Fingers curled, I lifted my hand. Hesitant, I let my fingers land on his chest. Let my digits spread as I marveled at the heat billowing off a landscape of ridges and valleys that was at once so utterly foreign, and yet… familiar.
Beneath my palm, his heart hammered a wild pace and I felt him recoil an instant before he seized my wrist in a grip meant for splintering bone.
Guarding his vitals, coiled and ready to defend against attack.
Because he remembered.
That I had tried to kill him like this, once.
That I’d been closest to victory when I’d embraced what he’d made me.
A seasoned whore.
One who’d tasted the salty brine of his seed and begged for more. Pussy singing for his touch, for the punishing ache of his cock as he whispered obscenities against my ear and bred desperate obedience into slick heat.
I’d gaped for him.
Crawled.
Begged.
Needed.
“Please,” I whispered, and wet my bottom lip with a flick of my tongue. Spine arching over the windowsill, I went loose and docile against him. Giving him my weight, trusting him not to break my wrist, I lifted my feet and hooked them around the backs of his thighs. My silks gaping in a lewd spread, I tipped my hips back and offered myself as that last, desperate distraction.
Nostrils pinched white, he took a choppy breath. Shuddering as wet heat kissed where he was rigid and thick.
“I”—I swallowed, throat dry and reedy, and tried again—“I need…”
His head tilted a few degrees. Enough that the deep inky, black of pupils blown wide caught a curious glimmer of light.
“Please,” I whispered. “It hurts to want you like this. Toneed—I’ve never… I don’t…” I shook my head. Blinked. And with an effort that left me scraped raw, I uncorked the dam. “I need to feel you,” I panted, and let my tongue sweep over the points of my teeth. “Touching me. F-fucking me. Again and again and again, because…” I abandoned my grip on the sill and reached for his fly with the trembling fingers of the hand not caught in a merciless grip. Catching him where his zipper sagged, already sticky with a glossy white sheen. “Because I can’t help it, damn you,” I gasped, core clenching when I took him in hand. Letting velvet and steel slip through my fist, I stroked him from tip to base and back. “Can’t stop thinking about it. What you do to me. The way you taste…”
His lips parted on a ragged, low growl. But he didn’t blink. Didn’t move as I worked my palm over his length.
“I know you can feel it,” I murmured, and let my thumb sweep over his slit, through a bead of furious, slippery want. “How badly I need you to do it again.Already. That I haven’t stopped dripping for you—” I pumped once, twice more, and then sent his tip through sodden heat. Slicking him with the honest truth of my words as they dripped from honeyed lips. “Because I can’t help myself, and no matter how much you hate me, no matter how much it hurts, I still need it.”
Pinning me with a slitted glare, his black gaze flicked between my eyes. Searching, rigid, resisting me even as I laid myself bare and threw myself at his mercy.
Fat, shameful tears spilled over my lashes, and I choked on a bitter laugh. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? To ruin me so deeply, so completely that I could never escape you?”
At this, his cock kicked where it was poised to obliterate me. A spike of sick, male jealousy lanced through my blood. Possessive rage cooled only by my destruction. It was satisfaction born by my words—words he didn’t so much as attempt to deny.
Because I was right.
A fragile smile cracked my lips. Laced with so much that would remain nameless, hardly more than a grim flash of teeth, but a smile nevertheless. “You win. I have nothing. Iamnothing,” I said, voice watery and quavering with each syllable that spilled over my lips. Damning me. “Just a whore. An empty vessel, begging for your”—my breath hitched—“your come. Helplessly addicted, my every cursed step haunted by the ache for you.”
Slipping my free hand up, careful not to touch the spot where his heart thrashed in his chest, I tried again to pull him inside. Leveraging hooked heels, I stretched as far as he’d let me. My fingers falling to trace the bow of his bottom lip, just once. A gentle pass that let me feel his shallow breath on my knuckles. The prickle of stubble shading his chin.
“Please,” I whispered, and moved to pry his fingers away from my throat. Guiding him down, over the snag and catch of black silks covering nothing of my nudity. Over the bump of jagged ribs and the soft hollow between. All the way. Past my belly button to find where I was slick and hairless, weeping for him to move. To take. “It hurts,” I said again. Fragile. Raw. Grinding against the head of his cock, our fingers intertwined, and I painted delicious little circles around the base of my clit.
Inky eyes darted down. As if reluctant to be distracted, but unable to resist the sight of what he’d fought so hard to claim. Now freely offered.
Nostrils pinched white, a tiny breath puffed over his lips. A shiver rippled through unyielding muscle.
“I have nothing left,” I whispered. “Nothing that’s not already yours. The empath…” I whispered, and shifted to take his length in hand once more, leaving him to toy with that rigid bundle of nerves. “This p-pussy…” Stroking him, I tried to pull him inside. “All yours. And I need you,” I murmured, palm slippery with his come and mine. “Fuck me, Asher,” I said, pulling him closer with my heels. Straining toward the back corner of his jaw, so I might press a single word against his skin. So he would feel it, when I said, “Hard,”
He snapped.
