“Oh,” I breathed, both relieved and turned on by his answer. “I can be quiet then.”
“Are you sure? Because I can gag you.”
I shook my head emphatically. I was still learning what it meant to be submissive to Ash—figuring out what I liked and what I didn’t—but I was confident being gagged didn’t turn me on. “No, I’ll behave.” I smiled up at him then. He might like me down on my knees all willing and compliant, but I was still me, and that meant no matter how demanding he got, he’d never break me of my sass. “Besides, if you gag me, how will I be able to take your delicious fucking cock down my throat?”
Ash shuddered, and the cock in question jumped. “See what I mean?” he laughed, dropping the tough guy act for a brief second. Then, his features hardened with resolve. “Enough talking. Open that smart fucking mouth and suck me, woman.” Ash fisted my hair and pulled my head forward, thrusting his dick into my mouth as far as it could go. My eyes watered at the rough intrusion but then my throat relaxed and swallowed around his thick length.
“Use your tongue.”
I obeyed, fluttering it along the underside of his crown as he pulled his hips back and then surged forward again, fucking my face with abandon.
“Fuck yes, just like that.”
As ropey saliva leaked down my chin, I was powerless to do anything but sit there and let him defile me, but I loved the feel of his cock shoved so far down it could gag me if I let it.
And he knew it.
“Do you want my cum down that pretty little throat?” he growled as he worked in and out of my orifice.
I gave a tiny nod, and he drove into me. Again, and again, and again until my mouth was stretched so wide my jaw ached. With one hand tangled in my hair, Ash held me against him until I gagged and then, with a few more driving thrusts, shot his thick load down my throat, just like I’d asked him to. Reflexively, I swallowed every drop, and when I was done, I licked his cock clean, savoring the taste of him on my tongue.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rae
Dropping back onto my calves, I sighed dreamily and swiped my arm across my chin before letting my hands fall limply to rest at my side. My pussy was dripping wet from his rough treatment, but the pleasure I’d experienced from him fucking my face had left me drowsy. I hadn’t come, but I felt ready for a long nap.
But Ash was having none of that. “Oh no you don’t,” he chided, scooping me into his arms and carrying me to the leather chair in the corner of his room. Falling to his knees, he shoved my thighs apart. “It’s my turn now,” he said, opening me wide with his fingers and then dropping his mouth to my aching sex to lap at my juices. “So fucking sweet,” he murmured, sucking on my throbbing clit.
Even in my dazed and languid state, my back bowed off the chair and I let out a keening wail.
Ash gripped my waist and dragged my ass along the leather until my pussy rested at the edge of the chair for better access. He licked, and laved, and sucked at my bare lips. He feasted on me, the same way I’d feasted on him. The sight of him kneeling between my legs, my juices all over his beard, was nearly enough to make me come.
When he pointed his tongue, and fucked me with it, I moaned. Even though I wasn’t supposed to speak, I whimpered, “I’m close, Ash.” Before I could come, he bit down on the inside of my thigh—branded my skin with his teeth—and hefted me out of the chair and over his shoulder. On the way to the bed, he slapped my ass, hard.
“I thought I said no talking.”
“I’m sorry,” I croaked, my voice coming out scratchy from taking his cock so far down my throat.
Smack. My ass lit up like a Christmas tree and I moaned as the pain spread. It hurt, but it was so, so sweet too.
When we reached his bed, he tossed me down onto it. “On all fours,” he snapped, positioning me exactly how he wanted me.
With shaking arms, I propped myself up and looked over my shoulder to take in all of his naked, magnificent glory looming over me. “Fuck me,” I begged, and Ash smacked me again, propelling my body forward. I screwed my eyes shut and waited for another blow to land, but it never came. Instead, he gripped my hips and thrust his thick, hard cock into my pussy, filling me so full and so deep I didn’t know where he ended and I began.
“Holy shit,” he bit out. “I swear I could fuck you for the rest of my life, woman.”
Ash slid back out, taunting me with just the head of his crown, and then slammed all the way back in, his balls hitting me in a steady rhythm that added to the exquisite feel of me being stretched around his cock.
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “Fuck me, Ash,” I begged. “Harder. Give it to me harder.”
He flexed his fingers, dug them into my skin and kneaded my flesh. When I was used to the pain of his grip, he pulled away and spanked my flank. I yelped, and he massaged the sting away. With his hips flexing like a piston, Ash spanked my other cheek and then caressed my heated skin.
Over and over, he rained blows on my ass, and with each one I cried out and begged for more. I was burning up, the heat from the imprint of his hand burning a path straight to my core. I wanted to be marked by him forever. I wanted to wear the evidence of Ash’s passion for me like a signal to the world that I was his and he was mine.
Dropping forward, he wrapped his large body around me, his mouth hovering near my ear. His breath was hot and moist against my skin as he panted with each thrust. Eventually, his weight was too much for my strained arms to bear, and I collapsed onto my front, my hands trapped between my body and the mattress. Ash maneuvered his hand to my front to find my clit, and with strong, deft fingers, he rubbed and pinched and swirled around that small bundle of delicate nerves until I was sobbing. I felt him everywhere, and I wondered, briefly, if it was possible to die from pleasure.
“I’m going to come in you,” Ash growled, taking my earlobe between his teeth and biting down. “I love thinking about your beautiful pink cunt dripping with my cum, watching it slide down your thighs.”
“Yes,” I sobbed. “Please. I need it. I need you.”
“You’ll come when I tell you and not a second before.” He bit my shoulder and sucked my flesh brutally into his mouth, marking me. Claiming me.
“I want to come,” I begged, needing the release, yet holding out for his consent. Because if instant gratification was wonderful, during my time with Ash, I’d learned that delayed gratification blew it out of the water every damn time. The longer I held out—the longer I forced my body to obey his commands—the more intense the reward would be when he finally let me come.
And yet, for all that, I didn’t actually know how much longer I was physically capable of holding out. He’d done things to me tonight we hadn’t done before, and I’d reveled in them. I was shaking, trembling uncontrollably, my mind no longer capable of thinking. He’d forced me to simply feel. To experience everything he gave me, everything that he was. Tonight, I’d surrendered to my body’s most basic primal instincts, instilled over thousands of millennia: the need to rut, to fuck, and to continue the survival of the species.
Repeatedly he’d taken me to the very edge of my desire, tantalizingly close to discovering the sheer weightlessness that came with the fall, only to pull me back with a whispered, “No, not yet.”
But I needed that fall. I needed to break free of the confines of my consciousness and let those primitive compulsions drive me to another plane. I needed to explode, to burn the whole thing down, and then rise from the ashes like a mighty phoenix reborn. I needed him to take me there. I needed him to let me soar.
But Ash needed something too.
“Stay with me Rae,” he murmured against my cheek, and then slid out of me, leaving a giant chasm where we’d been joined.
Literal tears sprang to my eyes as I sobbed at the loss of his skin against mine, of the mingling of our sweat, our passion, and our desire.
But then Ash banded his arms around my middle, and sat back on his shins, pulling with him. With his front to my bac
k, he dropped kisses all along my neck, my shoulders, across my back. “Shh, I’ve got you,” he whispered in my ear as his cock nudged at my entrance and then slipped between my folds, sliding home.
With his hips rolling beneath me, I surrendered every part of me to every part of him. Ash’s hand skated down my middle, over my belly, and to my center. When his finger brushed over my clit, I rocked against him, desperate for more.
“Harder,” I urged, lost to everything but the feel of him in me—in both my body and my heart.
My world narrowed to this one single moment, and then the next, and the one following that, until time ceased to mean anything but the stringing together of sensation and feeling. And at the center of it all, was this man. This strong, humble, beautifully-scarred man who had shown me that I was capable of feeling again. Who, from the very first moment we’d met, when I had thought there was nothing left for me in this world, when I had believed my worth was defined by someone who’d thought me worthless, had called to me. Who had made me believe there was something to live for. Whose kindred spirit had sought me out and then, despite the years that had separated us, given me a home.
Ash’s pace increased, and his strong thighs flexed against the back of my own, his breathing hard and erratic in my ear. “That’s it,” he hummed in approval. “That’s it, baby. Now. Give it to me. Give me everything.”
At his whispered command, my body obeyed. Reaching the pinnacle of my ecstasy, I threw myself over the edge, and all the world and all the noise and everything that didn’t matter—everything save Ash—blazed through my atmosphere as I fell from the heavens, as my body broke apart into a million shards of glass and then reformed into the toughest diamond, made stronger—made invincible—by the searing heat of my love for him.
With the last spasm of my orgasm milking Ash’s cock, he roared my name and emptied himself into me, his hips pounding into my flesh, his strong arms holding me like a vice, his teeth digging into my shoulder. And then we collapsed into a sweaty heap of exhausted, sated limbs. Ash’s hands roamed my skin, caring for me, murmuring praise and words of encouragement while he checked to make sure I was okay.
Ash and I had always been electric—our chemistry white hot—but it had never been like this before. I’d never felt so mastered, so trusting of another human being that my mind went quiet enough so that my body simply felt what it needed to feel. I’d never been brought as high as Ash had just taken me, and it shook me to my core because I knew I’d never be the same.
The truth was, in the midst of it all, I’d known beyond a shadow of a doubt that I loved him.
I loved him.
With everything I’d ever been, and everything I would be in the future, I loved him. With my bleeding, broken heart and my past mistakes, and with a fervent hope that I would keep on loving him for the rest of my life until that broken heart was nothing but a distant memory.
With my body snuggled tight against his, Ash couldn’t see the tears pooling in my eyes, but he was so attuned to me, that he sensed the change in my emotions and his hand stilled on my hip.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice subdued with worry.
I nodded and he rolled me onto my back, his bulk blocking out the waning light filtering in from outside. His eyes flicked between mine, and as the tears leaked out and down the side of my face, he kissed each salty path away. “I’m sorry, Rae,” he groaned. “I lost control back there. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No,” I croaked, and cleared my voice. “No, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded again, and gave him a faltering smile. I was okay. Or rather, I would be okay. As soon as I figured out what I was going to do about my feelings for him. Ash and I hadn’t discussed what would happen when we left the confines of this safe cocoon, what all this meant out in the real world, but I feared that in the harsh light of reality, we’d realize we were too different. That despite how we might feel now, that what we’d built together wouldn’t last.
I would love him for the rest of my life—of that I had no doubt—but I didn’t know if he felt the same. Oh, I knew he cared about me. That much was evident by the fact that he’d confided his deepest, darkest secrets to me, had entrusted me with his heart, but could he ever possibly love me the way I knew that I loved him?
“Why the tears then?” he asked, easing down and kissing my neck, my cheeks, my eyelids. “Why so sad?”
“I’m not sad,” I admitted. “I’m … I’m … ” I faltered, the words bubbling up inside of me and threatening to spill over. My love for him was strong and true, and even if he couldn’t ever love me in return, I needed him to know. I needed him to hear what was in my heart, what would always be in my heart.
But those words were difficult to say aloud. It was terrifying to open yourself up to someone, to give them your battered, bleeding heart, to hand over your trust and hopes and dreams, and say, “I’m yours. Please be careful with me.”
Staring down at me, a knowing smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “I love you too, baby. I love you so fucking much it hurts.”
He kissed me, and our hearts beat in time. Our rhythm, our harmony. A symphony of sighs and moans and yearning. And just like that, what had been battered and bruised inside of me was made strong and resilient. The future stretched out in front of me—of us—and I knew when I took my last breath, his was the face that I would see. When I left this earth, his name would be the last on my lips. When I passed into nothingness, I’d take a piece of him with me into the stars where we’d live on for eternity as a bright, enduring spark in the universe.
His forehead rested against mine, his eyes closed. “You’re my world now, Rae.”
I tangled my hands in his hair and pulled him to me for another long, languid kiss. “And you’re mine, Ash.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rae
Ash’s words echoed through my head for what was probably the millionth time since he’d said them: “I love you too, baby. I love you so fucking much it hurts.”
He loved me.
With that declaration, my entire world shifted on its axis. I’d told myself I didn’t need Ash’s love to make me whole again, but I couldn’t deny his heartfelt words went a long way toward plastering over the enormous cracks Ford’s betrayal had left in my foundation.
Now, I’d been smiling for five days straight, and I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened—if ever. Even when Ford had first told me he loved me, I hadn’t been this free, this weightless. I’d been too afraid that I’d do something wrong, that he would take it all back. Maybe it was because I was older and wiser, or maybe it was because I knew to the depths of my soul that Ash would never do that to me, but nothing could bring me down.
Not even the fact that the police still hadn’t found my stalker, or that I was having a hell of a difficult time with my album. The whole point of it had been to bare my soul, to tell the world through my music what I’d endured with Ford. But every day that I spent with Ash, the further away from that woman I felt, and the more distant I grew from the emotions that had fueled those lyrics. I could read the lines I’d written and remember who I’d been and why I’d felt the way I had, but I couldn’t feel it now … and that made every song fall flat when I opened my mouth to sing.
“Want to give it another take?” Ash asked from the other side of the glass.
Huffing out a sigh, I set my guitar aside. “No, I think I’m done with this one for today. I’m not even sure I want to include it on the album anymore. I sound like a whiny fucking baby.”
Taking off his earphones and hanging them on a rack, Ash beckoned me into the engineering room.
I hopped off my stool and cracked my aching knuckles. I glanced at the clock over the door as I stepped through, seeing that I’d been playing non-stop for five hours straight.
“Come here,” Ash said, spreading his legs so I could step between them. Fastening his large hands to each side of my waist
, he caressed my belly with the pad of his thumbs while his other fingers sank into the fleshy part of my ass. He brought his face to my stomach and rubbed his beard back and forth across before sinking his teeth into my hip deep enough to leave marks.
I yelped and tried to jump back, but he held me immobile. “What was that for?”
“I’m trying to calm down,” he growled. “I thought I could handle it, but it’s so fucking hard hearing you sing about him. About the others. I feel an overwhelming need to mark you, to show the world you’re mine.”
I ruffled my hand through his hair. He’d left it long and loose the last few days and the soft locks almost hit his chin now. “I am yours.”
He tugged me closer. “Straddle me, baby.” It was a command, but it was needy too—as close as he ever got to begging.
When I threw one leg over him, and sat facing him, Ash ran his hands under my skirt, his palms sweeping the fabric up until I was bared to him. I squirmed, seeking friction against my clit.
“I want to fuck you so bad right now,” he said, his eyes fixed on the apex of my thighs.
I looked down and watched his fingers skate closer and closer over my naked skin until they were near that aching, needy place. My breathing hitched and my heart accelerated with anticipation.
“Look at me,” he whispered on a strangled growl.
When I raised my eyes to his, his pupils were black with lust. Instead of finishing his slow path to my clit, he moved his hands to my ass and kneaded my flesh. Then, he tugged me forward and rocked me back along his bulge. I moaned and closed my eyes.
“Keep ‘em open, Rae.”
With my hips undulating over him, my eyes sprang open, and I chewed my lip as I chased my orgasm.
“Not yet,” he warned, and his fingers slipped deeper into the crevice between my cheeks until one of them swept over that tight, forbidden bud. I gasped, and he swirled around it, teasing me, promising me a glimpse of deeper, darker pleasure. He’d touched me there before, but never with such intense focus, with such burning desire in his gaze. Yes, he wanted to fuck me, but this wicked teasing told the real story. He wanted to fuck my ass, and I was going to let him.
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