squeezes as he lies across my back and runs his teeth over my jawline. Thrusts slowing, the groan in his throat is long and tortured, and he releases my neck to push off of me. As cool air hits my back, Lucian’s curses bounce off the walls.
As he jerks out the last of his orgasm, I lie weak and exhausted, reeling from my newfound thrill.
“You enjoy the lack of breath.” He rests his head against my shoulders and kisses my damp skin.
I nod, still panting from the exertion that has every muscle feeling like jelly. “I think I just figured out my new favorite thing, too.”
“You and I are going to get along very well, my little raven.” Teeth nipping my skin, he tightens his grip around me, drawing my arms in and caging me beneath him. “As tragic as that may be.”
Chapter 46
Lucian
Four years ago …
Voices echo around me. Sterile scents invade my senses. I can’t tell if I’m awake or asleep. The incessant beeping in my ear grows louder, until I open my eyes to see white walls and a half-closed white curtain, enveloping me in with two men in white coats.
Am I dead?
A flash of blinding light hits the back of my head, making my eyes instinctively screw shut, and I feel the flames burning my skin.
I jerk awake, but when I try to sit up, my body doesn’t move.
“Relax, Lucian. Your heart sounds as if it might gallop away any minute.” The voice is foreign to me, in this place that feels like a dream.
“Where am I? What is this?” The words arrive stiff and clipped through an ache in my jaw that pulses in my ear.
“I’m Dr. Thames, and this is Dr. Mayer,” he says, gesturing to the shorter, stocky man beside him. “He’s an expert in the field of reconstructive surgery.”
“Wh-what are you talking about?”
“You’ve been in a coma for about a week. In that time, we’ve done some minor patches to your face and jawline, but wanted to wait until you were stable before taking you to the OR.”
“Patches? For what?” A fog swirls inside my head, dancing around the dull throb that beats through my sinuses.
“You were in an accident and sustained some fairly serious injuries, particularly to your jawline, shoulder, arm and thigh. Your shoulder took the brunt of the impact, but you have a number of broken bones in your face, collarbone and ribs. There was quite a bit of head trauma, as well. The coma was induced to reduce some of the swelling on your brain. We placed a drain that, I’m pleased to report, we were able to remove yesterday afternoon, along with weaning you off the vent. You’ve remained stable since.”
My mind replays the last thing I remember. The lights. The fire. Roark holding his teddy bear. “My son. Where’s my son?”
“Your mother tells me there was an accident at home? That was the nature of you hopping on a bike with no helmet.”
“Accident?” I say the word aloud, and the movie reel inside my head rewinds further. Roark sleeping. The pill bottle. No pulse. My chest expands as the panic blooms behind my ribs, until I can’t breathe.
Something beeps inside the room.
“Hey, hey. Calm down, Lucian.”
A hand touches my shoulder, and I want to throw it off me, but can’t. Nothing moves. I can’t feel anything but the agony tearing through me. “He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. As difficult as it may be, the best thing you can do right now, Mr. Blackthorne, is focus on your recovery.”
Tears distort his form, as I stare up at this man I don’t even know. One who thinks he knows what’s best for me. “What’s the point?”
Two weeks have passed since the accident. Two weeks of rehab. Caring too little. Thinking too much. Drowning in the misery and guilt of having failed my son. It’s there every time I look into the mirror. The mangled remains of my face, so riddled with scars and metal plates that I don’t even feel human anymore. My punishment for being a shitty father. For putting myself first, when it should’ve been Roark.
His body was eventually returned to us and buried in a small sarcophagus down in the catacombs. It’s a place I can’t bring myself to visit. Not for a while.
“It was an accident. That’s all. An oversight,” my father says, sitting in his chair across from me, Amelia, and Mayor Boyd. “No one is really at fault here.”