Turning my jaw, growing the kiss, I ravish her mouth. At the slightest sign of her neck arching, and the second she whimpers, I take my opening and lay her on the blanket without leaving her mouth.
I don’t hold her down. Christ, I want to. I want to bruise her up, leave my teeth in her skin, bury myself so deep she forgets that burning bridge of a scar. Instead, I stay right here, blanketing her, kissing her like she’s the only thing keeping my lungs working.
Then, she touches me. Devil take me!—those soft fingers brush my chest, getting stuck in the stubble. I slap my palm on the floor above her head, using all my strength, all my willpowerto keep from grinding against her. It just beats like a beast on her belly.
Tonight, I own this kiss. I own the bits of softness she gives me, her humanity and mercy. I drink it all down from her angel mouth.
Those fingers trail upward, skirting along the throbbing veins in my neck, tracing my ticking jaw. Fuck, she’s driving me mad.
Need me an edge. But I’ll sure make it the sweetest, nicest edge I can.
“Wh-what are you doing?” she asks when I wind an arm around her waist and drag her just a bit over the blanket until I’m close enough to the little toy trunk next to the couch. I’m not about to let her go. But when I open the lid, Briella bristles.
“Trust me.” I ease her concerns when I take out some warming oil, uncap it, and then turn her over.
“Oh, God!” she cries out when my oil-slicked hands slide down her back.
I knead, stroke, and worship…not as smooth as Jude, but in my own bloody way, working out the knots.
She melts under my touch, every inch of her body surrendering to the pressure. But when she shows even the slightest hint of resistance, I press her neck down gently, urging her to stay beneath me.
“All these scars so fecking exquisite…” I murmur, tracing the silver scars, my name carved into her skin by my whip.
I reshape her, break her down, but not like before. This is a different kind of domination. A stronger, quieter kind.
It’s easy to fuck a woman, to take her and leave. But it takes a true warrior to make her feel like a queen, like a goddess. To teach her to desire me, to need me—like I need her.
She goes boneless beneath me, her body yielding to my touch, but I don’t stop. I keep massaging the warm oil into her, onto the scars I’ve left, marking her as mine again.
I glance down at her face, but it’s fractured, hidden beneath those curls. Fuck, her cheeks are wet with tears. She’s blinking them away, confused, drained.
She knows what I’m doing, knows I’m tearing open the raw wounds between us.
I lower my head and rub my lips along those scars, rasping my beard on her skin—soft and coarse. I leave nothing untouched.
Because pain? Pain is easy. But healing? Healing’s a bitch. Making her feel it again, making her confront what I did…that’s harder than any fucking burn.
It’s why she’s trembling more. But she’s lost all her fight. For the first time, she’s letting me touch all her broken pieces. Not cutting me. Not piercing straight through my chest.
When she inhales through her nose, I peel those curls away from her wet cheeks. “Still with me, Lass?”
Deja vu strikes me like a blade. Oh, shite. What I said back…in the dungeon.
She breaks down. So, I lift her—her broken, weeping, shaking body into my arms. Bring her close. Head on my chest so she can feel my big, beating black devil heart. Ahh, Christ, there’s gotta be a word for this kind of feeling. The kind that rips you open on the inside.
“Why?” she whimpers against me, rubbing her face in my chest, her words a little muffled. “We could’ve just gone on like we always have. Why couldn’t you just make a stupid sex joke and handcuff me to the bed? Just let me hate you?”
I think on her last word.
Come on, you bloody bastard. It won’t kill you. Let her in so she can gut you like the arsehole you are and rake her claws on your filthy fecking heart. Tell her.
“Cause I love you.”
She freezes.
“Ack, please don’t tell the others. They’ll never let me live it down.”
She still doesn’t move.
