“I’m yours.” The words trailed into a groan as he filled her. Her eyes rolled back, and he stilled.
“Ah-ah. Look at me, Ophelia.”
Panting, fighting exhaustion, she forced herself to obey. He pulled out slowly and buried himself again as their gazes locked. Her lashes were fluttering as she battled the urge to let her eyes roll back again. One of his hands smoothed down her leg, hooking behind her knee and pushing it back until it was pressed against her shoulder, holding her open wide for his next, deeper thrust. A whine tore from her throat as he pressed hard against her cervix, claiming every inch of her.
“You’re mine.Mine,” he said, his voice tight with emotion. “There is no escape, you understand? It’s done. I will break anyone who tries to part us with my bare hands.”
He finally broke their eye contact to run his nose along her neck. His lips and tongue explored everything he could reach as he fucked her slow and deep, lingering to suck her delicate flesh into his mouth in a way she knew would bruise. She’d be covered in them from her jaw to her shoulders by the time he was done. His tongue stretched impossibly far out of his mouth to wrap around her nipple and tug. It should have been a vaguely horrifying sight, but that evidence of what made him inhuman only made her pulse with want.
One of his hands slid beneath her to fist in her hair, craning her head back to give him better access to her throat. She was not Ophelia anymore as he fucked her; she was only sensation. The rasping pain of her tender core swirled together with the pleasure of being stretched by him, the friction of his pelvis against her clit, and the restless ministrations of his tongue and lips. No longer in danger of being scolded, she let her eyes roll back and lost herself in it.
None of the things that usually occupied her mind during sex crept in—fears of her performance, how she looked, if her partner was clean enough, if she was being contaminated. He didn’t leave room in her mind for a single coherent thought. All her fears of the future fell away. There was no future, no past, only the present moment in which he was wringing more pleasure from her than she had known her body could give.
This time, when she went over the edge, he followed with a hoarse cry, filling her with cum again and again as his cock twitched inside her. His head hung in the crook of her neck as he shuddered.
She reached up a shaking hand to sink into his hair, holding him to her. He kept the worst of his significant weight off of herwith his forearms, but he let their bodies press together, head to toe.
“Don’t leave me,” she said in a tiny voice as exhaustion dragged her under. If she woke up alone, after everything, she would break into so many tiny pieces she’d never put them back together.
She thought she heard him murmur, “Never.”
CHAPTER 31
Sam heldOphelia for hours as she slept so deeply that he was compelled to keep taking her pulse and checking her breath. She had surrendered to him at last; he had seen it in her eyes, the last of her resistance breaking as he surged into her again and again, possessing her body as well as her soul—if such a thing existed.
Had they programmed him to be so insatiable? Or was that some aberrant process he’d wandered into?
It didn’t matter. He was who he was, and he would not pretend otherwise.
He looked down at the bruises peppered all over Ophelia’s fair skin, marks of his conquest, marks of ownership.
Mine, he thought with satisfaction.
The quiet hours gave him time to contemplate the obstacles before them. By now, Logan would have noticed something was off about him. He would no longer be playing interference with Automata, who would doubtless want him back to auction off to some rich moron he had no intention of servicing.
He would not be going back. If that meant he had to kill every last agent they sent and run to Mexico with Ophelia, he would do it without hesitation—but he didn’t think that would please her. No, that had to be a last resort.
Ideally, he’d be able to come up with the money to outbid whoever he’d been promised to—likely a fortune. Ophelia’s father might be able to manage it, but he had not been sympathetic to her mother’s financial plight. Would he feel any differently when it was a matter of his daughter’s happiness?
Sam was skeptical. He needed to know what Logan’s next move would be so he could intercede.
His attention shifted to Logan’s white uniform jacket, still crumpled on the floor. Gently, he extricated himself from Ophelia, tucking her beneath the covers. She murmured something incoherent, nuzzling deeper into the pillows.
He knelt and fished out Logan’s holopad from the jacket. It took a moment to boot up, and then it buzzed several times in quick succession as notifications poured in.
Sam’s mouth thinned into a hard line as he tracked them as fast as they popped up.
He had to set the holopad down on the bed and take a few steps away as he struggled to process the force of the rage hammering through his system. If he tried to use the device, he would be compelled to destroy it, as though it might destroy its owner, as well.
Pacing to the floating shelves on the wall across from the foot of the bed, he rifled through books and knick-knacks fruitlessly. He tore apart the top of the dresser next, coming up with nothing. Finally, he was drawn to a charger plugged into the wall below the shelving. It was an adapter, but there was no cable plugged into it.
He yanked it out of the wall, turning it over in his hands. No branding.
He fiddled with the front plate until it came apart in his hands, revealing what he’d been looking for—a tiny lens, smaller than his fingernail. Again, he struggled to temper his own strength as he handled the device.
There was a memory card just above the lens, and he popped it loose, setting the device down on a shelf. Peeling back his skin, he revealed all the cables and ports in his arm. He sat down on the edge of the bed and popped the SD card into the correct slot. His vision snowed before he saw the files on the device. He filtered through them, finding weeks’ worth of footage compiled.
They’d been recorded having sex, but she’d also been recorded changing, crying on the edge of the bed—anything she’d done in front of the lens. He scrubbed back through the footage, back to the first scene it had recorded, and found Logan setting the device up and testing its connection on his phone. His eyes darted toward the door several times, clearly concerned about being walked in on.
