I wasn’t the kind of man who gave grand gestures or whispered poetic promises.Christ,I’d never even stayed thenight with a woman before, always having to scrub my skin raw of their fucking perfume because I felt repulsed.
I didn’t care about people’s emotions, especially not the women who dropped to their knees and begged for my cock like it was some grand prize. I used them to feed my somewhat unhealthy, destructive obsession with control. With being the one who dictated every second, every sound, every surrender because it was the only way I knew how to outrun my past without letting it swallow me whole.
But I could fuck, having been brought into the world by a woman who used her body to get what she wanted. A survivor. A manipulator.
Sex was something I understood.
I could make Violet come until she couldn’t remember where she ended and I began. Until her body only responded tome. To the way I touched her, took her,ruinedher for anyone else.
“That’s it. Good girl,” I praised, using sex to get whatIwanted.
Was it manipulation? Yes. Did I care? Absolutely–fucking–not. I’d use every dirty trick in the book if it meant she forgave me. If it meant she’d stay.
Her whimpers caught in her throat, tears slipping down her cheeks, and fuck, I wanted them. I wanted to taste her pain, her surrender. I wanted to fucking consume it. Consumeher.
So I leaned in and dragged my tongue across her cheek, licking up the salt like it belonged to me. “You cry so fucking pretty,” I whispered against her skin. “Makes me want to ruin you all over again.”
She gasped, trembling, and I felt her body tighten, strangling my cock. It was fear laced with arousal, confusion tangled with need.
And it only made me harder.
She clung to me in desperation, her nails biting into my shoulders, and for once, it was okay.
With her, it was okay.
The sharp sting should’ve pulled me under, should’ve awakened the darkness I worked so hard to keep buried.
But it didn’t. Instead of giving in to the demons clawing at the edges of my mind, I focused onher. On the way her moans slipped past her lips like a secret, on the way she trembled beneath me, wrecked and needy.
“That’s it,” I growled into her ear, thrusting harder, deeper. “Feel how well your cunt takes my cock? Almost like you were made for me.”
She gasped, body tightening, and I groaned as her nails dug deeper.
I wanted the marks. I wanted the pain because it meant she’d leave something behind.
“No one else gets you like this,” I rasped, lips brushing her jaw. “No one else fucks you like I do.”
She whimpered something incoherent, and it only made me rougher, hungrier when she came again. Her cunt milked my cock, tight and spasming, pulling me under with her.
“Fuck…” I groaned, the sound ripped from deep in my chest. The pressure snapped, white-hot and brutal, and I came with a growl, hips jerking as I spilled inside her, lost in the feel of her body clinging to mine. Unable to do anything but ride the wave.
For the first time I could remember, I didn’t feel despair from being touched. So when I released her hair and her head settled on my shoulder with a sigh…
I let it happen.
I let her hold me.
Chapter 51
Violet
There was nothing more disorienting than waking up somewhere I didn’t remember falling asleep. My body ached, the deep, pulsing kind that came from rough sex. I was pretty sure there was a bruise blooming where Ryder’s fingers had dug into my thigh, not to mention the marks on my back from the stupid beam.
I groaned and pressed my face deeper into the pillow, frustration prickling under my skin. Not just at him, but at myself. At how easily I’d given in. Again.
Ryder was chaos wrapped in control, and he confused the hell out of me. Because for a man who swore he didn’t care about anyone, who lived by his own self-indulgent rules… he seemed to care about me.
Which made this worse.
