And that tortured admission did something to her, ignited something deep inside her that went past pain. That went past fear. The scary part was over. It was done. And the pain was already beginning to roll itself back.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, curling her fingers around his neck and holding on as she shifted beneath him.
It was strange, this feeling. His body inside hers. How had she not realized? How intimate something like this would be?
Everybody talked about sex at university. Gave great proclamations about what they liked and what they didn’t, had endless discussions about thewhen, thewhyand thewith who. But no one had ever said sex made you feel like someone hadn’t just entered your body, but your whole soul. No one had said that you would want to run away and draw closer at the same time.
No one had said that it would be a great, wrenching pain followed by a deep, strange sense of connection that seemed to bloom into desire again as he shifted his hips and arched into her.
She tested what it might feel like if she moved against him, too, and found that she liked it. With each and every thrust that he made into her body, animalistic sounds coming from deep inside of him, she met him. Until her body was slick with sweat—his or hers, she didn’t know. Until that fierce need she had felt the first time he had kissed her was back. Until she thought she might die if she didn’t get more of him.
Until she no longer wanted to run at all.
He growled, his hardness pulsing inside her as he froze above her, slamming back into her one last time. And then, a release broke inside her like a wave, and she found herself drowning. In pleasure. In him.
And when he looked at her, she suddenly felt small and fragile. Any sense of being resolute crumbled.
And much to her horror, a tear slid down her cheek.
She was crying. God in heaven, the woman was crying.
No. He wasn’t going to think about God. Not right now. Because God had nothing to do with this. No, this was straight from hell, and he was one of the devil’s chosen. There was no other way to look at it.
Not only had he taken her in his truck like a beast—a fancy justification for sidestepping the wordmonsterif ever there was one—but she had also been a virgin.
And he hadn’t stopped.
When he had hit that resistance, when he had seen that flash of pain on her face, he had waited only a moment before he kept on going. She’d lifted her hips, and he hadn’t been able to do anything but keep going. Because she was beautiful. And he wanted her. More than beautiful, she was soft and delicate, and an indulgence.
And he hadn’t had any of that for more than five years.
Sinking into her tight body had been a revelation. As much as a damnation.
“Dammit to hell,” he muttered, straightening and pulling his pants back into place. He chucked the condom out the window, not really giving a damn what happened to it later.
“What?” she asked, her petite frame shivering, shaking, her arms wrapped tightly around her body, as though she was trying to protect herself.
Too little, too late.
“You know.”
“I don’t,” she said, shrinking more deeply into the far corner of the truck, her pale figure cast into a soft glow by the moonlight. “I don’t... I thought it was good.”
Her voice was trembling, watery, and he could hear the sigh that she breathed out becoming a sob.
“You didn’t tell me you were a virgin,” he said, trying to keep the accusation out of his voice, because dammit, he had known. On some level, he had known. And he hadn’t been put off by it at all.
No, he hadtoldhimself to be put off by it. By her obvious innocence and inexperience. He had commanded himself not to be interested in it. To chase after someone more like him. Someone a little bit dark. Someone a little bit craven. But his body didn’t want that.
Because his soul was a destroyer. A consumer of everything good and sweet.
Hadn’t Alicia been sweet when he’d met her? Hadn’t she transformed into something else entirely over their time together? How could he ignore the fact that he was the common denominator at the center of so many twisted scenarios in his life?
Him.
The one thing he could never fully remove from the equation unless he removed himself from the world.
“So what?” she asked, shuffling around in the car, undoubtedly looking for her clothes. “I knew that.”
