She frowned. ‘Let’s not do this, Jask.’
But he finally had her – her defences almost down, the real Phia almost fully laid bare. And he wasn’t letting her go easily.
‘No, Phia. Let’s do this. Here and now.’
‘Why? What’s the point?’
‘And what’s the point of keeping some kind of barrier up between us?’
‘Because it makes it easier.’
‘It makes it easier for you, you mean.’
‘Yes, it makes it easier for me. I prefer it that way. So let me go.’
* * *
She could barely breathe, the intensity in his eyes, the sincerity of his words throwing her off guard more than she could handle.
‘It wasn’t easy saying no to you in that alley,’ he said. ‘Don’t think for a minute it was. I wanted you then like I want you now. Just like I wanted you only an hour ago.’
Her heart skipped a beat, a cool perspiration breaking out in her clenched palms.
‘And despite what you think, it’s nothing to do with you being a serryn. I know you think I’m too good for you. I see it in your eyes. Well I’m not good, Phia. Not underneath it all. I have to fight all the time to make the right choices. Just like now – trying so hard to make this about my pack and not about you, not about us. Because you have no idea what I did in the years following Ellen’s death. I was on a downward spiral and dragged my pack with me as I immersed myself in my own contempt, caring for nothing but inflicting whatever pain I could on myself. They were hard times for them, something I cared nothing for at the time. And yet they still stand loyally by my side. For them I should be walking out of this room right now. But I can’t. Which is why I can’t let you leave either. Not until I’ve broken the last of those barriers of yours. And I will break them, Phia. Not for what I have to do, but for us.’
Her heart pounded painfully.
‘Because you’re going to acknowledge the way you feel too,’ he said. ‘You’re going to make yourself vulnerable to me. And you’re going to face it. Just as I am.’
She could no longer see anything but him. Hear nothing but the pounding rain. Feel nothing but the cool night breeze.
She instinctively tried to yank herself away again, but his grip tightened, his gaze still locked on hers.
‘Has no one ever warned you about cornering a serryn?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Has no one ever warned you about being cornered by a lycan? One on one, we both know who’ll win.’
Everything that exuded from his eyes, his tone, his touch told her to stop fighting back. And she didn’t want to fight anymore. If he thought he could break her, she needed to see him try.
She lifted her lips to his, needing, wanting to face the consequence should he succeed. ‘Then prove it.’
* * *
Her final submission unleashed every primal instinct he’d had to contain and suppress. Instincts he now knew he didn’t need to fight anymore. Not now he had finally proven to himself just how close he could get to the edge and that he could pull back – something he could only do with her.
Could do because he loved her.
He’d grown since all those decades before. He’d become stronger and not even he had known it. Had not dared to test it to know.
But now he had.
He didn’t have to fear himself with her. He was too conscious of her. More aware of her than he was of himself – her scent filling his senses, her warm body trembling against his. And now he understood her, now he knew he finally had her trust, he was aware of her even more.
He no longer needed to fear himself. She’d liberated him. And now he’d liberate her.
They both needed to finish what they’d started.
He heard the hitch in her breath as he spun her around, as he lifted her onto the bed with ease. He pinned her onto all fours, slamming both her hands together on the windowsill, contained them in one of his as he pushed his thighs between hers.
She didn’t move, didn’t struggle, didn’t utter a word as he ran his free hand up her spine to her neck. Brushing her hair aside to reveal the clasp of her dress, he unfastened it with one deft flick of his thumb and forefinger.
She shuddered as he kissed the base of her neck, her grip on the windowsill tightening.
‘What? No struggle this time?’ he whispered against her ear.
‘If you want to exhaust yourself, go ahead,’ she said, echoing his words from the wasteland.
He smiled, nipped her lightly on the earlobe before sliding his hand all the way down her bare spine, down over the curve of her behind before taking the hem of her dress back up with the motion to expose the lace shorts he had chosen for her. They suited her curves perfectly, just as he’d imagined they would.
He rubbed his thumb under high arch of lace that exacerbated the fullness of her behind – a feminine roundness enhanced by the contrasting slenderness of her small waist. A femininity he couldn’t help but revel in. Because she was painfully feminine. Painfully beautiful.
A femininity he needed to feel as he tucked his thumb into the crotch of her shorts to stroke her sex.
She gasped. A gasp that sent him reeling. Her pulse picked up a notch, indicating the adrenaline rush she thrived on. The same adrenaline rush he’d sensed down in the containment room – not one of fear, but one of arousal.
He nudged her thighs further apart, the feel of her warm bare legs through his jeans only escalating his arousal to the point of pain, and no more so as she continued to surrender.
Finding her clit, he applied just enough pressure to make her flinch.
She moaned almost silently, lowered her head onto the windowsill. But still she didn’t resist him, his arousal surging as she pressed back against him slightly, as if urging him inside of her.
She was giving herself to him again. Locked away there in their cocoon, just like when he’d taken her on the cell floor – when he’d first seen the real her – the fight in her was subdued, her defences were down. She was accepting what she wanted. Really wanted.
Him.
And giving herself to him was all he needed. He would protect her – somehow. He had to.
But that moment was about more than just that. She may have started to feel safe enough with him to allow him to get that close, but under it she thrived on the potential danger as much as he did. It was a part of her very nature. She liked him being in control, she liked him drawing the line. Because that’s how she felt safe: when he set the boundaries. Her retaliation all along, ever since meeting him, had been about getting that as much as anything else. She needed to be contained. She needed to be held. Because she might have trusted him, but she didn’t trust herself.
Keeping the pressure on her clit, he slipped his middle finger inside her, watched as she dug her fingers into the windowsill in response, aroused further by her lack of resistance.
He let go of her hands to unfasten his jeans, relishing in his freed straining erection as he locked into the hypnotism of her quiet groans.
He unhooked her strapless bra before clutching the windowsill again, his hand inches from hers. Lowering his lips to her bare spine, he licked, kissed and nipped along her bare vertebrae as he pushed his finger deeper inside her.
As his mouth met the very base of her spine, she shuddered, instinctively arched her back, lifting her behind in a way that was far too provocative for him to ignore.
He pulled himself upright, gently withdrew his finger, his hand. He closed his eyes, bit into his bottom lip to prevent him tearing off her underwear there and then.
Because her sudden stillness told him that was exactly what she was anticipating. He could hear her heart rate escalate, her breath held between its shallowness. She was expecting him to take her quickly.
Instead he clutched her neck again, keeping her in position as he gently eased her shorts down to her knees. As he slid his fingers back down over her now wet sex, she let out a groan, lifted her head a fraction only to slam
it back down onto her arms. And as he pushed two of his fingers back inside her, she took the deepest inhale he’d ever heard.
He leaned back slightly, revelling in watching her tremble, his own arousal peaking as he watched his fingers disappear inside the moist, sensual folds of her sex.
She cursed indefinably under her breath, her head still buried in her forearms as he pushed as deep as he could go.
His erection twitched and throbbed at her tightness, her involuntary moans, the sensual whimper that accompanied them diminishing his resilience. She was lost in him, taken to his world, where he was all she could think about.
The power of it surged through him. Only empowered him more.
‘Good girl,’ he said, as he leaned over her. He nipped her tenderly on her ear again. ‘Tame now, aren’t you?’
He knew it would evoke a reaction, albeit laced with a playful retaliation as she pushed against him. But they both knew the game they were playing – the unspoken rules as if they had been lovers for years.
He grabbed both her hands again, slamming them back onto the windowsill, trapping them there as he yanked her shorts off the rest of the way.
He pressed the tip of his erection just an inch inside her before coiling his fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck.
She held her breath, her nails scraping into the windowsill, her whole body tensing. She knew he wasn’t going to hold back. She’d already worked out that the position he had put her in would allow him deep and unbridled penetration.
She had summoned his lycan instincts yet again, only this time she’d finally get what she asked for.
* * *
Jask did what only Jask could do – perceptive enough to read her and reckless enough to act on the signals.
Sophia clutched onto the windowsill, her head lowered.
Just as she’d expected, his thrust was unbridled, deep, intense.
This time her groan was almost pained as he tightened the grip on her hair, his other hand clenching her wrists as he pushed himself even deeper, unrelentingly, until he filled her to the hilt.
The discomfort was just enough to sate her – to convince her of his honesty, as, instead of picking up pace, he slowed down, thrust deeper, more lingeringly, making her feel every inch.
She knew he’d be watching. She knew he liked to watch. She’d seen that for herself down in the cell. And it only enthralled her more – his sexual confidence a painful aphrodisiac.
As he lowered his chest onto her back, his hand spanning the back of her thigh so she couldn’t move, her cries echoed out onto the empty street below, ripples of pleasure moving from the back of her neck where he held her, down her spine, to pool where they were joined. Her limbs tingled and became numb until she felt nothing but him buried inside her.
‘Does this feel good?’ he whispered against her ear. ‘Do you like the feel of me inside you? Is it liberating, Phia, having someone else take control. Dare to take control?’
And as he picked up pace, as he freed her neck to grab her hip, she could feel herself slipping away.
She was giving herself to him willingly and unrepentantly. It didn’t feel like her – not the her she had come to know. Instead, it felt like a part of herself that she had once known had now returned – the liberated part of her that had been free and unrestrained and untroubled, back when life seemed simple and there was nothing to worry about.
Because the very submissive position she had allowed him to get her into, her helplessness beneath his control, should have had her worried, should have had her panicked.
No less than as he tugged her back against him, forcing her onto his lap, her thighs spread wide either side of his as he continued to thrust into her.
But not even as he clasped her breast with one hand, wrapped the other possessively around her throat to keep her back against his shoulder, as he raked her neck with his canines, did she feel a moment of fear.
She should have been troubled at the lack of connection both positions could have evoked – a position void of eye contact and an inability to read each other’s expressions. But it felt even more intimate – a physical and emotional understanding where all the normal cues weren’t required; where he was listening to and watching for cues another way – a lycan’s way – whilst she relaxed into his consuming of her.
And consume her he did. Because never had she felt so much during sex. Not just physically. Far more than just physically.
So when he withdrew only to flip her onto her back, the resumed eye contact with him as he pushed back inside her only made the act even more powerful.
She couldn’t look anywhere but at him. The neon lights bounced on his skin, glimmering in his eyes, igniting them one moment and darkening them the next – like the civility versus the visceral that fought inside of him.
He slid her wrists together above her head, holding them there with one of his as he freed the other to cup her jaw, keeping her head tilted up towards him as he lowered his lips to hers.
A kiss would be a painfully intimate act to perform during sex and, at that realisation, her heart jolted.
‘Lust, Jask,’ she said, before his lips touched hers. ‘Nothing more. Just like before.’
‘Lust doesn’t make your heart beat that fast,’ he said. ‘Lust doesn’t make me feel the way I do about you.’
As he cupped her neck, as his thumbs rested beneath her jaw, as he claimed her with a tender but possessive kiss that made her lose contact with her body, something clenched deep inside.
She should have pulled away because she knew he was right – this was anything but a lust-fuelled kiss from the way she churned inside. Lust didn’t make her question what she was doing. How deep she was getting.
Instinctively, she lifted her thighs either side of his, wrapped hers legs around his back, allowing him deeper penetration as he pressed his hand against the small of her back to meet her halfway. This time his thrust was more urgent, his stubble brushing against her already sensitive skin as he buried his face in her neck.
Images of what she had done to him back in the alley flashed behind her eyes. But now, instead of embarrassment, she felt arousal. Because those images told her just how difficult he had found it to say no.
The sigh he’d let out as she’d taken him in her mouth still haunted her. As she’d looked up to see his head stretched back against that alley wall, eyes shut, his masculine neck exposed, it hadn’t just been about her own satiation – she’d wanted to please him too.
It had made taking him deep into her mouth as natural as it could be. As she worked his tip with her tongue, the base of his erection with her fingers, as he’d jerked and twitched in her mouth, she had revelled in her power over him. And never had it been more exciting.
Jask was attracted to her.
And the way he’d kissed her told her he did care.
The combination was more lethal than she’d ever imagined.
She struggled to take the full force of his next thrust, let alone his increased pace, but he held her firmly, keeping her in position.
She held onto his upper arm, her fingers barely spanning the extension of his biceps, her other arm wrapped tight around his neck as she held him close, felt the powerful onset of her own climax as she felt him not just come, but explode inside her.
And something inside her gave again.
She cried out, felt him shudder, heard him groan. But this time it was not a groan of anger or frustration, but of satisfaction. More so, with contentment. And as she shamelessly gasped with pleasure, she finally gave in to a connection that was never going to go away.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sophia lay on her side, facing the wall.
Jask lay silently curled in behind her, one arm above her head, the fingers on his other hand interlaced with hers as it lay on the covers, his thumb gently rubbing hers.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked. ‘Your real name?’
She hesitated for a moment. ‘Phia is m
y real name. Short for Sophia. Sophie to my family.’
‘Sophie,’ he repeated. ‘It suits you.’
Her heart leapt at it slipping so easily, so sensually, from his lips. ‘Phia suits me better.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Phia makes you feel better. There’s a difference.’
She eased onto her back so she could look at him. ‘What changed it?’
‘What changed what?’
‘The downward spiral you were on. What changed it?’
‘Having someone who cared enough.’
There was a knot in her stomach. ‘You met someone after Ellen?’
‘Before. I’m talking about Corbin.’
She lifted her eyebrows slightly, playfully. ‘Something you need to tell me?’
His smile made her stomach churn all over again.
‘He’s a good friend,’ he said. ‘The best kind of friend. The kind who’s there when you need them. Who sees you at your worst and works hard to get you back to your best.’
‘He pulled you back?’
‘He more or less kicked my arse into pulling me back. He dragged me back to the compound one night. Locked me in one of the containment rooms. Gave me more home truths than I wanted to hear. And he wouldn’t let me out again until I started to see sense.’
‘How long did it take?’
‘A month.’
‘A month?’
‘I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. And he wasn’t going to let me out for as long as I continued to be a threat to our pack. Luckily, I’d kept my head beneath the LCU’s radar. Only because of my own covering my back.’
‘But you did listen eventually.’
‘Actually it was Solstice who got through to me in the end.’
‘What was her secret?’
‘Making me realise how much Corbin cared, how much she cared, how much the pack needed me. What a selfish bastard I was being. And how I was entitled to brood – but only for a little while. Apparently almost a decade was pushing it. I put my pack under a lot of risk in those early years – not being there for them.’
Blood Torn (Blackthorn Book 3) Page 38