As my consciousness slowly began to return amidst the sound of water echoing between the massive stone walls of the castle, I thought I was in a dream. But the sensation on my skin was too real to be a dream, too scorching. My fever was sky-high; my consciousness drifted in and out behind a veil of fog. Alberta's mud, Rita's silvery blood, and the exhaustion of my soul lay heavy upon me like a shroud.
When I opened my eyes, we were in that massive marble bathroom in our room. The weak candlelight leaking through the steam painted the wet marble a golden yellow. The Omegas were outside the door; I could hear their whispers and terrified breaths, but Varg hadn't allowed any of them inside.
"No one cleans what is mine but me, f-ck off!" he had roared toward the outside. I heard the doors slam shut as that roar echoed off the stone walls.
Now I was at the edge of the marble pool. Varg had stripped me completely naked. Stripped of those expensive dresses, I was nothing but a body stained with Alberta's mud. Varg, too, had rid himself of those bloody bandages and his coarse shirt; he knelt before me as a wounded, massive, and raw monument of masculinity. The burning embers in his eyes scorched me even through the steam.
With his calloused, coarse hands, he poured a bowl of hot water down my shoulders. I couldn't help but tremble as the water melted the mud on my skin and let it flow onto the marble. Varg lathered a coarse sponge and struck the first blow against my shoulder. His movements were not as gentle as a healer's, but as firm and determined as a sculptor carving marble.
"You tried to leave me," Varg said, his voice sounding even more muffled, even deeper in the steam. He pressed the sponge hard against my breasts, right where that faint purple light flickered. "You intended to leave this skin to those low-born vampire bastards. Did you think they could crawl all over you, freak?"
"I only..." My voice dissipated in the acoustics of the bathroom.
"Shut up," he commanded. He left the sponge and began to touch my skin with his bare hands. In that moment of skin-to-skin contact, the massive size difference between us and his searing heat branded my soul. He scraped the mud from my neck and collarbones with his hands, with his fingers. With every touch, he pressed against my skin as if declaring his ownership. He leaned in, burying his nose in the roots of my hair at my wet and soapy nape. He took a deep, growling breath. "That scent of yours... it finds me even under the mud; this f-cking scent is clouding my mind."
My breath hitched as his fingers moved down to my waist. Despite the water and soap, the texture of his coarse hands started a fire on my porcelain skin. Varg pressed me harder against the marble; as his wounded chest touched my back, I felt his heartbeat was more irregular than mine.
"Why are you washing me?" I whispered, my head falling onto his shoulder. "Why didn't you let them in?"
Varg slid his hand down over my stomach toward my hips. As he poured the water over me again, my skin was completely cleansed, its radiance awakening once more. But this time, the glow had turned darker, more passionate under his touch.
"Because," Varg said, leaning his lips against my ear. "I cannot bear for anyone else to see you in this filthy and beautiful state. You are my prisoner. And only owners cleanse the sins of their prisoners."
"Do you know what sin is..." I had said, parting my legs as I tried to restrain the strange, aching void rising within me. "It is trying to make a wife out of a monster you don't even understand... It is locking this monster in rooms and not giving up on the love of a ghost. Sin is not running toward freedom for your friends."
I bit my lip, struggling to rein in my womanhood that was swelling like a rose, the throbbing need in my groin. But Varg was too sensitive. He was surprisingly careful as he held me, despite his usual brutality. He took me in his arms and lowered me into the pool filled with hot water.
As the water enveloped us both, the entanglement of our legs beneath the surface was hot enough to melt all the ice in Alberta. As Varg looked at the porcelain doll in his arms, the burning embers in his eyes were no longer burning with hatred, but with an unconfessed hunger, a raw appetite.
"F-ck..." he murmured, and for the first time, I heard that loss of control so clearly in his voice. "What have you done to me?"
That night, I wasn't just cleansed of mud in the water; I also touched that wild need beneath Varg's impenetrable walls for the first time. As I was surrounded by Varg's massive and wounded body in the hot water, I felt something break inside me. But it wasn't like glass breaking; it was like the gates of a dam bursting open. The blood in my veins had surrendered itself to a burning fire sprouting in the deepest part of my belly, making my loins ache.
My breath began to tighten. The steam from the pool was no longer enough for my lungs. When Varg leaned my bare back against the edge of the marble pool, I realized how my skin was burning like a furnace despite his ice-cold, wounded hands.
"Vespera..." Varg said. His voice had taken on a bewildered tone, having lost its authority for the first time. He put his hand on my forehead. "This awakening is not normal; you're burning up."
"Varg..." I moaned. My voice spilled from my lips with an animalistic hunger, foreign even to my own ears. I couldn't open my eyes; only the searing traces left by his coarse, calloused hands on my skin revolved in my mind.
Varg understood the situation. Those ancient wolf instincts whispered to him what that scent of vanilla and fresh blood in the room meant.
"Heat," he murmured with a fascination mixed with dread. "You're in heat... It's too early. The wolf hasn't awakened, but this scent... f-ck, this scent will be the end of me."
He was trying to explain. That impenetrable, hard Alpha was trying to give a logic lesson to a melting porcelain doll. But I wasn't anyone's logical girl anymore. I was that female burning in Varg's darkness, in the arms of a monster.
I took my hand out of the water; the water droplets falling from my fingertips sizzled and evaporated on the marble. I clung to Varg's broad, wounded chest. As I dug my nails into his hard muscles, I felt a need more than pain.
"Quiet, Alpha..." I whispered, burying my head in the hollow of his neck. There, where that wildest, most masculine scent came from. "I don't want logic, Varg. I don't want your f-cking explanations anymore."
I opened my eyes and looked directly into his eyes that were no different from burning embers. That sweet ache within me had taken over my entire being. I burned more as my porcelain skin touched his coarse and hard body.
"I want... I want only something hard inside me, Varg," I said, my raw honesty cutting through the steamy air of the bathroom like a knife. "Something harder than those doors you locked me behind in this room, something more unshakable than this marble... I want the only thing that will save me from this pain. I want you."
That eerie sound, a mix of a wolf's growl and a man's desire, spilled from Varg's throat. His pupils dilated completely; the flame color in his irises flashed with fury. He gripped my waist with those coarse hands so tightly I thought his fingerprints would be etched into the marble.
"There's no going back from this, baby," Varg growled, bringing his lips within a breath's distance of my burning lips. "Once you step through this door, you won't even see the glittering streets of your city in your dreams again. Only I will remain. Only my darkness will take you away from everything."
"Give me your darkness then," I said, and pulled him toward me.