Chapter 155: Chapter One Hundred-Fifty-Five: Reclamation
//CLARA//
Dr. Varga worked with efficiency. By the time he stepped back, Gary looked less like a human and more like a poorly wrapped mummy swaddled for burial.
White linen bound his torso, his left arm splinted to his chest. Bandages covered half his face, leaving one swollen eye visible, the other hidden beneath a poultice smelling of comfrey.
I sat in the chair by his bedside, watching the shallow movement of his ribs, willing strength into him through sheer stubbornness. Dr. Varga left bottles of laudanum and instructions.
Casimir had hovered in the doorway. When the doctor left, so did he.
The night deepened. I should have moved, found fresh clothes, checked on Hattie. But exhaustion had turned my body to stone.
I don’t remember closing my eyes. I only knew I was falling—adrift in darkness that smelled of damp stone and iron.
Then hands caught me, lifting me from the chair. I stirred, pressing my face into the heat of a body I knew better than my own.
The red door swung wide in my mind again. The fear that I would die in that cellar and Casimir would never know.
I sobbed, gripping his shirt tightly.
"I thought—" The words broke. "I thought I’d never—we wouldn’t—"
His arms tightened, one hand cradling the back of my head, fingers threading through my tangled hair.
"And Aunt Cornelia," I continued, everything spilling out. "That nasty old bat, finally out of our lives." I laughed, but it came out hollow. "I should feel triumphant, and instead I just feel..."
Terrified. Like winning a battle only to discover the war was already lost.
Casimir stopped walking. We had reached my bed. His chin pressed against my hair, his voice rumbling into my ear.
"You have no idea how furious I am with you right now."
The anger was coiled beneath his calm. I felt it in the grip of his hand, the rigid set of his shoulders.
"But you’re safe." His breath fanned across my temple. "You’re safe, and I can breathe again. Even if you nearly stopped my heart."
He laid me down with a gentleness that contradicted his words, arranging me on the mattress as if I were fragile porcelain. I sank into the pillows as he loomed over me with that storm-dark expression.
"Do you have any conception of what you put me through the moment I heard your voice? Thinking I might have been imagining it—"
He broke off, his jaw working fiercely. His large hands slammed onto the mattress on either side of my hips, gripping the fabric until his knuckles turned white.
I pushed myself up on my elbows, the torn dress slipping off one shoulder.
"I had to find you."
I met his dark gaze, the words scratching against my ruined throat.
"The ledger—"
He stilled instantly. His chest stopped moving.
"You found the ledger?"
I swallowed hard and nodded. My chest throbbed, completely unable to voice the terrifying fact that his name was written so ominously inside those pages.
Casimir let out a long sigh that tore straight from his ribs. The rigid tension in his shoulders snapped. Slowly, he leaned down and dropped his forehead against mine, his hot breath fanning across my lips.
"Did you get what you wanted?" He closed his eyes, pressing his brow harder against mine. "Do you have the answers you’ve been destroying yourself to find?"
I shook my head. "It matters little to me now."
He looked back at my face—fury, fear, and admiration, all twisted together.
"You are going to be my undoing." The words sounded almost like a prayer. "You will shred every careful construction of my life, and I will thank you for the wreckage."
He kissed my forehead.
I pulled at his sleeve, my body instantly awakening to his proximity, overriding my exhaustion.
"Don’t be gentle. Not now..."
I arched up toward him, my free hand catching his collar and tugging hard.
"I need to feel you. All of you. Harder than that. Rougher."
Casimir’s expression shifted, the storm breaking across his sharp features. His hand left the mattress and caught my wrist in a vice-like grip, his thumb pressing hard into my racing pulse.
"Is this what you want?" His voice dropped to a low growl. "You want me to punish you for your recklessness? You want me to fuck you until you forget how close you came to dying?"
The crude words sent a violent wave of heat flooding through me, pooling between my thighs with embarrassing immediacy. I nodded, my breath coming faster, and pulled harder at his shirt.
"Yes," I gasped. "Yes, please. Make me feel it. Make me feel alive."
He came down on me, his mouth finding mine with violence bordering on consumption. His teeth caught my lower lip. His tongue forced its way inside.
I moaned into his mouth, my hands turning frantic at his clothing. The garment proved stubborn, and I made a sharp sound of frustration that he answered with a punishing bite to my jawline.
"Impatient," he accused, his breath scalding against my throat.
He reared back just enough to shed the garment, and I watched the muscles of his shoulders pull tight as he worked the buttons of his shirt free, tearing them open.
I took the opportunity to unlace my torn dress, shimmying it loose and kicking it away in one fluid motion, leaving myself entirely naked on the bed.
The frigid winter air hit my bare skin, raising gooseflesh, but I barely registered the chill. My attention was fixed entirely on the lean, powerful muscle of his chest, and the dark trail of hair leading down to where his trousers still constrained him.
He paused, his gaze traveling slowly over my skin with a hunger that felt genuinely violent.
"Look at you. Bruised and beautiful and completely without self-preservation."
His thumb traced a purple mark on my hip.
"I should lock you away. Never let you out of my sight."
"Then don’t," I challenged, arching my hips into his touch. "I am already yours."
His control snapped entirely.
He came down on me again, his mouth crashing onto my breast with teeth, tongue, and bruising suction.
I cried out, my back bowing off the mattress, my fingers tangling wildly in his hair to hold him there or pull him closer.
He worked my nipple until it ached, until the intense pleasure bordered on actual pain, and when I whimpered against his ear, he only shifted to the other breast and repeated the exquisite torture.
"You’re maddeningly perfect," he muttered against my wet skin, his breath scorching.
He bit the soft underside of my breast, hard enough to make me gasp out loud, before immediately soothing the sting with his tongue.
"Casimir," I breathed, my head thrown back blindly against the pillows.
His large hand found my thigh, ruthlessly pushing it wide open, his fingers tracing up my inner leg with agonizing slowness.
I was already completely wet, and when his thumb brushed firmly against my clit, I jerked as if a jolt of pure electricity had shot through me.
"Soaked."
His voice still carrying that dangerous edge of anger, as if my body’s instant response offended him even as it pleased him.
"Already dripping for me. You’d let me do absolutely anything right now, wouldn’t you? You’d let me fuck you raw, fill you until you couldn’t walk, and you’d beg for more."
"Yes."
His eyes went completely black as he unbuckled his belt and shoved his trousers down.
"Turn over," he ordered. "On your knees. Now."
I scrambled to obey, kicking my legs back and digging my knees into the mattress.
He didn’t give me time to adjust. He grabbed my hips, lining himself up, and rammed his cock straight inside me in one brutal thrust.
A sharp scream tore from my throat as my forehead hit the sheets. The sheer size of him stretched me to the absolute limit, but I fisted the bedding and took it.
He immediately set a punishing, furious pace. Every slam of his hips was shoving my body forward against the headboard.
"You feel that?" His breath scalding against my bare back. "You feel how close I was to never having this again?"
He fisted his fingers into my hair, ripping my head back to force my spine into a harsh, tight arch. With my neck exposed, he drove his cock even deeper, bottoming out inside me until my vision blurred.
"I could have lost you," he snarled against my skin, his chest heaving violently against my shoulder blades.
"I could have walked into that cellar a second late and found your cold fucking corpse. Do you understand what that would have done to me?"
I couldn’t answer. His thrusts choked the breath right out of my lungs. I could only sob his name into the pillows, hoping he could feel the apology in every broken syllable.
"Say it again."
He slammed into me harder, demanding the sound of my voice to prove I was still breathing.
"Casimir." I choked out.
"Again."
