by Kennedy Fox
“Now,” he says. “I will take that from you, Leona. I’ll take every last fact about you. Even if your throat gets dry or you fall asleep, I’ll make you keep talking until I know everything I want to know about what’s behind those eyes of yours. Every single thing. No part of you will be left untouched.”
The sound I make—oh, it’s mortifying, embarrassing. No one has ever wanted to know this much about me. Not even Sarah got this close. It’s like being in a spotlight. In his full attention.
“But I don’t think you feel like talking.” His lips brush the side of my neck and I’m alive with nerves, alive with the pleasure of being touched. He does it so expertly. The perfect pressure. The perfect tease. The space between my legs is hot and wet and oh, fuck, I’ve never felt like this about him. At night, in my bed, I’ve imagined things. Nothing I’ve imagined compares to the reality. “I think you feel like giving yourself over, so you don’t have to think anymore.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw it in your eyes.” He forces my head up so that our eyes meet again, the way they did three years ago only closer, so much closer. “I know what you need, Leona, and I can give it to you.”
“Please.” That’s all it takes, and I’m begging. I need it so much. I need it like a flower needs the sun. “Please give it to me.”
He kisses me again, a vicious, searching kiss, and then his hands are on my shoulders, pressing down. I fall to my knees on the floor of my own apartment entryway, on the little mat by the door that usually holds my work shoes, and Cole undoes his belt. From this vantage point he towers over me, tall and strong and invincible, and his face is set with such determination that my body trembles with it. I swallow the urge to ask what’s going to happen next—he knows, and I don’t need to know. More weight lifts from my shoulders. Free as a bird, here on my knees. I’m free as a bird.
Free to admire the fine cut of his slacks, which hug his built thighs as nicely as anything Hades wears. A shock. No one has ever dressed as nicely as that man, and no one will, but I didn’t think Cole could get there. When I imagine him, he’s filthy from the mines, dirt smudged over his face. He’s been digging for diamonds, not counting them.
And then he opens his zipper and tugs out his cock.
I barely manage not to gasp. It’s at least eight inches, thick and hard, the dusky color that tells me instinctively that he wants this. He wants me.
My mouth opens for him, head tilting back, and god, I am a slut. I have never been this way, not with any other man on the mountain, not with any other men outside unless you count a few fumbles hidden behind the auditorium in school. Cole groans. “You’re going to take it.”
Not do you want this? Or Is this all right? But you’re going to take it. He’s already made up his mind. Oh, god, it’s such a sweet relief that I don’t have to think anymore, not for another instant.
He steps closer, the black of his pants crowding out all the other touches of color in the apartment, and I take him into my mouth. It’s a struggle at first, because he’s big and I’m inexperienced, but I give him a tentative lick and he hisses his pleasure. He braces one hand hard on the doorframe and cups my chin with the other. “Fuck,” he says, low and hot. “Fuck, that’s good. Take it. Yes. Take it.”
Cole works his hips forward and I’m lost again, lost to the push and tense of him, lost to the way he drives himself into my throat without pausing, without shaming me by taking it slow. He’s not gentle. His hand on my chin is a vise meant to keep me in place and I do, I stay there for him while my eyes water and my throat contracts around him, my tongue lapping at him on instinct.
He makes small noises in the back of his throat. A man losing control—that’s what it is. I’ve never heard sounds like that in real life before. Part of me thought I might never hear them, and then what? I’d have to go to my grave not knowing what it sounds like when a man needs you.
It feels like power.
Choking, yes, but power still.
Cole pulls out abruptly and I suck in a huge breath of air. He leaves his hand on my chin, pulls my face up so that I’m hanging from his palm, and his eyes burn into mine. “Are you a virgin, Leona?”
“Yes.”
A wet, writhing virgin, turned on by the way he fucked my throat and desperate for more flying freedom.
A slow smile, his eyes darkening. “Not for long.”
He pulls me up to my feet and takes me further into the apartment. He’s confident in this, too, never wavering, and it occurs to me he must live in a very similar place. Cole already knows where the bedroom is and he takes me there, to the bed with its flowered bedspread. More heat rushes across my face. Does it look childish? Too innocent? But Cole’s eyes light when he sees it. His footsteps are so sure on the floor, so powerful, and I made a mistake. I thought he was another worker with his head down, a man going through the motions. No. He had to have chosen this. To look the way he looks now, and choose to work in Hades’ mines—
“On the bed.”
I scramble to obey him while he strips off his shirt and pants, dropping all his clothes in a matter of moments. I’m awkward and shy, looking at him, because in the nice clothes he was gorgeous but without them he is magnificent, jaw-dropping, breathtaking. Every muscle is a hard line. Broad shoulders and cut arms and legs that look like they could move the mountain around us.
But it’s his eyes that capture me, that pin me to the stupid flowered bedspread. They’re dark and wanting, and he surveys me like something he’s about to capture.
He’s already captured me.
My heart thunders, a runaway even while I’m helpless on my own bed, as a naked Cole stalks toward me, his movements graceful and slow. He has control over his body, every inch of it.
He has control over mine, too, and he lets me see the full force of it in his eyes as he bends over me on the bed. Cole’s big hands feel almost gentle as he lays me back against the flowers and pushes my shirt up up up until he tugs it over my head. He presses a kiss to each breast and then reaches his hand behind me to unhook my bra.
He takes my pants off.
And then, with a heavy breath, he hooks his fingers in my panties and pulls them down and away.
I’m naked, exposed to him, and he doesn’t hesitate to spread my thighs apart and look.
My breathing is ragged and loud against the quiet of the room. Embarrassment has superheated my blood and desire makes it sparkly and vivid, all that heat in my cheeks and between my legs.
“You’re fucking perfect.” This pronouncement makes me moan out loud, but what comes next—
What comes next—
His mouth, pressed to my secret flesh, his tongue flat on my clit, and then—
Oh, Jesus, oh, fuck. Cole eats me with nibbles and licks and a concentration so focused that I float away from him, my soul leaving my body and returning only to center itself between my own legs. Nothing exists but the sensation of him licking me, of his tongue working at my opening, of his hands holding me wide open for him. “Fucking perfect,” he says again, against that skin. “Don’t you ever run away from me again.”
Where would I go? I can’t get the words out, but that’s what I would ask if I weren’t so close to—so close—
“That’s right,” he coaxes, moving his thumb in to circle my clit. “That’s right. Come. Come for me, and it’ll make it easier for you to take me, yes, that’s it, oh, it’s fucking beautiful—”
My first non-solo orgasm happens on the flowered bedspread, cries spilling from my lips, Cole’s hands on my thighs, making me stay open for him the whole time my hips buck and my hands grasp uselessly on the comforter.
When he pulls away, every cell keens for him and I reach for his chest, my hand landing on his shoulder. “Please, do it now.”
My mind is a flood, my mind is a riot of singing birds, of open skies. “Be sure,” he says.
“If you don’t do it now, I’ll die.” It’s dramatic, and also true. “I’
ll die. Cole. Please. Fuck me. Please. It’s all I want.”
Chapter Six
He climbs over me on the bed in one fluid motion and notches himself to my opening. It’s only then, when he lifts his head from kissing my collarbone, that I see the struggle in his face. The animal waiting to break through. He wants to fuck me, not just rock his hips against mine, and the power beneath his skin is obvious. Evident.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I can take it.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says through gritted teeth. “I could hurt you.”
Oh, it sounds so good, so clarifying, the pain of being fucked by a man who’s in control. “Hurt me.” I bite one of his earlobes and—yes—it unleashes something in him and his body moves with it. He shoves in the first few inches of his cock and I gasp, throwing my arms around him like he can save me. He’s the only one who can save me, but he’s going to take me instead. It makes me hotter, more desperate, even as my body struggles to accommodate him. Fuck, the burn, the stretch. He’s huge.
My mind has gone deliciously, deliriously blank, my focus all on the physical. It’s immediate. Happening now. There’s nothing but the stretch, the wide head of him pressing inside the place I’ve thought about being fucked so many times. So many times. And now it’s happening. Cole reaches the last barrier and butts against it, the muscles down low in his belly bunching, grazing mine, and a pained whisper in my ear: I’m not sorry for this.
Meaning: I am sorry for this, at least a little, in the abstract way that a person can be sorry when they’re not a hundred percent in control of what they’re doing. He can’t stop himself, can’t stop shoving inside me, wants more. I’m drunk on it.
Cole pushes himself up and kisses me again, its own silent apology, and then he takes one long, shuddering breath. He lets his lungs fill with air, keeps his hips still for this last moment—
And drives in with all the force of his body, breaking that barrier, ripping it in two.
It’s a pain I’ve been craving but it drives a sob from my mouth and Cole rears back, trying to pull away, but no—“No,” I sob, and I yank him back closer, grinding against the pain, grinding against it furiously and relentlessly until it shifts and changes. Pleasure creeps in at the edges, a bright, rushing pleasure that starts out like the sunrise and gets brighter and brighter until I’m moaning with it again.
“Oh, fuck, that’s hot,” he breathes into my ear, fucking me. It’s savage enough to tell me—a second mistake. I thought he was more the man of nice clothes and mint but there’s a dark creature in him too, one that’s completely at home with the filth of the mines. There’s a part of him that needs the hard work and the hard fuck. He comes apart in front of me now, each thrust pushing air out of his mouth, each thrust bringing him closer and closer until our mouths are battling again, same as our hips.
Oh, it’s good. Oh, it’s so, so good.
He curses, low and frantic, and I think for a minute he’s regretting his decision but then—no. It’s something else entirely.
He wants to come inside me.
It’s so deliciously dirty and feral that as soon as the thought crosses my mind, I want it. I want the hot spill of him inside me and the rock of his muscles and the way he will be mine, he will be mine, he will never forget this no matter what happens.
“Do it.” I rake my nails across his shoulders, thin red lines of pain and desire. “Do it. Come inside of me.”
“Risky,” he says, and it’s so tight, so sharp, that I know he’s down to single words.
“I want it,” I babble into his ear, my own words folding in on each other, refracting out until they don’t make any sense. “I’ll come so hard. Do it, do it, Cole, please, come inside me, come—”
He can’t resist.
He thrusts in deep, deeper than ever before, bumping into the last unbreakable barrier, and his whole tall body stretches over mine, muscles contracted, muscles hard, and his breath is hot on my neck as he comes and comes and comes.
I can feel it.
Salty against the new path he’s driven in me, hot and liquid, hotter than the two of us together. The molten inside of him meets soft flesh and I take it, legs spread wide, panting into his ear.
Another orgasm bursts over me, a holiday firework, a cracker breaking apart and revealing a gift. Cole twitches inside me while my hips thrash out their need for him. My chest goes tight, then loose, and when it’s over I come down trembling, hands opening and closing on the bedspread.
“Come here.” He gathers me in, moving me with effortless strength, and somehow we end up with our heads on pillows, cooling bodies on top of the bedspread. One of his muscular arms goes over my waist and draws me in tight to his chest.
I hadn’t noticed the pressure there until now, hadn’t let myself feel it, but the ache in my throat grows so big that it’s impossible to ignore. It cuts off my air supply until I let it out with a gulp.
The first tear slides down my cheek, burning a hot trail, and then—well, fuck. Then I can’t stop.
Chapter Seven
Cole doesn’t move. He strokes a hand over my hip, again and again. Part of me waits for him to throw himself off the bed and leave the room, but he stays while I sob out all my grief and confusion.
“Was it too rough?” His voice cuts into the tail end, when the crying is reaching its natural stopping point. “If it was, Leona, I’m sorry.”
“No.” I pin his hand to my chest and hold it there. “No, it was perfect.”
“Tell me why you’re crying.”
Don’t think.
“My mother died and now I’m alone.” It almost brings a fresh wave of tears but I swallow them back. “I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life, now that I’m not...now that I’m not doing this for her. And it’s Christmas. And the party—”
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to my neck, to the line of my jaw. Following the path of tears all the way to my cheekbone. “I’m sorry to hear that, sweet thing, I’m so sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be done about it.” I blow out a breath and try to steady myself. “We knew it was coming. For a long time.”
“Is that why you came to the mountain?”
“To pay her bills. Yes.”
“And they’re all paid now?”
“All of them,” I whisper. Cole is quiet for a long time, and in that quiet curiosity strikes like a match. I’m cleansed of the storm I’ve been holding in since she died, and I blink open eyes that are swollen but clear. “Why are you on the mountain?”
“I was a runaway,” he says simply, and now that matchstick is an open flame. “I ran until I found a place that would let me hide from the world.”
I stroke my fingers over the back of his hand, which is resting comfortably above my heart. “Anything specific?”
He laughs, a rumble that I feel all through my chest, all the way down to my toes. “Home didn’t work out. So I found a new one.”
“Here?”
“Here,” he confirms. “It’s peaceful here.”
I think of Hades, angry and purposeful, headed for the mines. “You would really call it that?”
“I would.” Cole shifts behind me and pulls me in another inch. “Hades dispenses justice. You can be sure it’ll come, one way or another. That’s a kind of peace.”
“Do you ever want more than that?”
He leans in to kiss my temple. “Do you?”
I swallow hard.
“Don’t hesitate,” he commands. “I told you I would take this from you. Every last thought.”
“But why do you want my thoughts?” I’m broken open. I would tell him anything. But the questions are never truly silenced, are they? “I’m nobody.”
“You’re a bird,” he says, and my breath catches. “You reminded me of a bird. Not a caged bird, but one that came here and...perched. You never got close. You never made it your home.”
“I did so. Look at this bedspread.”
&
nbsp; “You have a friend, right? Sarah. But nobody else.”
So he has been watching. “How do you know that?”
“A bird is a rare sight in a mountain,” he says. “You’re not a canary, nothing like that. A sky bird. But you’re down here, and I’ve always wondered why.”
“If I’m a bird, what are you?”
“A stone.” A muffled breath. “I belong down in the mountain.”
“Stones can’t mine for diamonds.” I’m slightly delirious with how close he is and with the intensity of what just happened. “You’re not a stone. I can feel you—I can feel your heart beating.”
“What do you want now, little bird?” He moves his hand up to stroke my hair, and that’s it, that’s all, I’m melting. I’m never leaving his side.
“I dream of open skies,” I admit out loud, and it’s like the first breath of winter air, the first big gasp after being shut up in a warm house all day. “I want to go somewhere with open skies. Only I’m afraid, because I know how to live here, and I don’t know how to live anywhere else. I don’t have any money saved. I could leave, but then what?”
Cole laughs, and then he really is shifting behind me, moving, preparing to stand. He gives my hair one last stroke and gets up from the bed. His footsteps retreat from the bedroom and he returns a minute later with a warm washcloth, which he uses to clean me.
I can’t open my eyes. I’m too languid and spent, and honestly, I don’t want the conversation to go any further. Then it will come to its end and I’ll be back in my life, a bird in a cage, trapped by my own fear. “Stay here,” he whispers in my ear, and then he’s gone.
The bed bends some time later—I don’t know how long—and I open my eyes, quick quick. “I’m awake,” I tell him.
And then I feel the pouch in my hand.