Chapter Seventy-Three: The Reckoning of Flesh
He carried me to the car.
Not gently. Not carefully. He carried me like I was oxygen and he had been drowning—desperate, possessive, incapable of letting go. His arms were iron bands around my back and knees, my body pressed against his chest, my head tucked beneath his chin. I could feel his heart slamming against his ribs, a frantic, terrified rhythm that matched the chaos still roaring in my ears.
The car was waiting.
Leo stood by the open door, his face its usual mask of professional neutrality. Leon was already in the passenger seat, engine running, ready to move. They had seen everything—the near miss, the fall, the way their boss had thrown himself into the path of death to pull me back.
They said nothing.
They never did.
Rowan deposited me into the back seat with a care that bordered on reverence, then slid in beside me, pulling me against him before the door had even closed. His arms wrapped around me, crushing, suffocating, perfect. I felt his lips press against my hair, my temple, the corner of my eye where tears still clung.
"Drive," he ordered, his voice wrecked.
The car pulled away.
---
He didn't stop touching me.
His mouth found my neck—not the gentle, reverent kisses of that morning in bed, but something ravenous. Desperate. He was tasting me, breathing me, convincing himself I was real, I was alive, I was still here. His lips pressed against the pulse point beneath my jaw, and I felt his breath shudder against my skin.
"Aira." My name was a prayer, a plea, a penance. He whispered it against my throat between kisses. "Aira. Aira. Aira."
I should have pushed him away.
I should have reminded him of the audience—Leo in the driver's seat, Leon rigid in the passenger seat, both staring straight ahead with the focused intensity of men trying very hard to be invisible.
But I couldn't.
The shock was still too fresh. The image of those headlights, the sound of tires screaming, the knowledge that I had stood frozen in death's path and been pulled back by the man who had broken me—it all swirled in my head like smoke, disorienting and thick.
So I let him kiss me.
Let his hands roam—my shoulders, my back, the curve of my waist. Let him push the silk of my dress down, baring my shoulder to his lips. His mouth was hot against my skin, desperate and claiming, and I closed my eyes and let the world dissolve into sensation.
In the front seat, Leo and Leon became statues.
They stared at the road with the rigid focus of men whose lives depended on not seeing what was happening in the back seat. Their profiles were carved from stone, their grips on the steering wheel and door handle just a little too tight. The tension in the car was suffocating—not from what Rowan was doing, but from their absolute, theatrical refusal to acknowledge it.
The city blurred past the windows.
Rowan's mouth moved lower.
---
Then my stomach lurched.
It came out of nowhere—a wave of nausea so sudden and violent that I gasped against his mouth. My body went rigid in his arms, my hand flying to my lips.
"Rowan—"
He didn't stop. Didn't hear. His mouth was on my shoulder now, teeth scraping against the marks he'd left before, claiming me all over again.
"Rowan, stop." My voice was muffled, strained. The nausea was building, a rising tide that I couldn't fight. "I'm going to be sick."
Nothing.
His hands were everywhere, his lips relentless, his desperation a force of nature that swept away everything in its path—including my protests.
"Rowan, please." I pushed against his chest, weakly, my strength fading as my stomach churned. "Please stop. I'm going to be—I'm going to—"
He didn't hear me.
Didn't want to hear me.
He needed to feel me, to know I was alive, to brand himself onto every inch of my skin so that death couldn't take me without taking him too. His need was a monster, and it had consumed him completely.
I started to cry.
Not from sadness—from fear. From the helplessness of being trapped between his desperation and my body's betrayal. The nausea was unbearable now, a pressure behind my teeth, a burn in my throat.
"Rowan." A sob. "Please. I'm begging you. Stop."
Something in my voice finally reached him.
He froze.
Pulled back.
Looked at me.
My face was pale, tears streaming, one hand clamped over my mouth. I was shaking—not from cold, but from the effort of holding back the wave that threatened to break.
"Stop the car."
His voice was raw, urgent, stripped of everything but command.
Leon hit the brakes. The car skidded slightly, then stopped.
I was out before Rowan could move, stumbling onto the sidewalk, falling to my knees behind a low hedge. The contents of my stomach—the elegant dinner, the champagne, the nerves—emptied onto the concrete in heaving, violent waves.
I heard him behind me.
Felt his hands on my shoulders, steadying me, holding my hair back from my face with a gentleness that seemed impossible from the same hands that had gripped me so desperately moments before.
"Shh," he murmured, his voice broken. "Shh. I'm here. I've got you."
I vomited again.
And again.
Until there was nothing left but dry heaves and tears and the shaking of a body that had been pushed too far.
When it was finally over, I collapsed against him, boneless and spent. He gathered me up—not desperately this time, but carefully, reverently—and carried me back to the car.
---
Leo had pulled a bottle of water and a small towel from somewhere. They were waiting on the seat, along with a paper bag that Rowan pressed into my hands in case the nausea returned.
He didn't touch me in the car after that.
Didn't kiss me.
Didn't hold me.
He just sat beside me, close enough that I could feel the heat of him, and watched me with eyes that held a universe of guilt and fear and something that looked terrifyingly like love.
"Home," he said quietly. "Now."
Leon drove.
The city blurred past.
And I sat in the back seat, wrapped in my husband's silence, and wondered if this was what survival felt like—this hollow, shaking aftermath of nearly dying, of being saved, of being claimed by a man who didn't know how to love but would burn the world to keep me.
The nausea had passed.
But something else had begun.
And I didn't know yet what it was.
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