He bites his fist, his blues glossy with what I mistake for anger, until he hisses, “Jesus, baby. You’re spectacular.”
I glance down at my stomach, noting that the scar extending between my breastbone and my belly button from the emergency splenectomy is as visible as ever, but when I peer back at Ryker, all I see is genuine awe. My breath hitches. No one has ever looked at me with such reverence. Not evenbefore.
“Keep going,” he orders, his voice hoarse. “Bra and panties.”
Suddenly eager for his reaction, I unclasp my bra and ruck down my panties without hesitation. Before the garments even touch the floor, he showers me with more veneration.
“Fuck.” The thirst in his sultry embers and the bulge in his pants shout how authentic that gravelly reception is. “You. Are. Stunning. So much more ravishing than I ever imagined.”
“You imagined?” I ask, my mind playing that over with the pros and cons that could stem from his answer.
“Of course.” He hauls me against him and nestles his face in my hair with a shuddered exhale. “A lot. You were phenomenal in my mind, Merce, but this … I can’t catch my breath.”
How can he look at me and not see the ugliness of all that was lost?
“Hey,” he whispers, reading my thoughts again, “none of that.”
Without warning, his fingers thrust inside me, pumping in and out and curling to hit that elusive G-spot that has been long neglected. In thirty-four years, no one has found it. Until now. Until him.
An unbidden moan springs from my lips, and he studies my face for a beat before his mouth is on my breast, sucking on my nipple and grazing his teeth over it while I squirm and buck my hips, desperate for more. He pays homage to the other one and then drops to his knees, kissing every inch of my scar in a seductive perusal of my trail of shards. With his tongue’s caress, the cutting sting is distant.
“Don’t stop,” I plead, closing my eyes and unabashedly grinding into his hand as his mouth descends lower, soft kisses on my inner thighs, his scruff teasing my clit, his breath tickling my heated flesh.
“Just getting started, baby,” he mumbles between languid licks of my pussy. “But we are going to change things up.”
“Change? I’m so close.” I open my eyes and gawk at him.
This formidable man, a god to so many, who was always justmine—my best friend, my support, my lifeline—is on his knees for me. My fingers comb through his thick hair. My eyes latch on to his. For a split second, I’m not broken. I’m …his. And now I can’t catch my breath.
“Go sit in front of the mirror,” he directs, effectively dousing me with cold water.
“What?” I gasp. “No … I—”
“You agreed to obey without question,” he reminds me from his knelt stance. “Go. There’s a pillow.”
My focus darts to the mirrored wall, which will be impossible to ignore, and the pillow and blanket he dropped there. He planned this. That’s why we’re in the closet.
He stands and nudges me toward it—okay,dragsme toward it. “We’re going to face it together.”
Maybe that’s only in reference to the mirror, but it feels like more. Facing the scars. The pain. That godforsaken night when I begged to die and didn’t get my wish.
The night he broke too.
Against every impulse to bolt coursing through me, I sit on the pillow, and he lowers himself behind me, his long legs spread wide to bracket my enfolded body. His hand clamps onto my inner calf, unfurling my leg and planting my foot outside of his knee. He repeats with the other leg and moves my hands to rest on his thighs, so I’m fully open. Then he forces my chin up. Still, I avert my gaze.
“Look.” His free hand splays over my stomach, the tip of his thumb brushing the underside of my breast and his long, slender pinkie nearly reaching the apex of my thighs. “Open your eyes and see how beautiful you are, Mercy.”
My eyes lock on to his in the mirror, my naked form an out-of-focus backdrop, and he seems to accept that. Those blues aren’t any easier of a focal point though. They’re fevered with heat and emotion. It makes me ache.
His hands rove with his characteristic intensity, starting at my chest to mime some of his words. “As if your radiant face wasn’t enough, your tits are extraordinary. Full and perky. Nipples like goddamn pencil erasers, begging to be pinched and sucked.” He plunges two fingers inside my drenched opening, stealing the air from my lungs. “You have the most perfect, mouthwatering pussy in existence. Fucking magnificent.Glistening and pink. So wet.” The hand on my breast falls to my stomach atop the hideous line, the other tracing the smaller bone-surgery scar on my arm. “And these are not the marks of defeat. These are the badges of a fucking warrior. A goddamn viper. So gorgeous. Wear them with pride.”
A boulder lodges itself in my throat. “Ryker … I …”
“I know.” He enwraps me in his arms as his mouth sails along my neck and jaw with jagged breaths. “Too much. Let’s get you what you need, beautiful girl.”
Despite my chest being cracked open from that heavy dose of affirmation, my entire body is ablaze when he slides my buzzing dildo inside me, replacing his hand with mine.
“Fuck yourself with that,” he demands, and while I thrust it in and out, he circles my clit, kneads my breasts, and tweaks my nipples, crooning encouragement in my ear. “You’re so fucking sexy, Merce, taking what you need. So goddamn breathtaking. Look at how your cunt swallows that toy. So greedy.”
