Vexed Deleted Scene- Against the grain (Never before seen epilogue)

AGAINST THE GRAIN

Vexed (Epilogue)- Deleted Scene

AZURE

Surfacing, I busy myself by taking in the unsurprising view, anything to stop myself from thinking… from remembering.

The cold night sky sharpens itself against the horizon like a blade cut from thickest midnight silk. My eyes remain trained on the moon as it dangles, solitary, seen only in reflection of its supposedly far superior masculine counterpart. I inhale the scent of the as they lap over my shoulder, caressing my bare skin like a frothing shawl. 

I have known he’s following me for a while but haven’t bothered to acknowledge his presence. I could. I could tell him to get the hell away from me and return to the Occulta Mirum like a good tentacled puppy, kicking him emotionally. Instead though, I’m letting his eyes peruse my spine from afar.

Why am I allowing such a blatant trespass of my skin? 

Maybe it’s because it feels like a crime of passion and I have a thing for men who know how to handle themselves in a cage.

Or maybe it’s because I’m just as guilty as he is for wanting what I cannot acknowledge or talk about out loud. Perhaps I want inside that same cage more than I’d ever admit.

I remember the splintering of the headboard, the grain of the wood buckling and becoming sharp and jagged under the weight of our mingled muscle tension. The sound of it echoes through my ears like the shots of an only too recent war, sudden, and stuck on repeat like a machine gun peppering bullets into undeserving flesh.

“I bet you taste sweet. Like a sweet, dark, fucking cherry,” his purr echoes inside my skull, the memory prowling with soft velveteen paws through the long grasses of denial that have swayed in place, camouflaging the dark jet sheen of his predatory eyes. They thicken at my command, growing over my recollection in a tangle of thorny vines, keeping me safe from the clutches of what had happened back in England.

What happened in England, stays there. 

I nod resolutely, taking one last look up at the sky, the stars cruel pinpoints of cold light that elicit ignorant wishes, before diving back beneath the blanket of the waves.

As I sink, my tailfin swaying from left to right, I run my fingers over the velvet of the charcoal scale, caressing the taut muscles of my stomach and steeling myself. I whirl around, coming face to face with him, closer than I had anticipated.

“Hello Cherry…” he whispers, voice cracking like the earth beneath my feet as hell threatens to tempt me to descend to his level. To his debauchery.

“Go back to the Occulta Mirum. I left with the intention that you would look after things while I was gone. You know Callie and Orion are waiting,” I blurt, the moonlit water moving innocuously around us both. My hair floats around my head like oil-soaked seaweed, my tail undulating to keep me on eye level with him as his tentacles furl and unfurl. 

“Not happy to see me, Love?” He cocks his head, eyes darkening like he’s looking straight through my skin to the hammering heart beneath.

“I’m never happy to see you,” I snap, turning and deciding that swimming away will be the most effective way to get rid of him. After all, I know he gets off on the banter between us.

“That’s not what you said that night!” he calls after me, voice high with superiority, the kind that only comes from watching someone unravel atop you.

“Look, that was a mistake. For the millionth freaking time. Now go home, Vex. I’m busy,” I call over my shoulder, unable to muster the energy to tear myself from his gaze even one more time. 

I take off into the deep blue hue of the ocean’s salty clutch, letting my hair push back against my skull. Cutting through the currents that threaten to throw me off course, I disturb several lazy shoals of slow-moving fish and startle several crustaceans out of their shells as I pass. I quicken even still, sand flying up in my wake, the sea floor rising to meet with the shore.

I don’t think, I simply will myself into human form, walking up out of the waves and onto the private beach where only a few months ago Callie and Orion were married. They should have sent a driver for me; I just have to find clothes first.

Orion said that he would leave me a package on the inside of a cavern hidden at the very far end of the stretch of sand, and so with the salty lick of the sea lapping at my ankles, I stride fast across the beach, nude and unblushing.

I find the cavern just where he said it would be, eclipsed from view of the shoreline by a jutting crag of dark brown rock slick with seaweed and shells. I navigate them quickly with my sand peppered soles, my lithe figure slicked by sea spray as a wave crashes against the shore. 

I throw my head back a little, moving my wet hair from my shoulders and inhaling the citrus stench of the sea, one that I have known and adopted my entire life as the scent of home. 

The darkness of the night gathers in the crevice of the rock formation, eclipsing the moon with its craggy ceiling and leaving me standing with diluted eyes, scouring the darkness.

A sound causes me to pause, and then stop, my breath caught in my throat. The scent of smoke and salt twists through the air like a phantom of my worst moment, tapping me on the shoulder before choking me with its taboo connotations. 

“I told you…” I sigh in a whisper, the words sounding weak even to me. His lips come to my neck, a hand sweeping the damp tangle of onyx locks from my spine. Shuddering but rooted to the spot, his hand comes around my narrow ribcage to clutch my breast, nipple puckering against the grains of sand clinging to his fingers.

I want to tell him no. To say that this isn’t right. 

And yet, it feels right. Like the most obvious answer to a question I’ve been unknowingly asking for years. Those enemy fingers spider across my skin, raising electric mountains in their wake as he latches onto the skin above my carotid and licks gently with his tongue, the heat of him warming my behind. I melt into his silhouette as his fingers reach the apex of my thighs, parting the long barren valley he finds there and letting the torrent of salt and heat coat his fingers as I let out an unwilling sigh.

“That’s right, Cherry. Sigh for me.” I can feel him smile against the back of my neck as he yanks my buttocks toward him so I can feel his erection, steel against the taut muscle of my backside.

He holds me, whimpering, standing in the sand, skin spattered dark by grains that refuse to relinquish their hold on me just like him, quivering as he caresses me slowly, too slowly, toward climax.

“Come,” he whispers in my ear and I squeeze my eyes shut, stomach tightening as he increases the pace with his fingers and I let out a high note, obeying him without conscious thought. The sound of the climax echoes off the high rock of the cave like I’m a gospel singer in the world’s first natural cathedral, his touch religion and faith rolled into one irresistible lack of control over everything I am.

“Good, Cherry?” he demands as I pant, slumping forward like a doll in his arms.

“Fuck off!” I hiss, trying to get out of his clutch but finding myself too weak to move.

“I see…” he grins, salacious, nude as he spins me in his arms so I’m facing him. Pulling me into his chest, I struggle as his lips find mine, hands rising from my waist to clutch at the sides of my face. He pushes me back, his grip tightening, so my knees are forced to buckle. Sand sprays up as I unwillingly splay out on the ground, his silhouette cast dark by the moon as he towers over me, falling onto his own knees and crawling over me like he’s the hunter and I the prey.

How did it come to this?

He kisses my neck, trailing nips and bites down my body until he yanks my legs apart forcefully and pins them to the sand. He licks his bottom lip, fingers brushing the dusting of sand from the insides of my thighs. His teeth gleam and his eyes glower violet as his jaw clenches and his cheeks hollow.

He puts his mouth on me, the heat of his tongue making me immediately tense beneath his caress as his hands wander up my torso until they’re playing with my breasts. I feel his tongue wandering circles, lapping at my wetness, and then his laugh as my back arches. The vibrations of his throat, coupled with the merciless assault on my clitoris leads to a quick, eye-wateringly intense orgasm that causes my brain to rattle in my skull, fingers clawing at the sand beneath me for any kind of distraction from his expert torment. 

As the final echoes of my pleasure die upon the dark rock of the walls, he slides over me, covering my trembling form with his and kissing me. I taste myself on him and listen to the low hum in his throat as he finds the position he’s looking for and enters me without falter or pause. 

I cry out, the groan from his lips eclipsing the sound that escapes from mine.

Oh, fuck it!  I cuss internally. 

I grab onto his ass, digging my fingernails into the muscle and driving him deep. The grit of the sand creates a sharp friction between our bodies as we writhe together, finding our pleasure, our arousal, in the mere wonder of grinding against the grain. 

My muscles tighten around him, and I feel him chuckle from deep within his chest.

“Again, so soon, Cherry?” he teases, and I roll my eyes, abandoning the motion halfway through as I feel the waves of pleasure begin to build as the tide of him pulls me out into deep water.

Running my long nails up his back, I draw blood, biting down hard into the nape of his neck, but it doesn’t seem to deter him, instead having the opposite effect.

His pleasure mangled cry, the ferocity of it, sends me over the edge too, and I feel myself pulsate around the silken flesh of him, the heat of our blood creating the only respite from the winter air of the surrounding night.

He collapses on top of me, breathing heavy in my ear for but a minute before getting to his feet.

“Merry fucking Christmas.” He spits into the sand, ridding the taste of me from his mouth.

Without another word he turns and disappears back beneath the waves, leaving me splayed out under the cold yuletide sky, furious.

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