by Nadia Aidan
Adonis now understood what would crumble her resolve, what would force her to yield to him, to completely surrender. It was pleasure that was her weakness—true pleasure, unending pleasure. And he had the power to give her that as well.
The first swipe of his tongue against the lips of her cunt was not gentle, not teasing. He was relentless as he breached her, spearing her with his tongue, dragging hoarse needy moans from her lips and a gush of wet warmth from her pussy.
Selena twisted and writhed beneath him, her thighs trembling. She gasped at the pleasure roiling through her body, assaulting her like waves crashing violently against jagged rocks. Adonis was unrelenting as he devoured her pussy like a man starving. She knew what he was about and she fought to resist, until she was a powerless, boneless heap spread before him, helpless and quaking.
When she could not stand it any longer, she did something she’d not done in the entire time he’d struck her with his leather flogger. She released her hold on the headboard of the bed to grasp his head and push him away. But he would not be denied, nor deterred from his ultimate goal.
Adonis held fast between her thighs, his lips nibbling her clit before taking it fully within his mouth and sucking hard. A lightning bolt of heat and desire sizzled through her, from her core, along her spine until it exploded behind her closed eyelids.
Her sheath filled with the juices of her pleasure and he swallowed them hungrily, deeply, his tongue probing her cunt, searching for more until she gave it to him. He wrung her body of climax after climax until she swore she had nothing left to give, and then he wrenched yet another from her.
He wanted to know why she was there, and she’d refused to tell him. The pain had been excruciating, unending, but she’d taken it within her body, accepting the stinging whips. She hadn’t cried out, not once. After a while, she’d stopped speaking altogether. The pain had been pure agony, but it had not been unbearable. Quite the opposite. After an hour, a warmth had spread throughout her, inflaming her until she welcomed every leather strike against her tender skin. She’d been forced to bite her lip so that he would not notice the slight flush of her skin, the hitch in her breath as she came one time after another. Selena would never have dreamed her body would welcome pain as pleasure, but it had.
She could have endured if he’d continued to strike her, indeed for many more hours. She was certain he could have drawn blood and she still would not have surrendered. But this? This was far worse. It was unbearable, and already she could feel her resolve beginning to crumble.
Adonis did not stop. He was determined in his ministrations, his attentiveness to her body, her needs. An hour later, after what felt like hundreds of orgasms, even as sweat poured from their bodies, he remained between her spread thighs, feasting upon her cunt, sucking the tiny nub at her opening, his tongue spearing her hole as he dragged another orgasm from her and lapped up her juices.
She had lasted several hours beneath his flogger, but barely one against his lips before she was tearing at his hair and crying out.
“Please stop,” she gasped, her chest heaving. “Stop,” she cried as she exploded against his lips again.
He lifted his head, his face stained with her juices as they glistened from his smirking lips.
The bastard.
“Why are you here, Selena?” he demanded for the hundredth time.
She pinched her lips together, refusing to answer.
He shoved two fingers inside her, his eyes never leaving her.
“Why are you here?”
She closed her eyes, desperately struggling to shut him out. She could ignore the image of his smirking face, which she no longer saw, but the pumping of his fingers inside her, she could not.
He repeated his question, his voice harsher as he buried two fingers, then three inside her. She clawed at his wrist, his forearm. He only speared her faster, harder, deeper.
“Adonis, please,” she cried, tears leaking from her eyes. She hated herself, she hated him. She’d sworn she wouldn’t beg.
Her pleas fell upon deaf ears. A fourth finger found its way inside her, pummelling her cunt, stretching her.
“Answer my question. Tell me what I want to know.”
She shook her head back and forth against the pillow, her eyes still clenched shut. Tears slipped down her cheeks, staining the bed as they fell from her chin.
She refused to tell him, she couldn’t… But when he curved his fingers, brushing against the roof of her tunnel, against the rough patch of skin nestled there, the very place that brought her indescribable pleasure, she could no longer deny him.
Her orgasm rocketed through her at the same time she said on a rush, “I’m here to kill my father.”
“I know that already, Selena. There is more to it than that.”
“But that is the truth,” she screamed in pleasure, in frustration.
Her frustration evidently fuelled his because he cursed violently. “Why are you here, Selena?” he shouted.
Her eyes flew open, clashing with his murderous expression. “I already told you,” she hurled back. “And that is the truth.”
“But not all of it.”
No, it wasn’t, but she could not reveal any more than she already had, or she risked ruining the plan she’d so carefully constructed. For hours she’d endured and suffered his relentless torture, until, finally, she’d yielded. It shamed her, humiliated her that this man would be the only person to ever witness her at her weakest, at her most vulnerable.
With Adonis’ fingers still inside her, still thrusting, and on the brink of yet another climax, she finally broke and began to sob.
“I can’t tell you any more. I just can’t.”
Adonis swore harshly as his entire body seized up. He’d broken enough people to know when one had hit that point, and Selena had passed hers.
She covered her face and sobbed into her hands.
It shattered him.
The rawness of her tears, her crumbling resolve, her helplessness—to know he’d broken her, cleaved his heart from his chest and he cursed again.
What happened after that shocked him as much as it must have shocked her.
In all his years, he’d never done this.
In all his years, he’d never caved.
But her tears pierced him. Her weakened spirit crippled him.
Withdrawing his fingers from her sheath, he covered her body with his. Grasping her wrists, he pulled her hands from her face. Her lids snapped open, her gaze clashing with his. The look in her eyes laid waste to whatever resolve he still possessed.
He kissed her tear-stained cheeks, then claimed her lips at the same time as he claimed her body.
He swallowed up her startled gasp as he plunged inside her then drove deeper. She embraced him, enveloping his thrusting length with her sheath, as she wound her arms around him and clasped her legs behind his back.
He’d never done this. Not once had he been driven to repair the damage he’d inflicted. Not once had his body been driven to the brink of desire by an object of his punishment.
Her pain had not touched him.
It was her pleasure.
It fuelled his, nurtured it…ignited it until he’d practically trembled with the need to take her. Her sobs had shattered the last vestiges of his resolve, had snapped the tenuous thread of control he’d still possessed.
Five thrusts. He may have shoved his cock inside her five times before he erupted, and splintered apart in her arms.
He buried his shaft inside her on a harsh grunt and came so hard, his eyes rolled to the back of head and his toes curled. Adonis spurted inside her until he filled her up, until he was boneless and weak. Then he collapsed atop of her in a heap, panting, still nestled inside her.
When he finally found the strength to pull out of her, Adonis lifted his body and braced himself with his arms, but he stilled when his eyes met hers, nearly swallowing his heart in his throat. Tears still glistened on her lashes as she raised her hand to cu
p his cheek. She dragged his head down, and he let himself be ensnared by her, his eyes closing shut. When their lips met, she kissed him deeply and passionately, but it was the tenderness with which she held him to her, with which she cradled him close, that caused his heart to stutter.
He hated himself because of his weakness for this one woman. He hated himself because he still loved her, deeply, desperately. He hated her because she had the power to make him realise this.
She must have sensed the change in him because she drew back from him, her eyes watching him closely. He wrenched away from her when her gaze began to probe him, searching deeper. Trained to detach himself from his emotions, he slammed up a wall between them, his expression once again inscrutable.
She could not be trusted. No matter his feelings for Selena, he could not do what he’d just done ever again. He could not let her see that she still possessed power over him, that she still had the power to control him.
That he was still vulnerable to her.
He rolled off her and stood. He found the handcuffs that Ares had used to tether her to the bed and he once again put them on her, slipping one end around her wrist and the other around the rail along the head of the bed.
“I need to use the bathroom and bathe myself.”
“You can do so after I’ve showered,” he replied, his back to her as he stalked across the room and entered the bathroom, slamming the door behind him, shutting her out.
He could not forget himself. No matter his feelings for her, he could not allow himself to see her as anything but what she was—the enemy.
That she’d staunchly refused to tell him the truth, that she’d put his brothers in danger, made her his enemy.
That he still did not know the depths of her purpose made her dangerous.
That she was still his weakness and he did not know her true motivations made her deadly.
He could not afford to forget that.
Adonis showered quickly and returned to his bedroom where she waited atop the bed, naked and impatient.
He released her from the cuffs and watched as she entered the bathroom, but when she moved to close the door, he stopped it with his hand and the swift shake of his head.
She frowned. “There are no windows in your bathroom, and the only doors are this one and another that leads inside the linen closet. Where do you think I will go?”
“If you tell me why you are here, the real reason, then I may be inclined to trust you enough to close this door.”
Silence was her only response, along with the thinning of her lips into a taut line.
He did not release the door, and she was forced to suffer the mild embarrassment of him being able to hear every sound she made as she relieved herself.
At the sound of running water, Adonis left his position near the door and crossed the room where he replaced the towel slung around his hips with a pair of black silk pyjama pants he found in his dresser. One to sleep naked, he’d not worn such things since he’d abandoned his father’s home, so the feel of the soft fabric against his legs dredged up memories long forgotten. But as quickly as they came in one moment, he firmly pushed them aside in the next.
With his memories once again in the past, he returned to the present, and it was the absence of sound that struck him.
He was inside the bathroom within three strides, expecting to find it empty and a hole somewhere in the floor or ceiling where Selena had managed to crawl through. He drew up short when he found her—her head resting against the marble tub, her body beautifully naked beneath the crystal clear water.
“You’re bathing.” The words came out before he could stop them.
Her eyes flickered open. “Yes.”
She would not understand. She had no way of knowing how deep some of the scars were that he still carried.
“Would you like to join me?” Her words as well as her expression were guileless, innocent, not ones of seduction.
She lifted her hand and reached for him. “Come. Join me.” The gesture was a touchingly intimate one.
He recoiled, before he could stop himself.
Her hand dropped, plunging into the water once again. Disappointment flickered in her eyes, but she buried it, so quickly he would have sworn it had never been there.
He’d hurt her. His rejection had hurt her.
He turned to leave. He did not wish to hurt her, at least not in that way, but hurt and pain embodied the nature of their relationship.
“You do not like to bathe, do you?”
Her words froze him into place.
“Showers are quicker.”
“But that is not why you take them.”
He turned to face her, his eyes empty. “No, it isn’t.”
“Will you tell me?” He followed the erotic journey of the sponge in her hand as it lathered her skin with soap and water. “Will you tell me why you prefer to take showers? Why you do not like to bathe?”
He was entranced by the water sluicing and sliding across her copper skin. It was a long while before his gaze found its way to her face, and, when it did, the compassion he saw in her eyes levelled him.
He’d not told anyone this, not even his brothers.
“Of the four of us, Eros and I were the most highly sought-after consorts. Whether it was truly skill, or our appearance…or both… I do not know. But we were successful at pleasing others, though Eros was the best.” She watched him intently as he spoke, her eyes full of compassion.
“Eros prefers women,” he continued. “But he still enjoys bedding men. I never did. At first I was repulsed by it until I simply came to accept what I was forced to do. Pleasure is a strange thing. It does not care about the source, as long as it is satiated. My body came to accept this. My mind never did.”
He glanced at the gilded shower head above her. “Dieu must have had this installed after I left.” He returned his attention to her. “I would spend hours, days even, pleasing an endless string of men, and then I would return here and bathe in that tub until my skin was red, until it was raw, as if I could somehow erase what I had done, what had been done to me.
“I may have cleansed my body, but my mind, my soul… Some things you can never erase. I stopped taking baths the moment I left this place. And the thought of taking one ever again turns my stomach.”
She remained silent for a long time, staring at him, studying him, until he thought she would never speak.
But then she said the unexpected, the last words he’d ever thought to hear.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For loving me enough to bare your soul to me.” Her words stilled him, even as they sliced him open.
“I do not love you, Selena.” That was a lie. She knew it. He knew it. And he knew that she knew, but his revelation had left him raw. Her statement of his love now left him bare. His battered emotions simply could not take any more.
“You have not trusted me since the moment I entered your hotel room. You do not trust me now. And yet, you tell me something so intimate, so revealing…”
Her voice trailed off. He did not utter a sound. The only noise to be heard in the room was of the water sloshing against the tub as she continued to bathe.
“I do not love you, Selena,” he repeated, as if saying the words would somehow make them true.
“I know what it is like to love someone and hate yourself because you do. To hate them for making you love them when you wish you didn’t, when you wish you could do anything but. I know what it is like to not trust them, and yet open yourself to them so fully because you can do nothing less, because your heart will not allow anything less. I know what it is like to love a man who hates me, who does not trust me, who would rather see himself dead than admit he loves me. I know what it feels like to be tortured by love, to be tortured by my love for you, but it doesn’t make what I feel for you any less true, any less real.”
“You do not love me, Selena.” His voice was firm, resolute. His insides qu
ivered.
“How I wish that were true,” she whispered, her smile sorrowful.
“I do not love you.”
Her solemn smile did not falter. “I imagine you wish that were true as well.”
Chapter Twelve
In his anger, Adonis had stormed out of the bathroom and slammed the door shut. Now alone, she was free to bathe undisturbed, but she could no longer find peace, so she climbed out of the tub and dried herself.
She would never know what demon had possessed her, what devil had driven her to say the things she’d just said. Every word was true—even the ones he’d steadfastly denied. Yet, she did not fully grasp why they’d flown from her lips so effortlessly, and without warning to even her. She’d not known what she was saying until she’d said it, and when she had, she’d wanted to snatch the words back, but it was already too late.
Adonis was not ready to hear of her love for him or to be confronted by his love for her. But the desolate look in his eyes, his tortured expression when he’d revealed that something as simple as bathing caused him pain, that the thought of him doing it ever again made him sick… She’d been powerless beneath his shadowed gaze, full of sins and darkness from his past. Maybe that was it—the look in his eyes that had hollowed her out. Or maybe it was simply what he’d said. He’d revealed an intimacy, one that had cost a piece of his soul…and she’d not known what else to say except ‘thank you’. When he’d asked ‘ for what?’ she’d had no choice but to tell him the truth. It did not matter if he was ready to hear it or not—it was the truth.
Selena pushed open the door quietly, her steps hesitant as she entered the bedroom. The light of the moon spilled through the window, casting Adonis in a silvery halo. He stood before the window, staring out into the void, seeing nothing. She knew this because his eyes were vacant, hollow…empty.
She treaded softly over to him. Instinct told her to give him a wide berth. He was raw emotionally. Yet, her heart demanded that she push him until he admitted what they both knew. Her heart told her to be prepared to console, to soothe his wounds, because his own heart would not give up such secrets without a bloody fight.