49
HARLOW
close the last few feet of open space before the woods behind HavenwoodI House at a full sprint. I wait to hear footsteps pursuing me or alarm bells— anything that might alert people to my escape—but there’s nothing but the scratch of branches overhead.
Moonlight casts creeping shadows on the ground, but I’m running so fast I barely have time to register them.
Low branches tear at my hair as I sprint through the forest, feet pounding, dirt flying up behind me in clumps.
The thing about surviving the inevitable horrors is knowing you’ll be there at the end with all the worst monsters who have done whatever it takes to endure.
I can’t believe it was just a few nights ago that Henry lay beside me on the bathroom floor and stroked my back while I cried and writhed in pain. I can’t believe I knew he was a grifter when I met him but I let my guard down anyway. I can’t believe I’m still dumb enough to trust a man.
I used to think I was justice, but now I’m afraid I’m just the soft touch born of many brutal beatings. Henry was so gentle. Some stupid, indestructible part of me wanted to believe that was the real him.
He made me remember what it is to want. He summoned this forgotten longing to press my chest against someone else’s and whisper, “Love me”— as if one command from my lips could summon enough devotion to fill my hollow ribs.
This mistake is an echo of every failed attempt at intimacy—of being so knife-edged that no lover could touch my heart without coming away bloody.
I remember how badly I wanted a love I could feel. And then I learned not to want that because pain is a feeling, too.
Thank Divine Harvain I’m getting out now. If ever there was a time for good fortune, this is it.
My body is alive and energized from the run, but a squeal in the trees to
my left draws me up short.
Bleeding woods! It’s hunt night.
In my rush to flee, I forgot. I’m in the hunt territory and wearing this stupid white dress, which means I’m fair game for anyone looking for prey.
Henry’s warning about Stefan echoes through my mind. Is Stefan also out here, hunting for blood?
I bite back a hysterical laugh as I spin, trying to get my bearings. There’s no simple way back to Lunameade. I have to go for speed, and if all else fails, I have my dagger still clenched in my fist.
My body springs into action, legs churning to propel me toward the mountain wall. I wish I weren’t wearing this flimsy dress that keeps tangling in my legs and snagging on thorns and branches.
It was always going to be like this. Running was the first survival skill I learned. I’ve been doing it for years—circling the garden perimeter with Gaven at my side, taunting me to go faster or do just one more lap.
The thought of Gaven sends my head spinning. He always seems to find me eventually, but now he’s probably just as at risk as I am.
Wild fear pumps through my blood. I doubt Henry is dead. For all my imagining, I still don’t know how to kill him. If I had something bigger than a dagger, I could have at least tried disembowelment.
A shiver creeps up the back of my neck. Someone’s close. I feel it before I hear it—the heavy sense of eyes on me—of being prey stalked by a predator.
My heart pounds and my blood rushes in my ears, the fear wild and completely uncontrollable.
An arm catches me around the waist and a hand clamps over my mouth and muffles my startled shriek. My back slams against a hard chest and my blade goes flying from my hand.
“You fucking stabbed me.” Henry’s voice is low and full of menace, but I go limp with relief.
My husband chuckles. The sound is bitter. “Oh, no. I’m not deliverance, lovely. I am that from which there is no escape. Not anymore.”
I try to scratch at him, but I can’t find any of his skin.
“You wanted to be caught, didn’t you?” He yanks my hair to bare my neck and brushes his lips over my thundering pulse.
“I wanted to kill you. Was my blade in your chest not obvious enough?” I snap.
He smiles against my skin. “You’re too well-trained to have missed my heart.”
“You’d have to have a heart to be maimed by such a blow. I aimed elsewhere in the hope of hitting something more vital.”
He sighs into my ear. “And yet that is an end I’ve met before and cannot meet again, thank the Divine.”
I stop my fighting. “They stabbed you in the heart?”
“They did what they had to.”
I squirm, but his arm wrapped around my ribs has me in an almost bruising hold and his other hand is fisted in my hair.
“There’s no getting away now.” He clicks his tongue. “I told you never to run from me, Harlow. I know which story you heard at the Raining Star Bar.”
The meaning of his words hits me. My mind flies to the tale of the hunt and the biting and the public fucking—the complete possession. Henry is Deathless, and he’s caught me here during a hunt. They aren’t mindless animals like the Drained, but they still have a wild side and a taste for blood.
I shake my head—because as exhausted as I am, as afraid as I am, I’m more curious and exhilarated. I’m not ready to stop fighting.
“If I drink from you now, you’re mine.”
I shudder against him, warmth rushing through my body in a mixture of hate and desire. How these two feelings can be so close and so conflicting is beyond my comprehension.
Henry skims his nose from the junction of my shoulder up my neck, breathing me in. “Is that why you ran out here on a hunt night, Harlow? You wanted me to claim you. You wanted to belong to me, but you couldn’t say
it.”
“I hate you,” I growl.
“Hmm. Perhaps you wanted someone else to claim you. Should I leave you here and see who comes to taste you? You only have to say the word and I won’t do this.”
I still. He’s giving me a way out.
It’s on the tip of my tongue. Stars. I could surrender here, and for all his lies, I know he would master this animal side of himself. But I don’t want to.
He chuckles. “Oh, you don’t like that idea? That’s good because I’m going to fuck you into the ground and sink my fangs into you when you come.” I shiver, clenching my thighs together, and Henry wrenches my head back farther so his dark blue eyes meet mine. “Do you know the only thing that tastes better than blood laced with fear?” He nips at my neck, not enough to break the skin, but enough to make me twitch. “Blood laced with pleasure and fear, and I want all of yours. You’ve stabbed me and made me chase you out here and now I’m going to take what I want.”
I want to run. I want to stay right here. I want him to claim me, and also I want to take my chance in the Drained Wood.
“If you hadn’t stabbed me, I would have let you run, made a game of it— maybe I wouldn’t have fucked you,” Henry growls. “Maybe I wouldn’t have made it official, but now I’ve lost a bunch of blood and I’m hungry and your scent has been torture since we met.”
Goosebumps rush along my skin as his breath ghosts over the pulse point
in my neck.
“Should I bite you here?” he murmurs.
He releases my head and slides his hand slowly down the front of my body, cupping my right breast. “Or here? I know how you love when I bite your nipples.”
His hand continues its slow path down my stomach, over my hip, until he grabs my inner thigh. “Or here. I think that will be your favorite.”
“Let me go,” I rasp, but it doesn’t even sound convincing to me.
I don’t want to give him this win. How can I have escaped my parents’ control only to end up in someone else’s? Can I not just be free?
And yet, being with him doesn’t feel like a trap. I know better, but I am so tired of fighting, and I can’t even begin to touch the betrayal I feel that he kept this from me. I feel like I’ve wandered into the forest too far and can’t find my way out. This is so dangerous and I want it.
Henry spins me suddenly and pulls me into a kiss. I want to scratch and claw at him—to shove him away and run forever—pursued but not caught.
Instead, I kiss him back. I open, letting him take what he wants. His shirt is slick with his blood. I press against the place I stabbed him. I want to hurt him in any way I can. I want him to feel sorry.
Henry groans and kisses me harder.
I have never met a man who liked this monstrous side of me. This is what I’ve wanted the whole time. Not the soft, delicate things. I want this raw, unbridled need.
He picks me up and I wrap my legs around his waist. He slams my back into a tree trunk, and I bite his lip hard enough to draw blood. I lick it away, and that breaks all of his control.
“Fuck, Harlow,” he groans, kissing down my neck, rocking his hips
against me. “I can’t be gentle.”
But I don’t want gentle.
He shoves a hand under my dress and rips my panties away before fumbling with his pants. A second later, his cock is pressed against me. He rubs it over my clit, and I shudder. I swear it feels different, but he just waits.
“Anything to say, lovely?”
It takes my brain a full minute to understand he’s giving me a chance to say the word and stop him. Stars. The part of me that wants control above anything else screams the safe word in my head.
But the stronger part of me that wants so badly to surrender just once wins.
Henry searches my face for any hesitation. I narrow my eyes, and that’s all it takes. That small hint of a challenge and he thrusts his cock inside me to the hilt. I grunt a guttural sound from being overwhelmed by the fullness.
Something is different—he’s big, but not the kind of big that edges on painful.
“Does it ache?” Henry asks with a smug smile that shows off a hint of sharp fangs. “Claiming makes the teeth come out and my cock swell. I’m in my full form for you, teeth, cock, and all. So I can be sure there’s no part of you I don’t reach.”
He offers no time to adjust, immediately pulling out and thrusting in again. His hands on my hips are bruising, holding me in place and forcing me to take every inch of him.
There’s a satisfied, glazed look in his eyes, like he knew I’d be wet enough to take him, but it makes me hotter that he wants me so much that he doesn’t care. It feels good to be out of control—to let Henry take over. His sharp teeth scrape down my neck, and my whole body clenches.
Henry grunts a curse.
There’s something about being able to control the pain in my body, to see
the place it’s coming from, to feel it given with pleasure. I’m not in control, but somehow choosing to surrender makes me feel powerful. This is a thing I can choose to give away without risking losing something, or maybe it’s that I’m losing something I never wanted.
Henry growls into the curve of my neck as he picks up his pace. My skin is covered in goosebumps, my nipples so sensitive they ache. Pleasure rushes through my blood. It’s freeing to be wanted like this, to be taken without judgment.
With no warning, Henry spins and takes me to the ground. He pulls back for a moment and rips my white dress down the center, baring the green lace undergarments.
He pauses to take me in, his eyes passing slowly over the lace. He yanks the cups down and tweaks my nipples. I arch off the ground and groan, and his grin turns feral. Then he strikes, biting my right nipple.
My scream turns into a groan as he thrusts into me and sucks the nipple hard. He does the same thing to the left nipple, and I’m stunned with pleasure and pain and fear that I’m his now. I wait for something to happen—some sign that I’m not myself.
“I didn’t draw blood,” he says, pinching the sore flesh.
He pulls back and thrusts into me, his gaze fixed to where we’re joined.
He does it again, harder, and I slide along the leafy ground, twigs and stones
scraping the backs of my arms.
“You look so good taking me like this.”
I should be freezing in the cold night, but I’m burning up, lust coursing through my blood at the wild pleasure of being wanted like this.
A twig breaks somewhere to our left, and I turn to squint into the darkness.
Henry leans over me, pushing my left leg higher and sliding into me deeper. My pussy clenches so hard.
“That’s right,” he whispers in my ear. “Anyone is welcome to watch.
Does that make you hot, Harlow? Someone watching me fuck you?”
I clench harder around him, and he growls into my collarbone.
“You’re mine now, and I’m never letting you go—but maybe I’ll let someone else use you for a bit when I’m done.”
The thought of Henry letting someone else fuck me—of him watching someone else use me—makes me so hot. I’m dripping down my thighs.
“Oh, you like that? Maybe I’ll let the lot of them take turns using you
until I’m ready to fill you up again?”
I moan loudly.
“Not tonight, lovely. Tonight, you’re mine alone to use however I like.”
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I like that idea. I want to belong to someone—to be taken care of—and I don’t think I could take tenderness.
Perhaps that’s what always felt discordant in my relationship with Bea. She was so gentle with me when I needed her to be as harsh and demanding as the rest of the world.
Henry can meet me where I am. His violence isn’t happening to me. It’s happening for me. He understands implicitly what I can take and what I can’t, and I am terrified of him—not because he’s a monster, but because he knows me.
I’m so close, every muscle in my body wound tighter than ever before. I feel like I’m going to break, but Henry doesn’t let up.
He groans into my neck. “Let go, lovely. You’re going to come and make it official. I want to claim you.”
I’ve been fighting it so hard because it’s what I do. I fight.
According to the story, when I come, he’ll bite me and then I’ll be his.
The pleasure in my body is so intense, my vision is growing dotted. I’m right on the edge of a climax.
Henry’s teeth slice into my neck, the sharp sting stealing my breath. His canines withdraw, and he closes his lips over the puncture and draws my blood into his mouth. He shudders. The pain of the bite mixes with the strange tingling pleasure of being taken so completely, and I cry out as the orgasm washes over me.
He sucks harder on my neck, and pleasure races through my bloodstream, his hips pumping faster to draw out my release. My legs shake so violently I can barely keep them locked around his hips, but he thrusts into me harder.
Wave after wave of pleasure crashes over me, going on and on so long that my feet cramp and my body goes limp.
Henry groans, his hips jerking more erratically as he comes.
The two of us lie there, limbs tangled, hearts slowing. Warm blood trickles from the wound on my neck. Henry laps at it gently.
“Mine,” he growls, taking another long pull of my blood.
My pussy clenches again, and he shudders.
He chuckles into my neck. “Oh, was that not enough? Don’t worry. I’m not even close to being finished with you.”
I hate how smug he sounds. He licks up my neck and presses a kiss to the bite. The tingly feeling of his healing rushes over my skin, followed by the itch. He healed the bite.
“I only did it so I can get that same reaction when I bite you again,” he murmurs in my ear. “Maybe I’ll let some of the others bite you, too. Maybe I’ll make you fuck them.”
I clench around him again, and he chuckles. “Such a greedy little wife.
But not tonight. Not while I’m claiming you. I’m going to fuck that idea right out of your head.” He draws back and grabs my chin so I meet his eyes. “No one can do for you what I can.”
I shouldn’t push. He looks barely sated, still half-crazed, but I can’t help myself.
I lick my lips and smile. “Only one way to find out.”
His jaw ticks, and I expect him to bite me again. But a slow grin spreads over his face.
A strange feeling hits me in the chest. At first, I don’t recognize it. It feels like tingling, but then it sinks lower, rushing through my blood. It’s an ache —a need.
He clicks his tongue in mock concern. “What’s the matter, lovely?
Feeling the effects of being mine? Did I forget to mention that claiming can be a bit of an aphrodisiac? It will be more intense if I bite you again.”
Suddenly, I’m ravenous for him. I need his touch everywhere. I need him to bite me all over. I need him to consume me. Lust courses through me, burning like a fever, and I arch into him.
I hate him so much, and also, I’m ready to get on my knees and beg for him to do anything he wants to me.
He draws out of me and I whimper at the emptiness. I want to cry, and also, I want to strangle him for making me so needy.
“Kneel like a good little wife,” he taunts.
My body is trembling, my limbs wrung out from running and fucking, but I force myself up to kneel before him in supplication with my tattered dress
hanging from my arms.
“Beg.”
Even through the claiming haze, my defiance breaks through. “No.”
“Beg me to fuck your smart mouth or I’ll leave you aching and writhing in the dirt all night.”
“I know how to take care of myself,” I growl, sliding my hand between
my legs to try to ease the ache.
“None of that unless I allow it. You’re mine and I decide when and how you get your pleasure.”
Lust rushes through me. I am so disgusted with myself and so turned on. I don’t know how he knows these dark things that I don’t even know about myself, but I have never been so aroused in my life.
“Take off those shreds of clothing and open your mouth.” His voice is low, commanding, and I rush to obey.
I slide the dress off so I’m naked before him.
“Good girl,” he chides. I hate how the affirmation sends a shiver of pleasure through my body. “Hands behind your back.”
I do as he says, and he cups my cheek and tilts my chin up. His other hand tugs on my hair. The pain is grounding, cutting through the lusty haze.
Suddenly, I feel eyes on me from all sides. I can only see shadows in the darkness, but I know they’re there, watching. That awareness sends a rush of wet heat between my thighs, and I shift, trying to get some friction.
“You’d let them watch your wife naked?” I challenge.
“They like to watch a claiming—to know how much of you I own. They like to watch you struggle when you know deep down you want to belong to me. They like to see a proud woman humbled by need.” He grins and strokes his still-hard cock. “And so do I. Now open your mouth.”
I obey, staring at his enormous cock.
“Take a breath.”
I take a breath, and then he thrusts his cock in deep. It’s almost too big— my jaw aches from being forced so wide. I fight the urge to gag, holding his gaze as my eyes water. He holds himself in my throat.
“Divine damn me, that feels good,” he groans.
He draws out, and I sputter, then he thrusts back in again.
He fucks my mouth mercilessly, like he did my pussy. His roughness just keeps making me hotter and hotter. My skin feels too tight. I need to please him as badly as I need to be touched. My breasts ache, nipples painfully hard.
He groans, deep and guttural, and I almost come just from the sound of his satisfaction.
He thrusts again and holds himself there. My eyes burn with tears, and the urge to pull away, to draw in breath, grows more intense by the second. My vision grows spotty, but I stay where I am. He tightens his grip in my hair as if afraid I’ll draw away, but I don’t want to.
Finally, he pulls out, and I sputter and gasp for air before he thrusts back in deep.
He repeats it again and again, taunting me with his control, with my desire to please him, with the insane lust coursing through my body. He starts pumping faster and harder, his movements frenzied. Both hands come to the back of my head. He thrusts in as deep as he can go and grunts as he spills down my throat.
I swallow as much as I can. He slowly pulls back, taking a few shallow pumps as he curses and pulls my hair harder. I am right on the edge of finishing with him, but I feel too painfully empty.
I lick him clean, holding his gaze as I drag my tongue up his shaft.
Henry growls, shoving me onto my back in the dirt. He spreads my legs obscenely wide. I’m mortified as he licks the wetness coating my inner thighs.
He chuckles. “Poor little insatiable wife.”
Then he strikes: his teeth sink into my left inner thigh at the same time he plunges three thick fingers inside me. I scream. The pain and pleasure send me over the edge again and I come in a wet rush.
“You taste so fucking good when you’re mine,” he growls.
He pumps his fingers in and out faster and bites my other thigh. I arch off the ground. He sucks hard, and my blood rushes into his mouth. I run my hands down my aching skin. I need more. I need to be filled with him. It doesn’t matter that I’m sore. I need him to bite me all over and fuck me.
He flips me onto my hands and knees, then shoves my chest down to the ground. The pine needles on the forest floor prick my nipples.
“You look so good like this. Drenched and needy,” he says. He slaps my ass, the sting sharpening my senses.
Shadows move just past the tree line. There are even more people watching now.
Henry yanks both of my hands behind my back. Securing them in one fist, he grips my hip with the other and then pushes his thick cock inside me again.
It hurts. I’m swollen, exhausted, my muscles practically at the point of failure, but I can tell he’s going to fuck me as long as he wants.
He curses, gripping my wrists harder. “Doesn’t that feel right?” he says, his voice full of smug satisfaction. “It looks fantastic. You’re so tight, but you take me so well.”
I can do nothing but breathe, torn between pain and pleasure. I’m groaning—a deep, guttural sound that feels drawn up from the center of me.
“Keep your hands here. I’m going to fuck you like you need to be fucked now.”
He pushes in deeper, and I gasp for air.
“Mine,” Henry growls. He thrusts faster and harder, and I can barely brace against how deeply he’s fucking me now. I feel him everywhere. He releases my wrist and moves that hand around to my stomach to hold me in place as he pumps into me.
The pain finally eases. I’m so slick, and the sensation is taking me higher and higher.
The rough ground scrapes over my nipples and my hands claw at the dirt.
I scream as I come harder than I have in my entire life.
Right as I’m at the peak, Henry bends over me and bites my neck. He holds me in place with his teeth as he fucks me. The pain is searing, but I’m still clenching around him, my whole body shaking. It’s brutal, animalistic, but I want more.
He shifts forward, and his weight comes down on top of me, shoving his cock deeper inside me. I’m frenzied, screaming, coming, wanting more as he groans into my skin, his teeth sending a vibrating shiver through my body.
Finally, he withdraws his fangs and starts to drink. He growls, sucking harder and harder, taking more blood from me than just a sip.
Suddenly, the danger slams into me.
Henry fucks me savagely. I feel him growing thicker inside me. I sense the life force is rushing out of me and into him, and fear slices through me.
He’s going to kill me.
He groans, finally drawing his mouth away from the aching bite. “There it finally is. Fear. This is the perfect cocktail of you. Pleasure, lust, pain, and fear—and mine all at once.”
He bites the other side of my neck, pain lancing me as I start to struggle.
He chuckles as he drinks more of my blood. My heart thunders. My ears ring.
He sucks hard and fucks me even harder. The more I struggle, the more frenzied he becomes, and the more punishing his thrusts. He bites a bunch of shallow punctures down my neck just because he can, before sinking his teeth deep again.
I explode. I come so hard, my vision whites out and my mouth opens in a silent scream. Henry thrusts twice more, bottoming out as he groans and
spills inside me. He takes another pull of my blood. Then he presses a kiss to the bites one by one. The tingling, itchy healing fixes them all.
He eases out of me and leans away. I can feel his heavy gaze admiring the mess he’s made of me.
I’m completely spent. My muscles are at failure. My body is prone in the dirt. My fingers and toes tingle from the lack of oxygen. My feet are cramped. My legs are still trembling.
“You look so good like this,” Henry murmurs.
I want to slap him. I want to run for my life, but I’m too exhausted to even move. Still, desire pulses in my body, a relentless burning ache for him.
I want more. I’d quite literally let him fuck me to death. For a moment, I thought I had, but he understands where my line is better than I do.
He carefully rolls me over, and I stare up at him. His mouth is smeared with blood, his hair plastered to his sweaty forehead. His eyes are lit with lust still, and his predatory gaze rakes over my naked, bloody body. I hate him for being so handsome, for knowing me so intimately, for understanding my darkness and showing me his own. But mostly, I hate myself for liking it.
He places his hand on my stomach and peers through the trees around us.
“This is my wife and my claimed. If anyone so much as looks at her in a way
I don’t like, I will kill them slowly.”
I can barely keep my eyes open.
Henry carefully wraps me in his cloak and gathers me into his arms.
My head lolls against his chest. “You’re one of the Drained.”
“I’m not, but I’ll explain in the morning. I took a lot of blood. You need rest.”
I want to fight, but I can’t. My eyelids are too heavy. I fade in and out of consciousness as he carries me toward the manor.
When I wake again, Henry is placing me back on my feet on the plush carpet of our shared bathroom. I swat his hands away, and he retreats to give me a moment to myself.
I stare into the mirror at my face. My eyes are puffy, my cheeks flushed, and my chest marred with scratches from the dirt and branches. I splash cold water on my face and take care of my needs, then look longingly through the open door to my room at my bed. I want to sleep, but I need to clean the filth from my skin first, and the tub is already full of steaming water that would help my sore muscles.
Henry taps on the door behind me and enters.
He’s already naked as he peels his cloak from my body. Then, he helps me into the steaming bathtub and climbs in behind me, ignoring my protests.
“You’re too tired to be in here alone. Now, be quiet and let me clean you up.”
My mind is still hazy with a mixture of lust, anger, and fatigue. Questions bounce around my head, but I don’t know where to start.
Henry washes my hair with surprising gentleness, then scrubs the dirt and crusted blood from my skin. He presses his fingers to my pulse for a quiet moment.
“I didn’t take as much as I thought, but you should still take it easy, Harlow.”
I hate him so much, yet I still want him to touch me. I lean back against him and sigh as his hands travel down my neck and shoulders. He cups my right breast, and I arch back into him.
One caress and I’m awake, lit from within, aching for him again.
“You need rest,” he murmurs in my ear.
But I don’t want rest. I want a place to put all my anger. I want my power back.
