by Kresley Cole
Would I abide by them? Accepting Sevastyan as mine? I remembered how I'd felt at the thought of losing him too.
As if barbed wire had been tightening around my heart.
Boom. Boom. I followed the sound to another cabin. When Sevastyan didn't answer my knock, I eased the door open. I heard the shower running in the attached bathroom--the booming was coming from within.
As a sinking suspicion took hold, I hastened into the bathroom. I sucked in a breath at the scene before me.
Naked under the spray of water, with his eyes glazed over and his teeth bared, Sevastyan was punching the stone shower enclosure with his battered fists. The steaming cascade hit his chest as he struck, over and over, as if at an invisible enemy.
If he'd been granite under pressure, now he was fracturing right before my eyes--just like the stone he pummeled.
"What are you doing?" I cried. How could he keep this up? His fists bled; more blood trickled from a knot of cloth he'd tied tight around his bicep, his idea of a bandage for his bullet wound. It formed a groove between bulges of muscle. "Please stop!"
He didn't.
"Stop!" I tore open the shower door and scrambled inside, grasping his uninjured arm with both hands.
He was a killer, volatile and violent, but I felt no fear of him. Not even when he whirled around on me, black hair whipping over his cheek. He was breathtaking. Real. Raw.
Mine, my mind whispered.
That sense of connection to him flared like a blinding light.
Between gritted teeth, he said, "Leave." His eyes were bleak, his noble face filled with such pain.
I could ease it. "I won't leave you like this."
"Why? You don't give a fuck about me. Not beyond what I can do for you."
Did he mean beyond pleasure? Beyond his protection? I remembered his parting words after our fight: Beyond sex, anything with me doesn't appeal to you. "You're so wrong, Sevastyan."
He just stared at me. What was he looking for? Permission? Understanding? Finally he moved, placing his palms on the wall on either side of my head, boxing me in.
His star tattoos were at my eye level, mere inches away, beckoning me. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and press my lips to his chest.
Kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until all his pain disappeared.
Tentatively, I leaned forward to graze my lips over one of his tattoos. He flinched as if I'd struck him, but he didn't stop me. I chanced a brush of my lips over his neck. He was motionless, a statue on the outside, a brutal enforcer on the inside.
I nuzzled the rugged line of his jaw. I smoothed those locks of hair away, then kissed the chiseled cheek I revealed.
When I slanted my lips over his, he shuddered out a breath and drew back. Blazing in his gaze was that bone-deep yearning, the one that called to mine. "What do you want from me, Natalie?"
How to articulate it? I want to kiss you until you forget your pain for a time, want to hold you tight against me because I can't seem to get my body close enough to yours. In other words . . . "I want you to make love to me."
Before, I hadn't slept with him because of the future and consequences. I wasn't sure I would live long enough to enjoy the former, so I couldn't be bothered with the latter.
At my admission, his brows drew tight; he looked like he was unraveling.
I asked him, "What do you want from me?"
I gasped when he fisted the collar of my dampened shirt. "I want what's mine." He tore the material from me with one rip, stripping me.
I was trembling, bare.
As his gaze raked over my naked body, he couldn't bite back his anguished groan.
Sevastyan looked at me like a man plummeting toward death would look at a pair of wings. As if I were the difference between life or death for him.
I laid my palms over his star tattoos; he cradled my face. His forehead met mine. For long moments, we stayed like that.
When he took my mouth with his at last, I parted my lips in welcome, closing my eyes as he softly kissed me. God, I loved his taste, wanted to drink in the heat of his mouth.
As ever, I was struck by the contradictions of this man. He was tender, yet carnal. His thoughts were a mystery, but his body told a story--of his restraint: rippling muscles, heaving chest, shaking hands.
With a groan, he flicked his tongue harder against mine, telling me that he was about to deepen this kiss. Telling me that he was about to claim this part of me, with the rest of my body to follow.
That he was about to conquer.
And when I surrendered utterly, he consumed me like he'd been suffocating and I was the sweetest air.
Chapter 28
Sevastyan kissed me until I was dazed, boneless against his hardened body. I clung to him when he yanked my knee to his hip, clamping it there.
His cock pressed against my belly like a pulsating brand, and I grew wet for it, readying.
He used his free hand to grip one of my breasts, leaning down to lick its stiffened tip. I whimpered when he suckled it between his lips, still working that clever tongue, forcing more tension to coil low in my belly. He tended my other nipple in turn, tonguing, sucking, leaving both achy peaks straining for more.
Then his hand trailed down to cup me. He slipped his middle finger inside my spread lips, making me moan, "Yes, yes . . ."
When he felt how slick I was, a defeated sound broke from his chest and a second finger joined the first to open me.
Then he withdrew those fingers to his mouth, his lids sliding closed as he sucked clean my cream. Another dip, another suck. As if he was drinking me one drop at a time.
It was the worst torture to feel his strong fingers filling me, then emptiness. "Inside me, Sevastyan, please . . ."
He delved them deeper. "This is what you need." He pumped them into my core until I was clawing at his shoulders.
I felt light-headed, taken over by a kind of delirium. I needed him to lose control--because I was about to. My hands traveled down his wet body, my fingertips lovingly trailing over his sigh-worthy pecs.
On the way down, I brushed my thumb across one of his flat nipples, noting his sharp inhalation. As I sifted my nails through the crisp hair of his goody trail, his hand tightened on my pinned knee.
Once I reached the heavy weight of his cock, he rasped, "Use it."
I rocked my hips up as I pulled his shaft to me. When the head made contact with my pussy, he bit out a curse, his length jerking in my hand. Panting, I ran the crown up and down between my swollen, flaring lips.
"So slick," he growled. "So ready for me."
As I petted my clit with the bulbous tip, his towering body shuddered with need. "Enough teasing. Wanted this too long."
He covered my hand with his own, fitting the crown against my entrance, pressing forward just a fraction.
As soon as I knew without any doubt that I was about to lose my virginity, worries crept in. He was far larger than anything that had ever gone into my body. This is going to hurt.
He pulled our hands away, then began easing deeper, wedging the broad head inside. My gasp was cut off by his lips, hungry and insistent as he sank his cock farther. Each inch forced me to stretch more and more; where would it end?
Just as I felt a tendril of panic, he drew back. His smoldering eyes scanned my face, gauging my every reaction.
Though the hot water had long since run out, I began to sweat. The stretch burned--too big, too big--so I raised myself up on my toes to buy some time.
He shook his head slowly. "Take it." His free hand seized my hip to hold me steady.
I inhaled for courage. Once I'd relaxed a degree, he murmured, "My good girl," then continued his inexorable possession of my body.
I felt pain--no surprise, considering his size--but I could bear it. When I'd accepted as much of his shaft as possible, when he was seated deeply inside me, he went still again. Though I sensed in him a ravenous lust--the urge to thrust must be lashing him--he somehow harnessed his aggression, ba
ttling his most primal drives.
Even as his neck corded with strain and his muscles shook.
Even as I could feel his cock throb inside me with every beat of his heart.
Voice a harsh grate, he said simply: "Moya." Mine.
At that moment I was completely his. I was joined with him, impaled by him, and there was no escape. Like I danced along the edge of a volcano about to blow--or gazed up at a rupturing dam.
"Moya." He drew his hips back, then eased them forward. The pain faded, and in its place came a hint of something so incredible--
He did it again.
My lids went heavy as wonder suffused me. Rapture. Fullness. Connection. With his next measured thrust, I breathed, "Oh, my God."
"You like that, pet."
Adore. "I never knew." My hands relaxed their death grip on his shoulders and began sweeping caresses over his sculpted back.
"My woman's getting so wet." Another roll of his hips had me sinking my nails into the rock-hard contours of his ass.
When I began to move with him, he bit out, "You want more?"
"Yes, God, yes!"
He lifted me with an arm looped around my back. "Hold on to me. Legs around my waist."
When I locked them there, possessive hands cupped my ass, forcing me to slip back down his slicked cock. His shaft hit me at a new angle, and my eyes went wide. The pinch was fleeting; the pleasure mounted.
"Surrender, Natalya."
I gave a cry, and did. Tonight I was his without reservation.
His golden eyes held me rapt as he surged against me, into me, cock thickening even more. When my nipples raked over his muscular chest, I tightened my arms around him, unable to get close enough.
He was inside me; I wanted to be enveloped by him.
His wicked, tattooed body was working mine, controlling my pleasure, heightening it in every way. The marble on the undamaged wall was smooth against my back. I slid up and down against it, slid up and down his throbbing length.
I was already racing toward my orgasm when his words ghosted over my ear: "You're giving me such a hot, wet clutch . . . about to steal my cum from me before I'm ready."
He was as close as I was? Even in this position, I began to meet his thrusts, writhing on his cock, grinding my swollen clitoris against him.
He gnashed his teeth. "Stop, milaya. Or I'll come."
I was too far gone to stop; surely we both were. I squeezed my legs around his waist so I could undulate faster, harder. Water collected at the tight seal where our bodies met, my feverish movements sending it sloshing.
He splayed his fingers over my ass, grating, "Said . . . to stop." He dug into my curves to hold me in place, but his punishing grip just turned me on more.
Mindless, I panted, "Oh, God, oh, God!"
"Then moan for me, pet. Never get enough of that sound."
I did, until screams replaced my moans as I hurtled ever closer. "Sevastyan!"
He bit out, "I want to feel how hard my woman comes. Wring my seed from me."
At that, I crashed over the edge, my inner walls clamping down on his length. He gave a yell and ceased his thrusts; I knew he could feel me milking his cock with rhythmic contractions, demanding everything from him.
He held himself still as I clenched him over and over; spasms left me unable to do anything but repeat his name as my head lolled.
He wrapped my hair around his fist, forcing me to look at him. Between breaths, he said, "Ty moya." You are mine.
Then he threw back his head and bellowed, beginning to ejaculate into me. I could feel his semen jetting inside, like a scalding tide. Only then did he thrust again, bucking his hips in a frenzy to pump himself dry, yelling from the force of his cum. . . .
Afterward, he clasped me against him so tightly, it was to the point of pain. I needed it, wanted him to squeeze me even harder.
I don't know how long we remained like that, hearts thundering together, his hips softly rocking. Hours might have passed. When even the cold water from the tanks began sputtering, he carried me from the shower, arm clasped under my ass, his semihard cock still inside me.
Hadn't I once dreamed that he'd taken me soaking wet to bed? Without separating our bodies, he sat at the edge, with me in his lap. He kissed water from my neck, nursing the skin above my pulse point in that way that made me melt. He nibbled on my bottom lip, tenderly sucking on it.
When he dipped his head down to tongue drops from my puckered nipples, I arched my back with a cry, glorying in the feel of him swelling within me.
Yet then he lifted me off his cock, turning me, easily positioning me with my back to his chest. "Want to see you better." He fisted his length to impale me once more.
"S-see me?"
He wedged his legs between mine, spreading me till my legs rested against his outer thighs.
"Look at you."
I gazed up. We were in front of the dresser mirror, our damp bodies reflected--as if two more people were in the room with us.
"Any man would kill for you."
My face was flushed, eyes glinting with passion. Behind me, he seemed even more massive and unyielding, while I appeared pale, small, and soft. The dusky shade of his cock was stark against the pink flesh receiving it so eagerly.
As he hefted my breasts, I gazed at his ragged, tattooed hands against my milk-white skin, at that knot of cloth around his brawny arm. He looked like a dark god, a warrior who'd just returned from battle.
Because he was.
He lifted me just enough to reveal his veined shaft glistening from my orgasm and his semen. When a pearly bead trailed down from my opening, he said, "You see my cum inside you?"
"God, I see it." The hot, rich essence of him. The evidence of what we'd done. I moaned, beginning to tremble. In the mirror, I watched my breasts bobbing with my shallowed breaths.
Against the hollow of my neck, he rasped, "I've never come in another."
I was grasping at threads of this conversation. Never come? Oh, because he'd worn protection.
"Did you feel it inside you?"
I nodded. "It felt so hot, scalding. It made me need to come again."
He turned my face so our eyes could meet in the mirror, so I could see how he regarded me, my body.
Like I was already a caught thing. His gaze was . . . sinister. "In a way, I've marked you."
At the idea, I shivered against him. I'd expected a bruising, frantic claiming in the shower, and even now. This was the man who'd whipped my breasts, who'd slapped my ass so hard I'd felt it the next day. Merely recalling how he'd plied me with pain made wetness flood me.
Yet this relentless assault on all my senses was just as much a demonstration of his dominance. He had control over himself, over me. "This is where you belong."
"Belong?" I whispered. Such a loaded word.
"You belong against me"--he grazed his teeth down my neck--"around me. Connected to me."
Connection. "Yes, yes."
His fingers made a cage over my throat. "You belong to me." His other hand dipped down to stroke my slickened clit, eliciting a gasp from me.
I spread my legs even wider, knowing he was about to make me mindless again.
"I told you that if I was your first lover, I'd be your last," he said, his fingers making slow, slippery circles. "I told you that I'd kill any man who touched what was mine. Do you understand me?"
Though I could scarcely pull my thoughts together, reluctance stole through me. I understood he wanted to possess me. Darkly, brutally. But for how long? How totally?
Would there be anything left of me when a man like this had had his fill?
When I hesitated to answer him, he abruptly pulled out.
I was left cold, bereft. "What? Why?" Aching emptiness suffused me.
He positioned me back on his lap, his engorged shaft in front of my mons. It stood like an idol to be worshipped, making my mouth water and my hips rock. I couldn't keep myself from grinding against the damp base.
&
nbsp; "Grasp it."
I did.
"Stroke it. Learn it. My cock is the only one you'll ever need--or know."
Enthralled, I put both hands on him, pulling, masturbating him in front of the mirror. "Oh, God, Sevastyan . . ."
"If you want it back, then beg me for it."
As I squeezed it in my fists, words fell from my lips: "Please give me your cock."
"Why?"
Why? Honestly . . . "Because I feel like I'll die without it."
"Then tell me who owns your exquisite little body."
Owns. Owns. Yet right now, he did--controlling it absolutely. He lifted me once more, poising me atop his cock, wedging just the head inside. I moaned, wriggling on him as he withheld what I so desperately craved. Fine! "You own it."
"Who owns you?" he demanded, upping the ante. Once again, he was pushing me, forcing me to submit ever more completely.
But fighting him seemed . . . unthinkable. Like resisting the inevitable. So I murmured, "You own me."
"Good." His eyes gleamed with triumph. Satisfied that I'd surrendered, he dug his heels into the floor and thrust upward into my wetness.
"Sevastyan!" I cried, but he didn't slow, seemed to have reached the limits of his iron control.
His hips surged, pistoning between my legs. In the mirror, I could watch his gaze locked on my quivering breasts. I could witness his thick, shining cock plowing into me, swallowed by my hungry pussy. About to fill me with more of his semen.
My toes curled. I whimpered, tremors taking me over. Building, coiling, building, coiling--
Release.
My back bowed; I screamed helplessly as my body seized.
He tugged my hair to bare my neck, nipping me hard, snarling against my skin, "Ty svodish' menya s uma!" You madden me!
I felt his cock jerking inside me, then heat . . . burst after burst as I moaned his name--in a voice dripping with submission.
After I'd collapsed back against him, limp with satisfaction, Sevastyan kept our bodies joined, taking the opportunity to soothe his bite with a tender kiss on my neck.
Soon he started hardening again. I was exhausted, but the feel of him growing within me once more turned me on so much that I was ready for another round.
Yet he lifted me from his shaft, moving me bodily to the top of the bed. "I don't want to hurt you. I forget you were untried before this night."