All He’ll Ever Be (Merciless World Series Book 1)

It wasn’t her?

The fuck it wasn’t her.

It’s all I can think about as I lead her back to the bedroom. The sounds of our footsteps are heavy, but not as heavy as the beating of my pulse.

I know that night, I know her voice. That night, that moment even, changed my life forever. I know every detail. The cadence of her words. I’ve dreamed of them and been consumed by that moment for years.

The bedroom door closes with a resounding click as I walk to the dresser, where a new glass and bottle of whiskey wait for me.

I go through the motions, barely listening to her undressing and moving through drawers as I try to calm down.

It’s an impossible task. Every second, the anger rises.

How dare she lie to me. How dare she look me in the eyes and deny something that led me down a path of violence and self-hate. How fucking dare she do that, yet claim to love me.

I’ve never hated how capable she is of affecting me more than I do in this moment.

I’ll never tell her how much it hurts to hear her deny it. I refuse to let her know. I’ll be damned if I ever give her that truth and that power.

As I breathe, the amber liquid flows between the cubes of ice. My grip on the tumbler is loose as I swirl it, but it’s no use. I have no appetite for liquor tonight.

I want to punish her. It’s all I can think about.

I’ve handled everything wrong because I’ve underestimated her, but now that she’s shown her cards and revealed what lows she’s willing to go to, I won’t make that mistake again.

She was right. I should have clipped her wings.

“I don’t know why you can’t believe me,” Aria speaks softly, so softly the rustling of the covers almost drowns out her words as she climbs into bed. Glancing over my shoulder, I watch as she pulls them up closer to her throat and looks back at me the way she always should have, as if I’m the enemy.

I bite down on my tongue to keep from replying as I breathe in through my nose heavily. I don’t know why she’d lie about it. What motive is behind her lies?

My shoulders tense as I lean down to grab what’s inside the top drawer of my dresser. The sound of it opening is ominous. The metal is cold in my hand as the cuffs clink together. While I walk to her, I think about how to cuff her, but the thought of touching her right now is dangerous. So fucking dangerous.

She casts a spell over me each and every time my skin touches her. I can’t risk it.

I toss them on the bed as the thought hits me. “Cuff your left hand to the bedpost,” I command her as I drag the chair in the corner of the room toward the bed, closer to her.

With my back to her, I wonder if she’ll even obey me until the telltale snap of the closure echoes in the bedroom.

Only then do I breathe and sink down into the chair. I have her, and she’s not going anywhere.

The light from the moon shines down on her soft skin in a way that makes my chest ache. She’s so fucking beautiful. She brushes her chestnut locks away from her face and stares expectantly at me before resting back against the headboard.

“Are you just going to keep me here until the war is over and I hate you forever?” she asks when I don’t say anything. Her voice is flat, but she can’t hide the pain in her eyes. She can’t hide that from me. Not when I’ve seen the raw agony the cell brought her, the torment killing Stephan gave her, and the sorrow loving me has stained into those gorgeous hazel eyes.

“That’s not a bad idea,” I remark, not hiding the exhaustion from my voice.

The huff that leaves her lips is humorless. She tries to get comfortable, but she’s cuffed herself too high on the post. The cuff is between the middle and top rung, instead of at the bottom. She can reach the nightstand, where a bottle of wine and a glass from earlier lay, along with her cell phone. At least she can reach those, but nothing else is at her disposal.

Agitation quickly shows in her pursed lips as she props a pillow under her arm. Letting out a sigh, I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees and stare her down. I wait for her to look at me to ask her, “Why lie?”

Fire smolders in her gaze as she pushes out the words, “It wasn’t me.”

Tick, tick. It’s not the clock, it’s the steady beat of my heart, on edge and wanting to know why she’d try to hurt me like she is.

“I have all the time in the world,” I tell her and lean back. As I swallow, I realize how much it kills me, the very idea that it was someone else. “It was you,” I say, hardening my voice, refusing to entertain the thought the voice that saved me belonged to another. I know it was Aria. Deep in my bones, I know it was her.

“I’m sorry, Carter.” Aria’s whisper is pained. She scoots closer to me on the bed and I watch as the cuff keeps her away from me. Fuck, I’m a goddamn wreck and she can see.

She could always see me though. Something about her simply knows who I am. Her soul knows mine.

“I didn’t want to tell you,” she whispers and I’m taken back to that night, to the pain, to the desperation to die.

“I wanted to die and you saved me,” I tell her, knowing how true it is. It was her voice that called out to me as I felt the cold hand of death pull me closer to the ground. Not to a white light and salvation, but down to the dirty concrete floor. And I prayed for it to happen. I coveted nothing less than death to come to me and take the pain away. The torture I endured had destroyed any chance of peace and happiness a boy like me could ever have.

“I’m sorry,” is again all she can say as emotion wells in my chest and then higher, up my throat.

“You’re not,” I speak through clenched teeth and hold on to the fact that she’s lying. I know the voice that saved me. “You’re a liar.”

As Aria tries to wipe away her tears that have slid down her flushed cheeks, she brings her left hand up, only to have it held back by the cuff.

“And you’ll stay right there until I’m done doing what I have to do.” Standing abruptly, I watch her eyes widen. “You can stay there. Right there where you belong.” My words are hollow, but the threat is real. I won’t give her up so easily. If she thought lying to me would give her freedom from me, she thought wrong.

“Carter,” Aria calls out and moves on the bed, the sheets falling around her body in a messy puddle, but her left arm is restrained behind her. Frustration joins the desperation in her eyes.

Her right hand moves to her left as if she could pry it free as I stalk to the door. “Carter!” She yells out my name to get me to stop as I stand in the doorway. I stare back at my songbird, naked on her knees in my bed, and chained to it willingly. A dull pink mark still shows on her breast from where I touched her earlier, right beneath the pearls that sway slightly down her front. She’s a beautiful fucking vision. Beautiful, but wretched with sadness.

“Don’t leave me here,” she demands, as if she could, and then swallows visibly.

“You’re not in a position to give the commands,” is all I give her. I’m only able to take half a step out of the room before the shattering sound of glass at my right is accompanied by wetness along the right side of my cheek, my jaw, my neck and down my shirt. The dark red liquid seeps into my white dress shirt and I stare at the blotches, watching them spread over the fabric before looking back at Aria. The cracked bottle is in pieces at my feet, and there’s a small dent in the drywall. It’s surrounded by streaks of burgundy that are dripping down to the floor.

My heart races in my chest from shock, but also anger.

“Now you can’t hide at the bottom of it.” My words are spit with venom as control slips from me.

“Fuck you! I hate you!”

She screams it like she truly means it. Like her hate is the only thing keeping her alive, and I know that’s what it is. I’ve been there. I hated her before she even knew my name.

“I knew you did. I know you hate me. It doesn’t change that you’re mine.” I can’t hide the lack of control, the unraveling of composure as I stare her down, watching her chest rise and fall with chaotic breathing.

“I won’t let you do this to me,” she speaks with conviction and the dry laugh that erupts from my lips is dark and genuine as I grip the doorknob to keep from approaching her.

“Fuck you!” she sneers as she rips her arm away from the bedpost. Not tugging, but yanking her wrist against the cuff. Pain echoes in her face and in the shriek that tears up her throat. My heart slams in my chest as I watch her do it again. And again. My body temperature drops and for a second I don’t believe it. She wrenches her body away until a horrid scream comes from her lips. Tears stream down her face as her arm lays limp, and her wrist, still cuffed, is red and raw with cuts from the metal.

“Fuck you,” she cries, her words low and full of suffering. She rips her arm away again, although this time she can only use the weight of her body and the action is done without conviction.

Fuck.

I’m too fucking weak for her. Her agony destroys any rational thought I have. I can’t get to her quick enough, although I’m not thinking logically and I don’t have the key. In an attempt to help, I grip her as gently as I can to push her back against the headboard to loosen the tension of the cuff, but Aria’s hate is stronger than her reason.

Even with a dislocated shoulder, she shoves me with her uninjured hand. “Stay away,” she screams at me with tears still falling freely. “Get away!” It’s only when she tries to push me again that her body refuses to obey and she clutches at her shoulder.

“Aria,” I start to say, ready to plead with her to be reasonable and let me help.

“I meant it, I hate you!” Her confession is sobering. Her face is red as she swallows down the pain and stares me straight in the eye. “You wanted me to be like this? To chain me up and make me pay? You can’t go back. That’s your thing, right?” She pauses for a moment to breathe and then backs up against the headboard, holding on to her shoulder and sniffling. “Well, you can’t go back.” Her breathing’s unsteady and she speaks softer. “You did this. You made me hate you.” Her face crumples with the last confessions. “This is what you wanted, and now you can have it.”

The pain is numbing. It takes a minute and then another for me to even retrieve the key to uncuff her. She doesn’t look at me at all while I put her shoulder back into place.

And when she sobs, I want nothing more than to hold her, but she pushes me away and lies on her side, her back to me and her injured shoulder in the air.

I’ve never hurt so much in my life.

I remember everything from that night years ago. And even that pain doesn’t compare to this.

The whiskey is more than tempting this time and it goes down easy.

Each glass is easier than the last, and each brings the picture of our past to me like the way Aria paints. Each moment seems made up of beautiful strokes on her canvas. She could paint a painful past, yet make you desire to touch it with the masterful way her brush moves when she’s creating art.

For the longest time, all I see are the moments we’ve had together.

The next glass brings out my jealousy. And the thought of sending Nikolai a video of me fucking Aria and showing him how much she loves it.

She brings out a possessive side of me I’ve never known. She makes me lose my control. She ruins everything, but she’s the reason for it all.

She’s mine.

That’s the only thing that matters.

I would never do it; I’d never let a man like Nikolai see her cum. He had a chance with her, and he lost it. I fucking refuse to lose her like he did. I won’t let it happen.

At the thought, the tumbler slams down on the desk. For a moment, I think I’ve broken it.

I haven’t, but the whiskey is humming in my veins and knowing that, I push the glass away from me.

I get down on my knees, feeling lightheaded as I pick up all the shit I threw down from my desk earlier so I could have her. Placing the last few items where they belong, I let my hand rest where her lower back rested only hours ago. The hard chestnut is bitter cold and nothing like her warmth.

My gaze falls to the polaroid pictures laying haphazardly on top of a stack of papers. Pictures I brought out days and days ago to show Aria. Pictures of the house she says is so familiar. And one of them has my father and mother on the porch.

He loved her. Anyone who looked at them could see it. My father loved her with everything he had.

When she died a slow, slow death, he died with her.

I never learned how to love, only how to survive.

Maybe that’s what Aria’s been doing. Thinking on the past makes me reach for the tumbler again. The liquid burns as I swallow more down in large gulps and remember how she lay on the sofa in the corner of my office that first time.

She was so tired, but well fed and well fucked. The effects of what I’d done to her were still evident. Her skin lacked color and her ribs still poked through her flesh.

I did this to her. I put her in this position to simply survive.

That day she lay on the sofa, she slept off and on. Each time she woke startled and terrified until I went to her. I calmed her. I took her nightmares away.

Tears prick in the back of my eyes as I struggle to breathe. Yes, I hurt her, but I took it all away. All the pain, all the fear.

I thought it counted for more than it did.

As she slept that first day, I couldn’t do a damn thing but watch her and every small movement of her body. I remember every inch of her frame. I’ve never felt so sickened by who I am like back then.

But I tried to take it all away.

My elbows slam down harder than I wanted on the desk as I rest my forehead in my hands and let out a heavy sigh, burdened by all the sins I’ve committed against Aria Talvery.

It’s too much. Tonight has been too much.

I search the top right drawer for the small vial of sweets, but I don’t find it. The papers are scattered by the time I’m done, but I don’t care. When I slam it shut, the one below opens and I pull it ajar to find what I’m looking for right on top.

I know the liquor will numb me enough to sleep, but I never sleep long and tonight I need it. With a full vial, I swallow it all and when a moment passes and sleep doesn’t come, I grab another vial and take more of the drug.

My legs are heavy as I move to the sofa she slept in and lie in her place.

I don’t know if I would take it all back. I don’t know how I can ever have her. All I wanted was her, and I still do. I can’t help it. All I want is for Aria to be mine.

I hear her shuddering breath first. And when I lift my gaze from the floor beneath the desk to her flushed cheeks and then those gorgeous eyes, I feel a weight lifted from me.

Like the pain doesn’t exist anymore. Because she’s crawling to me. She’s coming to me. My songbird.

“Are you still angry?” I ask and my voice feels rough, as if it’s been unused for a long time. I can feel my brow pinch in confusion at the thought, and it’s then that I realize I feel cold. So cold.

None of it matters when Aria shakes her head. The messy hair around her face lets me know she’s been sleeping here in this room. She was waiting for me to wake up.

“I’m not angry.” Her voice is soft as she reaches me, but the tears don’t stop. My fingers splay in her hair as I cup my hand behind her head and pull her closer to me. I don’t even remember what the fight was about when I touch her. Nothing else matters when I touch her. She clings to me, her hands on my thighs as she lifts up her lips and kisses me.

With her lips to mine, everything feels right again and the pain doesn’t exist. Not until I feel the wetness from her tears on my face and she shudders in my grasp, pulling away to whisper, “Please forgive me.”

It takes me a moment, the haze of the whiskey dulling my thoughts as I struggle to remember tonight. How she lied, how she said it wasn’t her.

“Why did you lie?” I ask her, but she doesn’t answer. She only pleads for me to forgive her.

Her voice is wretched as she says, “You never told me that you did and after so long … please, Carter. Please forgive me.”

My head pounds with a pain that comes from drinking too much and it takes me a minute to register what she’s said. I ask her, “What do you mean ‘after so long?’”

She feels so right in my arms, and neither of us are willing to let go, but I feel so dizzy. So cold and confused. The room tilts suddenly. “Fuck,” I say, the word stretched in the air and the room tilts again, as if it’s trying to make me fall.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you,” Aria tells me as she touches her fingertips to my face ever so gently. She sniffles and adds, “Since I’ve gotten to talk to you.”

“I just saw you.” It’s all I can manage to say, but Aria doesn’t seem to hear me.

“I love you so much,” she says, and her bottom lip wobbles when her eyes find mine. “Please tell me you forgive me. I need it, Carter.” She pulls at my hand, holding it in both of hers and cradling my hand to her chest.

“Stop crying,” I tell her, trying to breathe but feeling the air become thinner. It’s like I’m suffocating. Something’s wrong.

I don’t want to take my hand away from her, but I need to reach for my collar. I can’t fucking breathe. It’s then, when I think about moving my hand, that I feel how cold she is against my knuckles. And how still her chest is. And how pale she is.

“Aria.” Her name is whispered, but I don’t know if I’ve said it. The chill seeps into my blood. She’s not breathing.

“Carter, no. No,” she tells me as if she knows what I’m thinking. “It was supposed to end like this. I could never be in the middle of war. I was always going to be the one to die.”

What is she saying? No! I scream but there’s no sound that escapes from my mouth. The room is silent, save her plea to me. “It’s okay. When it happens… I’m okay dying for you. I just need you to forgive me, please. Forgive me and love me, as I love you. I’ll always love you.”

The prick at the back of my neck flows down every inch of my skin. The room darkens and I still can’t breathe. I can’t think. She can’t be dead. Aria! I scream again, but it’s silent.

“We don’t have much time. Please, please, Carter. Forgive me.” Her eyes search mine as I scream and it’s then she sees my mouth moving but there’s no sound.

She yells something at me as the distance between us stretches, but her voice is gone.

Aria! I scream her name, reaching for her and holding on to her cold hands with every ounce of strength I have. Don’t leave me! I forgive you! I pray she hears me but all she does is cry as the darkness invades every sense I have.

The gasp that fills my chest sends a pain spiking down my back and I fall off the sofa and onto the hard floor of the office. I’m sweating and my heart is beating wildly in my chest.

My elbow scrapes against the floor as I struggle to get up fast enough.

“Aria!” I scream out, even though there’s no way for her to hear me. “Aria!” It’s all I can say as I run to her, to my bedroom and throw the door open to find her small form in bed. It’s not enough. I can’t swallow, I can’t breathe, I can’t do anything until I yank the covers back and see her chest rise and fall. She moans a small protest in her sleep from the cold, but even still, I lay my hand against her chest, right where it was moments ago, but there’s warmth and the steady beat of her heart.

There’s a suffocating lump in my throat at the sight of her. Still alive and still here with me. I fall to my knees beside her before covering her with the sheets again.

She doesn’t stir from her sleep, and a glance at the nightstand reveals a bottle of painkillers she must have found in the bathroom. It makes sense, given her arm. She’s passed out after taking the last two pills I had. But she’s here, and she’s alive.

It was only a dream. But it felt so fucking real. I struggle to breathe on the floor beside her and even worse, I struggle to get the vision of her out of my head.

I won’t sleep until this is over.

I’ve never hated myself more. I don’t care if she lied. I don’t care if those words didn’t come from her. I’ve never loved anything or anyone in this life like I do her, the Aria I know, the woman who I know loves me in return. The girl I took and broke, then placed the splintered pieces back together as best I could.

I won’t let her die.

Aria Talvery, my songbird, can’t die.