Page 24 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heiress

My body is a taut bowstring, pulled tighter and tighter. He slides a finger inside me, then another. He curls them, finds a spot that makes me cry out. He strokes it, in and out, while his tongue works my clit.

The pressure builds, a wave cresting, higher and higher. I’m moaning now, no control, just need. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t let up. The wave breaks, and I shatter, my body convulsing, my cries echoing in the quiet room.

He doesn’t stop. He rides me through it, gentling his touch as the spasms subside, then building me up again. And again. And again.

I’m a ragdoll, boneless, spent. He kisses his way back up my body, settles over me.

“I’m going to enter you now,” he says.

“Yes.”

He lines himself up, pushes in slowly. He’s big, and I’m tight from two years of nothing. There’s a stretch, a burn, a fullness that’s almost too much.

He stills, lets me adjust.

“Okay?” he asks.

I nod, can’t speak.

It’s been two years since I last felt this, a living warmth inside me, a pulse that’s not mine but beats in tandem with my own.

I press my hips up against him, a silent plea for more. He answers with a slow, deliberate withdrawal, then pushes back in. Each thrust is a question, and my body’s response is an unequivocal yes.

His hands find my hips, steadying me, guiding the rhythm. I meet him, push for push. The sound of our bodies coming together, the slick, rhythmic percussion, is the only noise in the room besides our breathing, harsh and ragged.

My hands roam over his back, feeling the muscles bunch and release under my touch. He moves with an economy of motion, a controlled power that’s both terrifying and intoxicating. This is not the careful, tentative coupling of a first time with a new lover. This is a claiming.

He shifts, changing the angle, and hits that spot inside me again. I cry out, my back arching off the bed. He does it again, and again, driving into me, chasing my release. My nails dig into his shoulders, holding on, riding the wave of pleasure that’s building, cresting, threatening to drown me.

He speeds up, his thrusts becoming harder, deeper. The bed is rocking, the headboard hitting the wall in a steady, percussive beat. My orgasm hits me like a freight train, a blinding flash of light, a silent scream ripped from my throat. My body convulses around him, milking him, pulling him over the edge with me.

He buries his face in my neck, his body shuddering, a guttural groan torn from his chest. I feel his heat spill inside me, a primal, life-affirming warmth.

He collapses on top of me, his weight a solid, grounding presence. For a long moment, we just lie there, a tangle of limbs and ragged breaths, the city lights a silent witness beyond the window.

He rolls off me, but doesn’t go far. He pulls me against him, my back to his chest, my body tucked into his. He throws a leg over mine, an arm around my waist, and holds me.

I lie stiff, my body a battlefield of conflicting signals. The satisfied thrum of a well-loved woman wars with the prickle of vulnerability, the exposed nerve endings of a person who’s just been stripped bare.

“Relax,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You already did,” I say, my voice a rough whisper.

“That was before. This is now.”

I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know what to do with him. He’s a stranger. A killer. The man who bought me. And he’s the only person in two years who’s seen the broken, scarred landscape of my body and touched it like it’s something to be cherished.

I force my muscles to unknot, one by one. I lean into him, just a fraction, a test.

He tightens his hold, a silent acceptance.

And in the quiet of the room, with the city sprawling beneath us like a carpet of stars, I let myself be held. Just for tonight. Just for this one night, I’m not the woman in the chair, or the daughter of a dead woman, or the wife of a killer. I’m just a woman, held in the arms of a man who’s promised to be thorough. And he was.

10

Lev

“You’re up early. Sleep well?”