“Touch yourself.”
Feeling wicked, she slid her hand down the front of her panties and pushed two fingers inside herself. She made a soft noise when she went deep enough to bump her clit. “Warm. Wet.”
“Oh my God, Riyah, I’m close. I want to finish in you though, so I pull out of your mouth and push you onto your back. Spread your legs for me. Do it now.”
She spread her legs wider and arched her back against the mattress, pushed her fingers into herself again and again.
“I’m between your legs now, kissing your lips but the head of my cock is right there, thrusting shallow. Barely pushing into you. Beg me.”
“Please, Vyr,” she whispered.
Vyr groaned a sexy sound, and she could imagine him stroking himself, thinking of her. This was the hottest thing she’d ever been a part of. “Fuck, I’m going so deep. I’m not gentle now. I’m rough and sliding into you fast, hard. Deep. Soooo deep. I’m close.”
“Me, too,” she whispered as the pressure built between her legs. “I wish you were really here. I want to feel you. Sooo bad.”
Vyr groaned again, and his breath was coming quick now. “Riyah,” he gritted out, just as she came.
Her body shattered around her fingers with such intensity she curled in on herself and screamed his name.
“I’m throbbing so hard, so deep in you right now.” His breath hitched, and she could imagine how warm it would be if he was spilling into her.
Her body twitched as her orgasm dragged on and on.
“You’re so beautiful. You know that, right?” Vyr asked.
Riyah smiled as her aftershocks slowed and faded. “You make me feel beautiful.”
“Good. I’m holding you now because you’ll want to flinch away from what I have to say. I’m hugging you tight, and you’re resting your head against my chest. I see you too, Riyah. I can see how good you are. I’ve read thousands of people over a lifetime, and no one has felt like you. I can immediately tell if a person is good or not. Doesn’t matter that they’re afraid of me. Everyone’s afraid of me. Fear is projected at me with this…dark energy, and I had to learn to absorb it. It’s poison and I’m a sponge, and I had to learn to just take it all into me. I hate fear the most. My soul can taste it, and it sickens me. But you…you’re light. You pull those shadows out of me and make each day easier. What happened to your mom—"
“You mean what I did to my mom?” she whispered in the dark.
“No…I mean what happened to her…that wasn’t your fault. Blame that fuckin’ crew if you want, but not yourself. Your mom made a sacrifice. She wanted you to be okay, and she told you to let go of what she’d given you. With each day you blame yourself? You take away from that sacrifice. Honor her, Riyah. Live a full life for both of you.”
She was tearing up a bit, but it wasn’t from heartbreak. She felt such potent relief that someone was giving her sanctuary from the guilt she’d carried for so long. But Vyr’s tone confused her. “Why does it sound like you’re saying goodbye?”
“Oh, I’m not. You’re stuck now, Badass Princess. You lost your broken dragon, but you gained a broken man. You’re mine. I’m yours. And when I get out of here, I’m going to try to be okay someday. For you.”
“Is that a promise you’ll fight for us?”
“Yeah, Riyah. For you, I’ll fight. Now go to sleep. I’m going to stay right here until you do. I’m not leaving you to the darkness. I’m here. Until you tell me to leave, I’m right here.”
She smiled sleepily. “I’m here, too. You aren’t in the dark either.”
“Riyah?”
“Yeah, Vyr?”
“Everything is going to be okay.”
Chapter Fourteen
The video footage of Vyr discovering the death of his dragon broke Riyah’s heart. She couldn’t even help her tears as she watched him stare at his reflection in The Dungeon. He screamed the most raw, heart wrenching sound she’d ever heard, and then he blasted his fist against the glass. He looked disgusted, then ripped his gaze away from the broken glass and slid his back down the wall. For the rest of her life she would never forget the agonized look on his face. She didn’t want to see it, but Emmitt was showing all the lower level teams how the cameras shorted out suddenly.
There was a three-man technical team involved, but so far, no one could figure out what was happening with the glitches in the lighting and cameras. Unfortunately, Emmitt kept playing the footage of Vyr breaking over and over and over again until it glitched, but by this point, Riyah couldn’t watch it anymore. The lights flickered, and the television blacked out, and this time it wasn’t Vyr’s power that was the problem. It was hers.
Shit. She had to settle down.
“Seriously?” Emmitt yelled. “We can’t even have a technical meeting without technical difficulties? I want this figured out! Now!”
Over a dozen people went scurrying for the door. Riyah was standing against the back wall, her arms crossed over her chest as people rushed past her. All were leaving but Emmitt and Hank Butte, who was sitting at a table near her, leaned back in the chair, staring at her with a feral, empty smile.
“Glitch, glitch, witch, witch,” he murmured softly. Emmitt didn’t seem to hear it from where he was trying to get the television working again.
“There was something going on with the ceiling right before it cuts,” Emmitt muttered.
But Riyah couldn’t take her eyes off Butte’s blazing ice-blue gaze. He wasn’t even trying to hide the shifter in him.
He had her card punched, so she felt zero percent rude asking, “What are you?”
“I knew of a witch once. A kid. She took everything from me. I suppose I should thank her, though. She made me what I am.” Butte stood and strode with inhuman grace to the door. And just as he passed her, he locked her in a hate-filled gaze. “Polar bear. Not many of us left thanks to you, bitch. Bitch, bitch…witch, witch.” He curled his lips back for a moment, exposing sharp canine teeth, and then he left Riyah there, feeling like she was right back in the woods with her mom all those years ago.
She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs burned for air, but she couldn’t drag any in. She stood there frozen. The lights buzzed and dimmed to nothing, recovered and dimmed again. One of the fluorescent bulbs popped, and glass rained down on the tables below. Before Emmitt could turn around, she bolted from the room.
Butte was gone, and she was alone in the hallway. She needed to kickstart the plans. There were a lot of moving parts, and Butte was going to be a problem. Fuck another six months for Vyr. For Torren and Nox, too. She needed the crew extracted as soon as possible, but they couldn’t just do a jailbreak. Things had to happen so Vyr could really be free, not spend his life on the run. Butte threw a huge wrench in things though, and now Riyah’s time in this prison was limited. Butte could out her at any time.