by James, Gemma
If Alex had her way, we’d head straight for the aisle.
I would never find another woman who loved me more, who willingly accepted my need to dominate in every way imaginable. There was no question I loved her. I’d killed in her name, thirsting for justice as much as vengeance, but when it came to making our relationship legally permanent, I stalled.
She deserved better.
She deserved a man who didn’t get hard at the thought of choking the breath from her. There were only two things in this world that kept me sane, and fighting in the cage was one of them. The other was Alex. But having one without the other was a depressing existence—one I’d already tried.
I craved her howls of pain, needed the way a single glimpse of her jade eyes told me how she loved me with an intensity that bordered on obsession.
Returning home and getting married would change everything. I wasn’t ready, but my hangups didn’t matter if she was hurting because of it. She needed me to prove that I was in it for the long haul. Thing was, I didn’t see how a fucking piece of paper would do that. It sure as fuck hadn’t kept my mother from walking.
I heard movement inside the tent as I leaned over the fire and flipped a strip of bacon. A few seconds later, a zipper sounded. I didn’t need to glance at Alex to know she was standing mere feet away with her dark curls tangled from the onslaught of my fingers last night as I fucked the hell out of her. And her neck…
Fuck, I couldn’t not look now. Ignoring the sizzling food, I stared at her throat. Red splotches circled her creamy neck where my fingers had gripped her last night in the throes of sex and madness.
“Good morning, babe.”
“Morning.” Pulling her flannel close around her body, she sat next to me by the fire on the log we used as a makeshift bench.
Leaning over, I covered her mouth with mine. We’d kissed more times than I could remember, from soft and quick—like this morning—to long and deep and breath-stealing. The way never mattered, never kept me from wanting to push her to her knees and shove my cock between her luscious lips.
If it weren’t for the bacon on the cast iron skillet, demanding my attention, I wouldn’t be having these thoughts, because my dick would already be down her throat.
“Want me to get the eggs?” she asked.
“Sure.”
As I continued turning over strips of bacon, I watched her bend and open the cooler. She had no idea what the sight of her tight ass did to me. She was bare underneath that flannel shirt—just the way I liked her—and I went from thinking about her mouth to drooling over her ass in two seconds flat.
It had been a while since I’d fucked it. Anal wasn’t her favorite thing in the world, so I didn’t take it as often as I liked. But I wanted it.
After the way she’d been shutting me out, not to mention clawing at her skin again, I was inclined to take her ass whether she liked it or not.
She returned with her dainty hands full of eggs. As soon as the bacon came off the skillet, I cracked open all six of them. She divided the smoky strips of meat between two paper plates, and once the eggs formed a bacon-flavored scramble, we dug into our breakfast in comfortable silence.
This had been our life for the last four weeks since we’d hiked to this secluded spot of pine trees on the edge of a lake I loved and she despised.
More like feared.
We’d set up camp and had been fighting and fucking ever since. It was our aphrodisiac, our dance of push and pull. If we didn’t have a reason to argue, we’d find one.
Because that was how we worked.
Passionate arguments that led to passionate punishments.
The latter kept up both sane. She needed the physical pain to chase away her demons, and I needed to dole it out to chase away mine. In that aspect, we were made for each other.
Alex glanced at me, plastic fork halfway to her lips.
“What’s the plan today?”
We could hike, or we could fish. Or we could fuck. We could do all of that, and not necessarily in that order. But today, I had something else in mind. I pinned her with a dark look that never failed to make her wither. She swallowed her bite of eggs with a gulp.
“I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”
“You know the answer to that.”
One thing I loved most about my girl? She never withered for long. Setting her half-eaten plate of breakfast aside, she glowered at me.
“This is bullshit, Rafe. How many times have I begged you to let me in? To talk to me?” She crossed her arms. “It goes both ways.”
“You want to play, huh?” I threw my paper plate into the fire then grabbed her. I tossed her over my shoulder, and her pleas came out in high-pitched shrieks as I stomped toward the edge of the lake.
“Don’t you dare!”
She wasn’t using her playful I-want-you-to-take-control-even-though-I’m-protesting voice. She was all-out pissed, pounding on my bare back as I trudged into the water up to my knees. Shit, it was cold.
With a splash, I dropped her to her feet. Fighting her thrashing arms, I stripped her of that flannel shirt, satisfied once I had her naked and defenseless in front of me. After tossing her shirt to the shore, I grabbed her again, strode several feet into the water, and dove in with her.
We broke the surface at the same time, me shaking the drops from my hair as she sputtered her outrage. She kicked her legs and made for the shore, and I questioned the wisdom in teaching her how to swim.
“Try to get away from me and see what happens,” I warned.
She caught the seriousness of my tone, and it was enough to halt her movement. Whirling back to face me, she treaded water, her brilliant jade eyes spitting wrath in my direction.
Anger was beautiful on her. My woman was hot and sexy and gorgeous, but above all else, beautiful clear to her soul. A myriad of emotions wrapped around my heart, constricting the pump of blood, making me dizzy from the effect she had on me.
Some people tried to define love, tried packaging it into hearts and flowers in February and diamonds and white gowns on a day to remember. Love had no definition. It was the insanity that glued two hearts together, the possessiveness that gripped the soul, the inevitability that arrowed straight for the jugular.
Love had me fucking whipped.
“Swim with me,” I said, nodding toward the tiny island that called to me from several yards away. Maybe that piece of land reminded me of home, of security and comfort. Whatever the reason, I was drawn to it and had been since the day we found this private spot.
Alex hesitated, her gaze swinging between the island where I’d punished and fucked her twice already, and the illusion of safety on the shoreline of our camp. But safety didn’t exist outside my will, my arms, my way. She knew that, and like the smart girl she was, she kicked to my side and moved through the water with me, her naked body one with the lake she still feared on a base level.
The island wasn’t far, which was a good thing, considering her status as a beginning swimmer. We reached the patch of rocky land, and Alex stood, her toes sinking into the dirt of the shore, water dripping from her hair, sluicing between her tits. Her nipples hardened, and I envisioned taking a switch to them.
My dick went from shriveled from the chilly water to hard and throbbing at the thought of punishing her tits.
Find some fucking patience.
I had all day to make her bend, and bend, she would. I shed my shorts before herding her toward my favorite boulder, with its smooth, curved surface that welcomed her body perfectly. Twirling her around, I shoved her to her knees, and she draped the rock, her feminine form a vision of pure art as she hugged the stone.
“Let me come.” Her voice quivered, her legs trembled, and she parted her thighs by a few inches. I was tempted to sink my fingers into her pussy to find out how wet she was. My cock twitched at the idea.
It was a bad idea if I wanted to retain a thread of control.
“Letting you come will only defeat the purpose.” Te
sting several skinny branches from a nearby tree, I broke one off and planted my feet on the ground behind her.
Fuck, she was a goddess. She knew exactly what she was in for, but she arched her spine anyway, damp curls a sexy tangle down her back as she put her ass on display. The way she submitted broke me apart a little more each time.
I fucking needed to make her come, craved the breathlessness of her cries, the alluring rigidity of her muscles as pure bliss flooded the delta of her thighs.
“Please, Rafe.”
Last night had left her desperate. Not bringing her to orgasm was making me fucking desperate. But one glance at the red scratches marring her arm was enough to keep me from giving in. Those ugly streaks on her skin made me grind my teeth.
“You’re being punished, babe. Not pleasured.”
She took a deep breath, held it for several seconds, then let it out with a whimper. “I don’t know if I can hold back if you fuck me.”
“That’s why I’m gonna fuck your ass. You’d better get good and wet.”
She fisted her hands against the rock but didn’t protest even though I knew she wanted to. I closed my eyes, counted to ten for a sense of calmness that never truly came, and let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
Then I brought the switch down on her backside.
3. A SWITCH OF TRUTH
Alex
I remembered the time Zach used a switch on me, recalled the terror that had risen in my throat because he’d been out of his fucking mind. The echoing pain of that memory ran deep, infiltrating to my marrow.
And yet each strike from Rafe was a caress, a kiss of fire that wasn’t painful enough to blot out the ache between my legs. He knew how to use that stick to his advantage. With the flick of a wrist, he made me squirm, my thighs pressing together as his chosen implement danced across my skin.
“Open,” he commanded, prompting me to part my thighs once more.
He struck again, and my body locked up, all effort spent on staying in position. The stick made a slight whistling sound as it swiped the air.
“Ahhh!” I jerked, and by some miracle didn’t break the pose.
The switch made an agonizing journey down my butt cheeks, leaving line after line of sweet torment. The harsher the sting, the quicker I grew wet between the thighs, my pussy throbbing.
Legs trembling.
Bottom lip trapped between my teeth.
I tried biting back a moan and failed.
“Please,” I said.
“You can beg all you want, but you’re going to sleep tonight with a pissed off cunt.”
“It’s wet, Rafe. So fucking wet.” I lowered my voice, and a seductive note crept in, soft enough not to be overt. “I need your cock inside me.”
He laughed, obviously catching on to my pathetic attempt at seducing him. “I’ll give you my cock for a while.” He leaned over me and planted a hand next to mine to prop him up. “I have no problem fucking your cunt,” he whispered, his words heating my ear, making me shiver. “And when you’re about to shatter, I’ll finish in your ass, babe. Like I said, punished. Not pleasured.”
“I’m begging you.” My breaths went shallow. “I won’t do it again.”
“You mean that now, but the next time you’re up against something you don’t want to deal with, you’ll hurt yourself. You always do.”
“Rafe, pleas—”
He wedged the stick between my teeth. “Don’t drop that.”
Biting into the branch, I resisted the urge to growl. He settled at my side and drew my hands to the small of my back. His large fist shackled both wrists, and our eyes met and held as he landed a sound slap on my left ass cheek. His warm palm came down again and again, making me moan with every firm smack. Dragging a finger through my slit, he teased my asshole, his eyes on me the entire time as he pushed that slick digit into my ass.
“Damn, babe. Your ass is so fucking tight.”
He was on the brink, desperate to slide into my backdoor and get off, but there would be no relief for me. Not until he decided I’d been punished enough, and that could take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. He’d leave my body throbbing for him as long as he wanted, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Not because I didn’t have any power. The issue was my own perversion that trapped me in purgatory, ensuring I remained a supple possession in his sexy hands—hands that punished and pleasured with equal amounts of passion and love.
I’d find no drug on this planet more addictive than Rafe Mason.
Keeping my hands restrained in his Herculean fist, he shifted out of sight, and I sensed him behind me. A few intense moments passed before the head of his cock nudged the apex of my sex, each second a torturous eternity as I waited for him to thrust inside me.
I anticipated it, dreaded it, longed for it.
The promise of a few exquisite thrusts that would hurtle me toward the edge of blissful freedom. With a swift plunge, he seated his cock inside me, and my slick walls clenched around his girth. I moaned, my teeth sinking into the wood between my lips. I lifted my head, ignoring the burn in my shoulders, and gazed at the water just yards away. A gentle breeze caressed my skin. Birds chirped and sang. The sun beat its warmth onto the crown of my head.
The setting couldn’t be more peaceful, more serene.
More secluded.
And yet I was in sexual agony, helpless against the hard stone underneath me as Rafe pounded me from behind. I was his. Baring my teeth around the stick, I cried out for mercy I knew he wouldn’t give and silently begged my body to do his bidding.
Don’t come. For the love of God, don’t come.
One hand landed on my ass cheek while his other squeezed the circulation from my wrists. “Hold it back, Alex,” he warned, pumping in and out, his cock hard and slippery and feeling so fucking good I wanted to let go anyway, damn the consequences.
I met each thrust with an upward tilt of my hips, craving him deeper. Needing more.
“So fucking wet.” He pulled out, and I heard him spit before he pushed the head of his cock into my ass. The sudden intrusion made me yelp.
“Ah!”
The stick fell to the ground.
“That’ll cost you,” he said, voice strained as he grasped my butt cheek with one hand. His choppy breathing splintered the air, and I knew he was about to take me rough, no matter the pain it would cause. I drew in a deep breath.
With one impatient thrust, he was inside my ass, his shaft intruding past the burn, beyond the resistance.
“Please…” I said on a groan, my teeth grinding together. The pain was too much, and I needed…more. I needed to fucking get off, and it wasn’t going to happen unless he rubbed my clit.
“Please, what? Are you begging to come, or are you begging me to get this over with?”
Shit. He wasn’t about to be quick now.
“Both,” I practically growled at him.
“Do you have any idea how much of a turn on it is to see my cock in the one place no else has been? It’s the only place that’s really mine.” He brought a hand to my throat and squeezed just enough to issue a warning. “Say it’s mine, Alex.”
“It’s yours.”
“Beg me to fuck it.”
I whimpered, my throat working under the threat of his hand. There was nowhere for me to go. I was stuck between Rafe’s iron will and the stone beneath me. What was worse…I was trapped by the hot, sticky mess coating the insides of my thighs.
My body needed him.
I needed the fucking pain.
“Fuck me in the ass.”
“Ask me nicely.”
God, he could be such a cocky ass. Asking him to take me anally was a moot point, considering his cock was already inside me, inciting the retched burn I couldn’t help but despise, even if I got off on the power he took from me in this moment.
“Please, Rafe. I need you to fuck me.”
“Fuck you where?”
“In t
he ass. You’re already there.”
Stop fucking torturing me…
“Damn right I’m there. This ass is mine.” He withdrew then plunged back in, smacking me hard as he forced his way into my tight hole. He fucked me with slow and steady thrusts, and I closed my eyes and focused on breathing. It hurt, was beyond uncomfortable, but the incessant throbbing between my legs—a throbbing his cock wouldn’t relieve as long as it sought release in my ass—was the hardest part.
His pumps became more painful, coming as fast as his uneven breaths. Tears leaked from my shuttered eyes, crawling down my cheeks like drops of rain. I cried out with every thrust of the steel-like rod violating my backdoor. His erection was as hard and warm as the rock I was sprawled on top of.
In the face of my howls, the birds fell silent.
And he came, his cock going still deep inside me. The deep-throated moan he let out tingled down my spine, causing goosebumps despite the warm morning.
“Please,” I moaned, refusing to open my eyes or move, even after he withdrew from my ass and released my hands. “I need to come.”
“Not happening, Alex.” Several moments went by as our rapid breaths floated through the air.
He jolted me back to reality by dragging me to my feet. Cradling my face between his hands, he kissed the tears from my skin, and my heart melted.
“Clasp your hands together at the back of your head,” he whispered, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones.
I wanted to question him, but a small part of me hoped he’d give me what I needed if I cooperated. I laced my fingers together and placed them at the back of my head, my elbows reaching outward, breasts thrust toward him.
“Good girl.” He took my mouth, tongue sweeping inside, stealing the breath from my lungs. And his hands, God they were driving me crazy. His fingers circled my nipples until they formed hardened buds. “Spread your legs.”
Giving him a whimpering plea, I hesitated. I didn’t want to open my legs; doing so would heighten the throb in my pussy, and I desperately needed it to go away.
“Alex,” he warned, prompting me to widen my stance. I followed him with my eyes as he rounded the rock. He returned, clutching the stick I’d dropped. No words were needed. His eyes told me everything.