He ignores my broken utterance, his focus absolute. He parts me with his thumbs and his tongue finds my core. It’s not the ruthless, skilled assault designed to shatter me quickly. It is a languid exploration, a mapping of every secret, sensitive fold. He licks into me with a torturous slowness that has tears leaking from the corners of my eyes, tracking down into my hair. I am gasping, trying to breathe through the overwhelming tide of sensation, trying not to cry from the sheer, devastating beauty of it.
For the first time since he took me, I do not feel like his slave. Under the skilled ministrations of his mouth, under the weight of this breathtaking reverence, I feel like his equal. I feel like his woman. The thought is so profound, so liberating that it unlocks something deep inside me.
My hands, which had been fisted in the sheets, lift. My fingers find the crisp, white cotton of his shirt. I fumble with the first button, my movements clumsy with passion and emotion.
He goes utterly still. His mouth leaves me, and the loss is a physical ache. He catches my wrists in one strong hand, his grip not painful, but firm. A warning.
“No, Grace,” he says, his voice rough, stripped bare.
The vulnerability in that tone fuels me more. This is the heart of his denial. This is the fortress wall I must breach.
“Please,” I whisper, meeting his dark, guarded gaze. “Let me see you. All of you.”
A war rages in his eyes. I can’t tell if it’s fear, shame, or a flicker of desperate want. He has never revealed his torso to me. Our fucking has always been with him still half-dressed. He has never let me see the damage he carries.
“You don’t want to see,” he grates out, trying to turn his face away.
I cup his cheek, forcing him to look at me. “I want to seeyou.”
The silence between us is heavy, fraught. Then, slowly, his grip on my wrists loosens. He releases me and sits back on his heels, his expression that of a man awaiting a sentence. His eyes never leave mine as my trembling fingers return to the buttons of his shirt.
I work them open one by one, revealing an expanse of skin that is not smooth and perfect, but a landscape of survival. The lamplight falls upon his chest and stomach, and my breath hitches.
It is mangled. A web of thick, ropy scars, patches of shiny, tight skin, and discoloured flesh maps his torso; a brutal testament to some battle he waged in the name of the Brethren. It is a history of pain written in his very skin.
Dangling right in the middle is that necklace, that trophy, that mix of me and him. My ruin. My destruction that he wears like a diamond.
A tear escapes and rolls down my temple, and he flinches as if it has burned him.
“I told you,” he says, his voice hollow. “It is not a sight for you.”
I don’t reply with words. Instead, I push the shirt from his broad shoulders, down his powerful arms. He is rigid, every muscle tensed for my rejection, my horror.
I lean forward into the space between us, and I press my lips to the centre of the worst of the scarring, right over his heart. The skin feels different under my mouth, textured and tough, but it is warm. It is him.
He sucks in a sharp, ragged breath.
I kiss him again, another patch of ruined beauty. And again. I trail my lips across the landscape of his pain, whispering against his skin. “It’s beautiful.” Kiss. “Because it’s you.” Kiss. “You survived.” Kiss. “You’re here.” Kiss. “With me.”
His hands come up to frame my face, his thumbs stroking my cheeks as he looks down at me, his eyes blazing with an emotion so raw and unguarded that it steals the air from my lungs. In this moment, every wall is down. Every defence is shattered. He is laid as bare as I am.
He lowers me back onto the pillows, his body coming down over mine but for the first time, his weight doesn’t feel like a prison. It feels like a shelter. Our skin meets, my smoothness against his scars, a perfect, poignant fit. He kisses me, and it’s unlike any kiss we have ever shared. It is not hungry or demanding. It is deep, slow, and tasting of salt, his or mine, I cannot tell.
He enters me with a slow, deliberate glide that makes us both cry out. There is no hurry, no frantic race for domination or release. I am not a thing to be used. This is a joining. He moves within me with a devastating patience, each thrust a slow, deep caress designed to build the pleasure between us until it is a tangible thing, shimmering in the air around us.
His eyes are open, locked on mine. He is watching me, learning me, ensuring every rock of his hips, every shift of his body brings me closer to the edge.
This isn’t about his dominance. It is about our mutual pleasure.
Our connection.
Us.
My legs wrap around his waist, pulling him deeper and I meet his rhythm, my hips rising to meet his every slow, penetrating thrust. The world narrows to this room, to this bed, to the feel of him moving inside me. To the sight of the scars on his back straining with each movement, the sound of our ragged breaths mingling.
The pleasure builds not in a frantic rush but like a slow, incoming tide, inexorable and overwhelming. I clutch his shoulders, my fingers sliding over the ruined skin, and I feel myself begin to unravel. He sees it, feels it, and his pace remains agonizingly, perfectly steady, drawing out every second of my ascent.
“Look at me,Grace,” he whispers, his voice thick with an emotion I dare not to name.
