Chapter Twenty-Two

Elle

“OPEN YOUR EYES, Elle.”

I couldn’t, not with the tears trickling down my cheeks. Tears I didn’t even understand. I wasn’t crying because it hurt—the pain had already faded a little.

I wasn’t even crying because I’d given this man who I didn’t know the final piece of me that no one else had earned.

I cried because in his strange arms, with his delicious body inside mine, I found a smidgen of that freedom I’d tried so long to find.

“Open your eyes,” he ordered again, rocking into me.

I obeyed, drinking him in, noticing the small beads of sweat on his brow and the wildness on his face.

I shifted beneath him, my hips adjusting to fit his. My tears dried like salt tracks. “You’re huge.”

“You’re tight.”

“It feels…nice, though.”

“Nice?” He half-smiled, fighting back the quick flashes of darkness he kept hidden. “Just nice?” He pressed into me. “No other description? No better word for me fucking you?”

“Sore?”

He scowled. “I was thinking of another.”

“Hard? Full? Desperate?”

His face eclipsed with shadows. “Desperate?” His voice switched to ragged breath. “Desperate for what? This?” He arched into me, his back bowing, his hips driving into mine with power and precision.

My neck tensed, my skull digging into the bed as my shoulder blades came off the mattress. A wave of pain and a crash of pleasure. It seemed I couldn’t enjoy one without enduring the other.

But I’d never experienced anything like it.

I wanted more.

So much more.

But I’d have to wait because bliss like this meant he must’ve come, and I’d read men couldn’t have multiple orgasms like women.

~You haven’t come yet.~

It didn’t bother me. Tonight had been a simple task to lose my innocence. It rid me of that minor complication, and the next time (if there were a next time), there would be no pain, only pleasure.

My hips moved, kissing the top of my mound to his lower belly. A thank you. A request. A bit of both.

He licked his lips, self-control etching his face. “You want to continue?”

“There’s more?” My lips parted as eagerness washed through me. “You didn’t…finish?”

He chuckled; it shook his body inside mine. “I won’t take offense to that. But if you honestly think I’d just enter you and be satisfied, you need some serious lessons on how I fuck.”

He looked down at where we joined, encouraging me to watch, too. He pulled back a little before pushing forward. The pain morphed into pleasure, warming and melting with a fine veil of sharpness.

Embracing the fire feeding on the lust inside me, I placed my hands on the top of his ass where his back clenched beneath my fingers. “More.”

He planted his fists into the sheets by my head. “Fine.” He slipped from slow to serious, driving into me.

My core clenched around him. A twinge of discomfort tried to steal me away.

Screw the pain.

I wanted this.

All of it.

He groaned long and low, his hips thrust upward, hitting some part of me that shattered into stardust. His hips jack-knifed into mine, as deep and as close as he could go. He let go. He drove again.

Thrust.

Whatever place orgasms lived suddenly swarmed alive like a hive with its ferocious queen. The buzzing flew from my toes to my knees to my spine, from my fingers to my arms to my tongue.

Everything ignited, and I jumped.

I jumped from the tower of Belle Elle. I forgot about my career, my rules, my boundaries.

I deleted myself.

I met Penn in the black debasement and spoke crude consonants and tasted dirty vowels. “I want you to fuck me. I want you to make me scream.” I dug my fingernails into his ass, jerking him to me.

“Give me what I want.” I bowed off the bed, capturing his mouth with mine, taking control all while submitting the remaining power I had. “Fuck me...please.”

I should’ve prepared for the unleashing.

I should’ve expected what would happen with such an invitation.

But it still took me by surprise. Still thrilled and terrified and teased.

“You fucking asked for it.” His smile was pure criminal as his stomach tightened, and he drove into me so hard, so fast, his hips bruised my inner thighs.

His mouth latched onto mine, our teeth clacking, our tongues knotting, every last masquerade at being civilized...gone.

He didn’t just take me up on my offer.

He doubled my stakes and went for everything he could claim.

He fucked me.

No, that was woefully unjust.

He broke me, fixed me, split me.

His body slammed again and again and ~again~ into me. His cock sliding in heat and wetness, dragging more from me. The orgasm buzz increased, consuming everything.

His stamina made my legs jelly. Every feminine atom burst with bliss. My hips tried to meet his, but his pace kept me pinned to the bed.

With a ragged breath, he slapped a hand over my heart, pressing my lungs, preventing me from gasping, counting my racing heartbeats.

My skin burned with sweat, turning his grip slippery. His fingers slid off me, slamming into the mattress. His arm buckled, wedging his entire weight on me.

His hips thrust as if he had no power over his body anymore. As if all he was, all he was meant to do, was possess me until I possessed him in some karmic twist of fate.

I gasped and panted and gulped as sex turned into the most basic of coupling.

He buried his face into the sheets, his back suddenly going ramrod straight, his cock pulsing inside me.

I froze, not knowing what to do.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

My fingers turned gentle, caressing his spine. The moment I touched his sweat-misted back, he reared up, baring his teeth. “Don’t. I’m just—” His jaw worked. “I’m so fucking close.”

“Don’t stop.”

His face scrunched up with sexual agony. “I don’t want to finish yet. I haven’t had enough of you.”

My cheeks pinked even as triumph blew trumpets in my belly. “Oh.”

He bent and kissed me, unapologetic with lust and his desire to come.

His eyes remained closed, barring me from reading him or trying to guess if this physical act meant more to him than mutual release.

I couldn’t figure him out, and I desperately needed to if I was going to survive whatever he’d done to me.

Because he ~had~ done something to me.

He’d awakened me, and I could never go back to sleep.

“Fuck, you feel too good.” With a feral grunt, he pulled away, withdrawing, and leaving me empty. Sliding down my body, his legs fell off the bed, his knees thudding against the floor.

Before I could ask what was wrong, his hands landed on my inner thighs and pushed my legs apart.

His mouth—the same one that’d been kissing me—landed on my core, his tongue pulsing inside me with a different kind of wetness, a more intimate kind of heat.

I bowed off the bed, clutching the sheets in shock. “Oh, my ~God.~”

He bit my clit with careful teeth. “You’re sore, and I need to fuck you hard. I doubt you’ll find release with me. So…you’re going to have one now.”

The sheets didn’t provide enough traction to grip onto. I grabbed his hair instead.

He cursed something deep and dark. His voice twisted my stomach into bowties. His tongue entered me again.

It wasn’t enough after the deep penetration of his cock; the shallow claiming left me straining for more.

But then his hands joined in too, pinching my clit as his fingers ran beneath his tongue to press inside me, granting girth and dexterity, pushing me up the cliff of an orgasm I’d bathed in since he turned me from pure to deviant.

Just like in my office, he didn’t mess around.

He wanted me to come.

I would come.

My legs tried to close around his head, but he slammed a hand onto my thigh, spreading his saliva and my arousal. Grabbing my wrists, he kept them pinned on my belly while his tongue worked me harder.

The orgasm had colors like a dark rainbow—all blacks and grays and reds and oranges. I felt it gather. I saw it swirl.

And when it descended from my bones and ligaments to gather in my womb, it glittered like some magical malicious force.

His tongue was the wand that spent that magic, dragging it from me, forcing it to explode in body-crippling waves.

“Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh,~God~.” I climbed the bed, him, the world. I went blind, deaf, mute.

I drowned in every crest.

I hadn’t finished coming when he climbed my body, hooked my leg over his hip, and slammed back inside me.

“Yes!” It was a scream. I had no shame. I screamed again as he drove brutally fast and deep. “Yes. Oh, God,~yes.~”

The pain…was no more.

The pleasure…was too much.

Thick, hot, welcome and an undeniable primitive need to feel him all the way, deeper, deeper, harder, harder.

His tongue slid over my neck, his teeth settling over my artery like a wolf mounting its mate.

I kissed his shoulder, reveling in the saltiness, the rawness of how two naked people could be.

My fingernails landed on either side of his spine, digging hard.

“Harder,” he ordered with a commanding bite. His tone kissed the dregs of my orgasm, rekindling it, fanning it, transforming embers into flames.

The soreness turned to a luscious pulling as he drove faster.

“Fuck, take it. Fucking take it.” He reared over me, his elbows locked, his fingers tangled in my hair, keeping my head imprisoned and eyes pinned on his.

The bed creaked as he worked both of us into a slick mess of sweat and pleasure.

I couldn’t look away, and in his brown gaze, I found something unbearably carnal, so unfiltered and truthful that my core tightened, begging for another release.

His lips smashed against mine, cutting me off from his thoughts.

I lost my mind and gave into the time-honored instinct to rock with him, to accept his control, and allow him to feed and deny me every hunger he summoned.

“Fuck, you feel good. I knew you would.” He hit me at an angle that sent the world fracturing with black spots. His expert claiming sent another spindle of need to join those hungry flames.

I was sore and loose and wet and delirious, and I didn’t think I could come again. But he had a power over me I couldn’t ignore.

A smaller, more tentative release found me, ecstasy radiating into my fingertips as I trembled and gathered beneath him.

My eyes remained open as the bands of muscle contracted almost secretly, tiptoeing through my body as if unpermitted.

I came softly, deliciously, wantonly.

His eyes widened. “You came?”

I swallowed as a final clench left me boneless, lost, and entirely drugged with endorphins.

“Fuck, you came. You fucking came with me inside you.” His gaze possessed me, and he lost it. Positioning himself higher over me, he grabbed my wrists and slammed them over my head.

And then, he ~fucked~ me.

“Shit, shit…~shit~.” His voice scrambled with breath. Inside me, he grew thicker, heavier, harder, hitting the top of me with every pound.

He was wild, unleashed; his control and lies undone.

His face, normally so handsome and regal, splintered into a broken veneer as he let go.

~“Fuck!~” An animalistic roar fell from his lips, his orgasm tearing up his back and into me.

I let him do what he needed.

I drank in his vulnerability and relished in the fact he let me see him the way not many people would.

He shattered.

He shivered.

He shuddered as the last wave wrung him dry.

Only once long moments had disappeared, and we’d returned from whatever stratosphere he’d catapulted us to, did his fingers unlock from my wrists and trail down my arm to cup my cheek.

With eyes soft and no longer angry about things I couldn’t understand, he kissed me.

This kiss was different.

It wasn’t a claiming or a thank you.

It was a stripping back; a peeling of the masks we wore.

An acknowledgment that we’d started something that, unfortunately, wouldn’t have a happy ending.