by Kit Rocha
That would have been overwhelming all on its own. But every noise she made, every jerk of her hips, every time she clutched at his hair or dug her nails into his shoulders—
It was subtle at first. A tightening of his fingers. A rumbling groan. But every layer he stripped away from her seemed to fracture his icy façade. She felt it, a feverish prickle as he drove her toward a second orgasm.
She opened her mouth to whisper his name, but the whisper turned into a choked cry as he sucked her clit between his lips. Her whole body clenched as she hurtled over the edge again, writhing on the bed, pulsing with something so desperate that she barely recognized it as pleasure.
He growled. Low and guttural, the raw need behind it spilling over her like liquid fire. He turned his face to her thigh and bit her there, a sharp nip that brought her hips up again.
He was there to meet her, sliding one impossibly broad finger into her body. “I can feel you coming.”
“Ashwin.” He had to stop. If he didn’t, she’d burn alive from the inside out.
“I warned you.” He pushed her thighs wider, leaving her utterly exposed to his gaze. He pumped his finger in and out as she clenched in helpless release. “I’ll make you feel. Do you want me to stop?”
Yes. The word dissolved on her tongue as her gaze locked with his. There was nothing cool or distant about him now, not like this. He was watching her like he’d never seen anything so entrancing. Like she was the only thing that existed in the world.
He stilled, his finger buried inside her. “You have to tell me, Kora. Tell me to stop. Or tell me to give you more.”
She rocked her hips and moaned when the movement pushed his finger deeper. “Ashwin, please.”
His thumbnail dragged across her sensitive inner thigh. “You always poked where you weren’t supposed to go on any network. Did you find the Sin Servers?”
The breath lodged in her lungs. “Would I admit it if I had?”
“You don’t need to admit it.” His finger rocked just a little, but the friction was unbearable, stroking over nerves she’d never been aware of before. “You’re too curious. Too hungry. You know what you want, Kora, so say it. Use the words that you try not to think. The ones that feel too obscene.”
It felt like a test...until she met his eyes again. He wasn’t just pushing her—the limits of her experience, the boundaries even she had yet to discover—he was pushing himself, as well. Every word would strip a little more of his control, and the thought alone made her clench around his finger.
She needed it, though need was too weak a word to describe this craving. It was like oxygen, water. Necessary to her survival.
“I want to fuck you,” she whispered. “Hard. I want you to feel it like I do. To know that when it’s over, no matter what happens, you’ll never be the same.”
“Never,” he rasped, a single word that carried all the promise of a sworn vow. He flexed his finger again, working it in slick thrusts, and settled his thumb over her clit. Pleasure jolted back, bright and hot, almost enough to distract her as he pushed a second finger into her.
It hurt and it didn’t. Instinct took over, and Kora clenched her fists around the quilt for leverage and arched toward him. The pain grew and subsided all at once, meshing with the tension and desire until there was nothing left but an excruciating something, sweeping down on her with an intensity that threatened to tear her apart.
He rose, his fingers sliding deeper as he leaned over her. One hand closed on the quilt next to her head, catching strands of her hair that tugged deliciously. His face blocked out the ceiling, his dark gaze locked on hers as he met the impatient arc of her hips, matching her rhythm effortlessly. “Just like that. Show me how it feels.”
She braced her hands on his chest, shuddering when his muscles flexed and moved under her touch. The contact anchored her, another point of connection in a world that suddenly contained nothing but the two of them. “It feels—” Her voice broke on a helpless cry.
“Tell me.” Tension twisted tighter around her, and he wasn’t coaxing slowly anymore. His thumb commanded as much as his voice, slipping back and forth in demanding strokes that set her body on fire. “What do you feel?”
Full. Aching. Drawn tight, like the string of a bow. Words tumbled around in her brain, and the ones that escaped her on a sobbing breath were small. Inadequate. “It’s so good.”
He was breathing so fast. Rough, each exhale almost a groan. “Yes. I can make you feel good.”
Don’t stop. She wasn’t sure if she thought the words or screamed them as the tension snapped and wave after wave of hot pleasure crashed through her. It wasn’t quick and smooth this time. It was choppy, each pulse glancing off another, until she wasn’t sure where it had begun—or when it might end.
His fingers withdrew, leaving her empty and lost, only to return wider and fuller—three of them. “You can take more.”
She couldn’t, and she did. Pain and pleasure didn’t exist as discrete emotions anymore. Every bit of sensation from his slow, careful fingers was just heat, feeding a hunger that made no sense. She was shaking, shuddering, exhausted and weak with bliss—
And she still wanted him.
Her hands trembled as they skipped over his skin, searching for something to hold on to as the waves began to build in strength again, picking up right where they’d left off. Her fingers locked around his belt, and she tried to tell him she was coming again, but all she could manage was a whimper. Her toes curled, every muscle clenched, and she clung to him helplessly.
She’d never survive this. And it would be worth it.
»»» § «««
Ashwin realized he’d gone too far the fourth time she came around three of his fingers.
Once would have been enough. No, once would have still been too many, because there was no practical reason to push an inexperienced woman so far. Her body had been tight enough around one finger to provide adequate friction to get her off. He could rationalize a second finger by acknowledging her predilection for intense sensation.
Three was simply selfish. It was selfish to savor the way she reacted to the gentle pressure against her boundaries, to drink in the way she wallowed in being overwhelmed. To live vicariously through her unchecked ability to feel so much, so recklessly.
She was his mirror, his opposite, except in these moments where she was so high on sensation she didn’t care if the next drop came in the form of pleasure or pain, as long as it came.
And when she came—
He stilled his fingers inside her, but her muscles gripped him in shuddering clenches. She was wet and hot, two quantifiable, concrete facts. A third fact: his cock had been hard since the first brush of her skin against his had sparked pain along his nerves.
Disjointed, unrelated facts. He kept them carefully separate in his head as he eased his fingers from her body and soothed her whimper with a gentle brush of his hand. Connecting those facts would be dangerous, because he knew how the math of that equation worked out. He’d already fucked her more thoroughly than any virgin required. He did not get to imagine the intense relief of sliding into her body and working her from sleepy-eyed disorientation back to frantic need.
Instead, he lifted her to his chest. Her head lolled back against his shoulder, her expression still dazed. He cradled her close as he settled at the head of his bed, his back against the plain wooden headboard.
She...fit in his lap. Her head tucked easily beneath his chin, the blonde locks of her hair tickling his throat. She made a soft noise and slid her arms around his neck.
Trusting. Sweet. He was used to the acidic undertone of guilt provoked by her easy faith in him, but it was harder to contain it when she was like this. Naked, figuratively and literally. Utterly vulnerable and exposed.
He wanted to destroy anything that threatened her.
He was threatening her.
She shifted in his arms, and he loosened his grip enough to let her turn and straddle his thighs. The loo
k in her eyes wasn’t dazed anymore. Her innate sweetness had melted into something far more predatory, and the tingle of pain as he rested his hands on her bare hips was as much warning as lingering conditioning.
Inexperienced, not innocent.
No, the woman staring down at him with suddenly intent blue eyes might be inexperienced, but she was far from innocent. She knew exactly what she wanted.
And Ashwin didn’t. No one had ever looked at him like this before.
“So severe.” Kora smoothed her hands over his shoulders and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Relax.”
He barely felt the pain anymore. It was simply there, a charged sensation not unlike static electricity. “I’m not trained to relax.”
“Not even here?” Her hands drifted lower, and she kissed him again, for longer this time. “With me?”
Her fingers brushed his belt buckle, and he’d felt more relaxed when he was balanced on the edge of a building in a windstorm. “You’re naked. And you’re unbuckling my belt.”
Metal clicked, and Kora smiled slowly. “Yes, I am.”
He had to wrest control of this situation back into his hands. Standing on the edge of a building was safe by comparison. If Kora knocked him off balance…
“We shouldn’t,” he said softly, catching her hands. “You’ll be sore.”
She nodded. “Hurting me would hurt you. I understand.” A pause. “Can you trust me?”
Yes. He was too disciplined to let the word escape without consideration, but he wanted to. When she looked at him like this—gentle, knowing, as if she saw him, and she’d always been the only one who seemed to see him—he would stand on the edge of the building if she asked him.
He’d fall, too.
Slowly, he lowered his hands to his sides. “Yes. I trust you.”
“Good.” She touched her forehead to his. “I wouldn’t betray that, Ashwin. Not for anything.”
He waited for the guilt to reclaim him, but her nimble surgeon’s fingers had already worked his pants open. No subjective emotion could compete with the immediate, blistering sensation of her warm, soft hand curling around his erection.
Intense physical pleasure. Immediate painful feedback. He gritted his teeth and hissed in a breath, shuddering as the conflicting sensory input blazed through him. “Kora—”
Her grip tightened, and the light kisses she was trailing down the center of his chest turned into her tongue tracing the same path.
His blood was boiling again, surging through his veins in a fury, and if he closed his eyes, he’d be back there. Sitting in a sterile exam room, the one where Kora had treated him a dozen times before. He’d tied the memory of every touch and every smile into the drug his fellow Makhai soldier had injected into him. He’d twisted the agony with Kora until the thought of her hurt, until he’d rewritten every memory with the feeling of acid eating him from the inside out.
It hadn’t worked. Pain had never been an effective warning system because he was too willing to disregard it. Even now, the slide of her tongue across his abdomen burned sweetly, but every touch hurt less than it should. She was making new memories.
He fixed them in his mind, because he couldn’t stop himself. The sight of her peeking up at him as she stroked his cock with eager curiosity was breathtaking. If someone captured it in paint, he might appreciate art for the first time.
But it was nothing compared to the sight of her parted lips lowering toward the head of his cock. Her tongue flicked out, still so curious…
Lightning.
All of the built-up static discharged at once. His body jerked, and he slammed his head back against the headboard, blinded by pain he couldn’t manage, couldn’t compartmentalize.
She was still there, behind his eyelids. An afterimage of the moment that had overwritten his base conditioning. Tousled golden hair falling around flushed cheeks. Pink lips parted. Blue eyes gazing up at him with power and anticipation and want, actual, specific want.
For a Makhai soldier. For a man.
For him.
Her tongue brushed over him, soft and wet and rough, and this time he hissed in pure, unchecked pleasure. He fisted both hands in the quilt to keep from reaching for her as he forced his eyes open. “Do that again.”
She stared up at him, eyes like the desert sky before a storm, and licked a slow, leisurely circle around the head of his cock.
It wasn’t the first time a woman had touched him like this. His third domestic handler had been fond of this activity, provided Ashwin catered to her fantasies. Sinking his hands into her hair to play the conquering beast had been a simple enough role, even for him. But he’d always puzzled over the apparent contradiction—why a woman with so little power would dream of having him take away even those scraps.
Now he understood. Because the desire to sink his fingers into Kora’s hair was so undeniable, his fingers twitched on the blanket. And if she lifted her head right now and told him to fight an entire squadron with his bare hands, he wouldn’t blink.
The fantasy was about this overwhelming madness inside him. About being desired by the monster so completely that you owned him. So he’d fight for you, kill for you. Protect you.
He’d burn down worlds for Kora. And he couldn’t hold back from her.
Exhaling shakily, he threaded the fingers of one hand through her hair. He curled his fingers to cup the back of her head—gentle, not pushing—and let the command roll out of him. “More. Deeper. Suck me.”
Her eyes flashed, and she licked her lips. Then she closed her mouth around him and squeezed her hand tight around his shaft.
That alone might have been enough. Considering how long it had been since he’d achieved physical release and how tightly wound he was with the taste of her pussy still on his tongue... No, it wouldn’t take much to reach orgasm. And that had always been the goal before. But now he was entranced by the sight of her. By the flush in her cheeks, and the way her lips stretched to accommodate him when he pressed gently on the back of her head and she obediently took him deeper.
Was this part of her genetic makeup? Did the need to soothe pain extend to an eagerness to give pleasure? It was easier to comprehend than the possibility that the enthusiastic noise she made as he guided her head lower could be inspired entirely by desire for him.
He twisted his fingers, gripping her hair hard enough to pull her back up until the crown of his cock balanced against her lower lip. “Do you like this?”
She sat up, tugging against his hold on her hair, and slid astride his lap. Close, closer, until her breasts brushed his chest. “I like this,” she breathed, low and throaty, as she wrapped her hand around his cock again. “I like you.”
Simple truth, offered up so willingly—and dangerously seductive. Ashwin gave in to the fantasy—his first, because a fantasy was different than a plan. A fantasy meant disregarding inconvenient realities and embracing improbabilities.
So he did. He tightened his grip in her hair and held her there, her lips so close to his he could taste her on the air. He curled his other hand over the base of his shaft. His fingers were still slick from being inside her, and he shuddered as he stroked up to meet her hand. “Tighter,” he murmured, sliding his hand over hers. “You can be rough with me.”
“I know.” She pulled free of his grasp, dragged her nails across the back of his hand, then rubbed her thumb over the sensitive spot just beneath the head of his cock. “But I can be gentle, too.”
She was teasing him. The playful spark in her eyes promised retribution for his methodical seduction, and for all the immediacy of his arousal, it was as if the acid in his veins had been replaced with warm honey.
He’d let her torture him all night.
Kora kissed him—soft, slow, her tongue dancing over his. Their first kiss without the sting of pain, and he tilted his head to deepen it, thrilling in how readily she welcomed him. Then she began to move, rocking her hips to nudge their clasped hands. The friction was minimal, just enough t
o keep his arousal at a simmer…
Until she moaned into his mouth and squeezed him tighter.
Fire shot through him. He released her hair and gripped the curve of her hip instead, splaying his fingers wide across her ass. “Faster,” he groaned into her mouth, guiding her to quicken her pace. Her pussy ground against the backs of his fingers, and she threw back her head with another moan, this one lower, almost primal.
She could come again, and it wouldn’t take much. Ashwin pulled their joined hands away and hauled her body to his. Her slick, hot flesh cradled his erection, and she cried out as he gripped her hips and moved her, sliding her clit up and down his shaft.
Kora clung to him, muffling her cries against his shoulder. Then the heat of her open mouth turned to delicious pain as she bit him—not a careful rake of her teeth designed to arouse, but hard, like she couldn’t stop herself.
The pleasure of it tightened every muscle in his body. He wavered on the knife’s edge, uncertain for the first time in his life if he retained the self-control not to orgasm. Then she shuddered in his arms, her moans shifting to the ones he’d already committed to memory—
High at first. Breathy. Then low and full. He could hear the relief wash over her as she came apart.
His control unraveled.
He clutched her hips as he came, pleasure at the center of a storm of irrational, illogical emotion. He stopped trying to process it all and simply felt—the slick evidence of her desire, the impossible heat of her body. The way her flesh gave under his fingers, soft and forgiving.
His semen, spilling across their skin, and the pang of regret was the only thing logical about this moment. It was rational to wish that he was coming inside her, because survival was the only instinct no one had never tried to rip out of him. Instinct demanded that he tumble Kora to her back and spread her legs wide, fill her with his cock until the stretch of it burned into pleasure and she sobbed for more. To pump deep and come, because that was what procreation was all about. Survival. Eternal life for your DNA. It didn’t matter that he’d undergone the contraceptive procedure the Base mandated in deployed Makhai soldiers—the instinct was still there, maybe stronger in him than in most. His DNA was extraordinarily tailored to survival, after all.