“You’d be doing me a favor,” he said with a growl that slid into my bones.
“Despite what our history may suggest,” I said, “I don’t actually want to hurt you.”
“Don’t be greedy, Gemma.” He pressed my nails into his skin. “What are you feeling? I want to feel it too. Put it inside me.”
Muscles coiled in his neck, his jaw working with restraint. His eyes throbbed, savage and ravenous.
And because of that I scythed.
He let out a jagged groan as the skin broke. After a tantalizingly long minute, he inhaled, rough and broken, lids hooded, jaw clenched. “Goodgirl.”
Gooddisappeared into something rocky, and I felt the praise abrade my blood.
He pulled me tighter onto his lap and I felt him, hard iron between my thighs. Like everything else about us, I know this is fucked. Iknow.I should probably be in therapy. But the thing was, I’d done that. All it ever did was make me feel even more broken.
“Tell me what you’re feeling.” It wasn’t a request, but a demand.
“I’m…I’m mad.”
“More,” he demanded instantly.
“I hate how I have to do mental contortions, rip apart pieces of me to be accepted. I want to scream at the world, strangle it until they understand the problem isn’t me, it’s them.”
I dug into his neck, bright pebbles of blood sprouting beneath my nails. At the increased pressure, his cock jolted against mine.
His jaw was taut, eyes rapt.
Hungry.
Doing this, wanting him while pain still scratched my insides, was doing something to me. His cock on my ass, his words on my lips, were a whip on my soul, grazing teeth along the flesh of my heart.
It was like…emotional BDSM.
“You would be distressed, too, bitch,” I yelled.
I didn’t know who I was talking to.
I didn’t know where this anger came from.
It was definitely not for Grim, but his eyes gleamed, urging me on.
“You would be so fucking distressed.” I dragged my nails down his neck, four jagged red lines following. “If everyone wanted to pollute the very essence of you just so you would smell like them.”
One arm slid around my waist, pulling me tight against him.
“But instead I have to learn how to live with you.”
“No, you don’t.” With his free hand, he lifted my chin. “You’re a queen, Gemma.”
The earnestness in the black depths of his eyes was disarming.Queen.I’d heard some version of that my entire life. But it was never like this. A power behind it, a reverence.
When Grim said it, I felt it.
More than that, I felt like it belonged to me.
He pressed a deep, hungry kiss to my lips. “The world bends to you.”
Grim lifted me off him, onto the bed. He got to his knees, fingers coming to the hem of my skirt. There was hunger in his eyes, but his touch was gentle and unpressured. He dragged the skirt off my body, then gently lifted my shirt over my head.
