Cornered (erotic) (#7, 101 Nights)

Chapter Eight: Elijah

Natalie’s sobs torture me. I want to fly back to Nijala and behead my father myself. I know what causes this kind of sorrow, the amount of pain and suffering are falling in tears and wetting my chest and arms.

Her pain is mine, but far worse than anything I’ve been through. I’d rather suffer a million times over than hear such heart wrenching sounds coming from my Natalie. I didn’t protect her from my own world, and for that, I deserved the worst punishment in hell.

I wrap my arms around her quivering frame and hug her tightly. Even pressed together, I have the sick sense of her slipping away out of my life forever. I’ve never been one to turn down a willing woman, even if I suspect what this is probably isn’t remotely healthy.

But I don’t care. I’ll sink my dick into her juicy cunt again and again and again … and if she walks away in the morning, I’ll never regret a second I spend between her legs. I’ve never hungered for anyone like I do her. Temporarily sated, I’m also acutely aware that her suffering will always remain my sin. The least I can do is let her cry and find some way to ensure she doesn’t spend her life suffering like I have.

Gradually, the tears stop, followed by the quaking of her feminine form. Natalie’s breathing grows deeper as she starts to slide into sleep. I hold her fast, not wanting her to slumber just yet for fear of what happens in the morning, but unwilling to wake her either. I’ve done enough damage to her life as it is.

I’ve never in my life worried about the morning after a one-night stand. I’ve fucked hundreds of women and never cared. I’m exhausted, more so after my flight to New York, but I don’t let my eyes close. If this is the last night I hold her, the last time I ever experience the body made for my pleasure, then I’m not going to waste it unconscious.

Not long after she falls asleep, Natalie jerks in my arms. She claws at me, tense and wriggling, mumbling sleepy words that don’t make sense.

“Hey!” I say, shifting my weight on top of her. “Natalie!”

She struggles for a moment before her eyes flutter open. She blinks awake. She’s terrified, an emotion that hurts me to see, because it’s my fault she learned how deep and dark the depths of human emotion can be.

“Elijah,” she whispers. Her body relaxes beneath mine, and she touches my face.

I ease off her. “It’s okay, Natalie. You’re safe.”

Natalie pushes herself up on one elbow, looking around with a shudder. Her features are haunted. I smooth her hair from her face. When she seems assured she’s safe, she looks at me.

“You okay?” I whisper, disturbed by her fear.

“Yes.”

“You’re hurting.”

“I’m fine.”

“I know a little something about dark pasts,” I say before I can stop myself. “I know that kind of fear and what it does to you if you let it eat you up inside. You can’t keep pretending it’s not an issue if you want to heal.”

Tears sparkle in her eyes. She’s listening, emotions swimming in her gaze.

“Trust me, farasha. You don’t want to hit the bottom of that well. You don’t want to explore how deep those emotions go.”

“Tell me. Please.” Her voice quivers.

My jaw clamps closed. I don’t want to answer. I’ve never discussed it with anyone except for George. But seeing her pain … knowing we’re connected as much by it as we are everything else, convinced this might be our last night together ever, I make a decision. “I should never be your role model for recovery,” I start bitterly. “I can’t talk about some things and I’ve forcibly forgotten others. My father abused my sister and me. Me more so. I was a spare heir, a child prone to an overactive imagination and largely overlooked by the rest of the family. I was a runt who started out too small and weak to fight back. All the more reason my father decided to express his vices in my direction. It started when I was four and continued until I was twelve, when I outgrew his … affection. I tried to protect Layla as much as I could, which I suspect wasn’t as much as I could have.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“He’s rotting at the bottom of a gulag, and we saved Layla. I’m almost at peace about it.” I push her back onto the bed and tug her into my body once more. “Your turn. Tell me.”

Emotions fly across her features. She turns her head away, ready to refuse me. I’m not about to let her stop now, when it’s clear she needs to talk about it. Gripping her chin, I turn her to look at me once more.

“There’s no better person on the planet to talk to about this, no one else who understands what true suffering is. Start with the nightmares,” I order her.

Natalie’s flimsy resistance collapses under the firm command of the master. After a moment, she begins to speak.

“I’m back in the container. It’s dark, and Layla is crying. We haven’t eaten in two days and the water makes us sick …”

I force myself to remain calm as I listen. The more she shares, the greater my urge becomes to sentence those who hurt her to old school torture and beheading rather than a lifetime in prison. But I can’t react – she needs this, and no matter how much it tears me up, no matter how many memories of my own dark past are flickering through my thoughts. I’m not about to take away the chance for her to heal that I never had. I want to be better for her than anyone has ever been for me.

She breaks down into tears not long after she starts talking about the day they took Layla away and Natalie thought she was being killed. Natalie is soon weeping again, her pain too real for me to speak, her body shaking as she sobs away the fear and terror.

I hold her, not daring to think about morning when she needs me now. There are no words for the torment she’s been through. She’s hurt, fragile, and reliving the experience every night.

And yet … no part of me is remorseful about being here. If anything, I don’t think she’ll heal better alone than with me to assist her. I know the depths of this kind of suffering. I can help her navigate it. As always, when it comes to Natalie, I’ll bear through anything if it means I end up between the legs of the one woman who brings me peace. Perhaps it’s mercenary of me. But I don’t care. Before I turned to Malika for help and became her Sultan puppet, I knew I was never going to let go of Natalie willingly.

She cries herself to sleep. This time, she doesn’t wake up with nightmares. I find myself dozing and wake up around midmorning with my arms around her. The rising sun hits the diamond on the table just right to cast tiny rainbows on the ceiling. I shift, watching them, tired yet not about to sleep.

“Are you awake?” she whispers.

“I am.”

“Do you hate me at all?”

“How could I hate you?”

“Because it’s my fault Layla was found and kidnapped. Because you had to become a king under these circumstances.”

I both understand her guilt and fear and am baffled by it. “If anyone is to blame, it’s me. All you have ever done is made me a better person, Natalie.”

“I hate me for it,” she whispers so quietly, I barely hear the words.

Concerned, I roll her onto her back so I can see her face. “You are too good for this kind of pain, farasha. You bear no responsibility for the actions of my father, his asshole lackeys. For me.”

“May I touch you?”

“You may.”

She rests a cool hand on the side of my face. “You’re so strong, Elijah. How did you make it through everything? I feel like I want to crawl under my bed and never leave.”

“I’m fucked up, Natalie. The only thing I’ve ever done right is coerce you into my life. If I had known I’d go through hell over and over, but the reward was a lifetime with you, I’d do it all over again.”

“I feel broken.”

“No,” I say, amused. I sweep tears from her face with my fingers. “Broken is a life without you.”