flecks in his black eyes shimmering like stars in the night sky. "Make me remember you."

Sweat-dampened hair was stuck to my forehead and he brushed the locks aside, tucking them behind an ear. "If you're sure—"

"I need you," I whispered, desperation lacing my words.

Warmth seared through me where his lips found my forehead, kissing me right there, an answer and a promise. Then his mouth met mine in a sweet, reverent kiss.

I didn't know he could be tender. He softly kissed each of my eyelids, and my nose too, peppering tiny kisses over my entire face, down along my throat. And while he kissed me his hand stroked over my shoulder, back and forth. Gently. Carefully.

He rolled me over onto my back, and spread his muscular thighs on either side of my own, mapping my entire body with his hands, pressing open-mouthed kisses everywhere. He kissed every single inch of my skin, rolling me onto my front, to mark me with his lips and claim me as his own.

I didn't think I had it in me, I didn't think I could get aroused. But I did. Slowly, like air breathed onto smothered embers, I caught fire. A tentative flame that burned brighter. Heat warming every inch of me. Until I ignited.

Sensually, flipping me onto my back, he lowered himself and laced our hands together as he kissed me. His tongue swept in, a groan swiftly following as I kissed him back, stroking his tongue with my own.

"Where else Nelle?"

I tensed. Everywhere. His hands were everywhere. Trying to get inside me. The words caught tight in my throat. I couldn't push them out. He must have understood what I couldn't say aloud, what I begged him with my gaze. He kissed one corner of my mouth, then the other, his hand coasting along the gentle slope of my breast, down my stomach, to there.

I stiffened as soon as he cupped me, my breath coming in quick, shallow pants.

Suddenly I didn't know. I didn't know if I wanted him to.

"Let me do this for you," he murmured against my mouth.

And when I couldn't get my body to relax, he pulled back his arm, spreading his fingers wide to hover his hand above my forearm. So close, but not touching. My skin prickled, and a zinging sensation washed over my flesh as he drifted his open palm lower, skimming the length of my arm. "Just you, Nelle. Only you. I felt it the very first time I met you. Even then I couldn't look away. Now...now I can't stay away."

My skin pebbled across my breasts and down my stomach as his hand glided back to there and his thumb started gently stroking my clit.

I gasped, bowing my spine. "Graysen?"

"It's me, beautiful."

Slowly, I relaxed into his touch in small increments.

I closed my eyes.

And all I saw was Danne's face.

My spine locked up. That warmth that had been flowing between us frosted over.

"Nelle," Graysen commanded. "Open your eyes, now."

I did, staring directly into his, and my vision of him wavered as tears filled my own, spilling from my lashes. I didn't stop them. I couldn't.

He kissed them tenderly from my cheeks.

I tasted my tears, the salt on his tongue as he brought his mouth back to mine.

An unnatural wild breeze caressed the room in gentle gusts that pulsed in time with my throbbing need, buffering the thin curtains, and rattling a vase upon a table. Graysen didn't stop nor acknowledge my untamed powers seeping outward. His thumb circled my clit, winding me tighter and tighter. I moaned into his mouth, my fingers clenching around his upper arms, my intimate walls rippling.

"That's it, beautiful. Let go."

"More," I gasped, thrusting my hips up. I wanted more. I wanted him inside me.

"Nelle, not—"

I smothered his protest with my mouth, winding my ankles around the backs of his legs, to shift my hips and tease him with my slick core. To nudge him just inside.

He groaned my name, deep and raw, unable to deny me. Rocking against me, he pushed in slowly, rocking, rocking, rocking, until my body accepted his. He entered gently, but I was still left with a burning sensation from his length, his thickness. A pain I welcomed. It scorched away the last touch of Danne's.

Graysen's thrusts were slow and deep and he didn't pick up his pace no matter how much I urged, how much I begged. A relentless torturous rhythm. A worship of his body to mine. Drawing us both closer and closer.

In the undulating shadows of the room, the candles guttering low, there was only his rough groans, my hitched breath, and the slap of sweat-slick skin. Words of love, unspoken but in the air, passed between us, shared with every kiss. Our languid march went on and on until I was swollen and aching and mindless, breaking me apart only to forge me into something new.

The orgasm didn't explode like the first time, wrenched from me, a gift Graysen had stolen for himself. This time I caught fire. The climax roared like wildfire, burning brush and scrub and tree, cleansing the earth. Leaving nothing behind but ashes. And I did what I'd sworn last time I wouldn't.

As I fell apart, unraveling beneath his body, I cried his name.

And the entire cottage jostled and yawned as it strained against its foundation before ending on a shuddering jolt that rocked the bed.

We lay in the moonlight, tangled and silent for a long, long time. Just our breath broke the silence in the cottage.

"Thank you," I whispered into the shadows.

His arms curled around me tighter, before his warm lips pressed against my temple. "Always, Nelle."

I fell asleep again.

I dreamed again.

Nightmares of endless pitch black.

And, like last time, Graysen roused me from the dream world. This time though, he smothered my screams with kisses and soothed away my terror with soft words. I fell into a heavy slumber within his embrace, my body strewn across his chest and my head tucked into the crook of his neck. His arms gently caging me.

This time I did not dream.