Broken Edge: (The Edge #3)

by CD Reiss

  My face was covered by my hands. I pressed my eyelids down until I saw exploding stars.

  “I’m sorry, Greyson,” he said. “It’s for the greater good.”

  I wouldn’t be able to talk him out of his ideals, no matter how misguided.

  I took my hands off my eyes. “Is there anything else I should know?”

  “You should know you’re doing good work. Worthy work. Don’t just look at what’s gone wrong. Linderman is doing fine still. You know, from what you’ve seen, there’s no way a guy in that serious a mental state is restored like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Until now. We have to understand what happened with Leslie Yarrow and make adjustments. She won’t be the last one.”

  The way he lowered his chin and dropped his voice a touch? He meant Caden.

  I’d given Caden the code to my apartment. When I got back, he was already there, sitting by the light of a single lamp. He got up and greeted me without a word, only a deep kiss that tasted like musk and lust with the feel of a day’s beard growth at the boundaries.

  I pulled away to breathe, and he moved his attention to my cheek and neck.

  “I have a few hours,” he said.

  “Lucky us. So do I.”

  Right at the door, he crouched and unlaced my boots. I stepped out of them. Kneeling, he undid my belt and fly. I unbuttoned my shirt.

  “I’ve been thinking about you all day. What it will be like fucking you with everything intact. Just to fuck. Just to be there with you completely.” He pressed his lips to my belly, sliding my pants down. “All of me.”

  Running his hands up and down my bare legs, he kissed every inch of skin he could find. I threaded my fingers in his hair.

  All of him.

  When was the last time we’d made love as a whole couple? Before his sensitivity took leave of his personality? Before his rage became a new threat? When was the last time the man I loved took me to bed?

  A fear nagged.

  Damon wasn’t able to hurt me, and Damon was a part of him.

  We’d discovered things about each other in the split. Would he be able to give me the same satisfaction? Would I be able to live without it?

  “Caden,” I said softly.

  He stood, pushing me back against the door with kisses.

  “Talk to me,” he said, pressing the shape of his erection against me.

  “I don’t want you to do anything that doesn’t feel right anymore.” I put my nose to his and caressed his cheeks. He fit just right in my hands. “I’m not going to push you.”

  “That’s fine,” he said, taking my leg and draping it over his waist. “But I might push you.”

  My face stretched into a smile. I shouldn’t have been that happy. He’d said he might push me. Meaning he might not be able to. But it was on the table, and that was good enough for me.

  Pushing against me with the full force of his hips, he put my other leg around him and carried me to the bedroom.

  Through a crack in the curtains, the room was cast in moonlight from the clear navy sky. He sat me on the edge of the bed. When he stood straight, I laid my hands on the bulge in his pants.

  Our eyes met. Me below in nothing but my bra and underwear. Him above, fully dressed. In that look, we acknowledged his dominance and his power to choose whether or not to use it.

  He laid his hand on my head and slid it to the side in a caress.

  Maybe this was it. Maybe he would be a passionate and considerate lover for the rest of our lives. Maybe I would be blessed with a life of wonderful sex without bruising or pain. I tilted my head to nuzzle his arm because he had to choose and he needed to know that whatever choice he made didn’t affect my love.

  Before I turned my head completely, he gripped the hair at the base of my neck, pulling enough to control but not enough to hurt.

  “It’s not going to suck itself,” he said.

  A flood was unleashed between my legs.

  With his hand still in my hair, he allowed me to undo his pants and get his cock out. It was rock hard, glistening at the tip. I licked off the salty precum.

  “Don’t be shy,” he said. “Open your mouth.”

  He was everything. The dominant command of his voice. The control of his hand in my hair. My body raged for him.

  I took him in my mouth, tasting the singular musk of his cock. I flattened my tongue and opened my throat. In three thrusts, I had his balls on my lower lip, and he yanked out so I could breathe. I looked up at him. His face was cast in shadow. The moonlight caught the square edge of his jaw.

  “Again,” he growled, pushing forward.

  I took him for two thrusts, and on the third, he paused deep, pushing my face against his belly before yanking out. He wiped his spit-covered dick over my chin and lips.

  This wasn’t a blowjob. I wasn’t sucking him to orgasm. This was him exerting control over me, my body, my will. This was a part of him brought out in the split, and it looked like it was here to stay.

  I smiled and gave him a single word. “Yes.”

  He fucked my mouth one more time, then pulled out with a gasp. He was close. “Get on your back. Let’s do this.”

  God, yes.

  I flopped back in my underwear. Still fully dressed except for his slick, spit-wet dick, he pulled my knees up and apart. A thin, damp swatch of fabric separated my pussy from his eyes.

  “What do you think I should do with you?” he asked with a tone that was less a question and more a command. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he stroked the crotch of my panties with the back of his hand.

  “Whatever you want.” I could barely answer with his hand brushing the fabric.

  “Is this your way of not pressuring me?”

  “Yes.”

  He slapped my pussy gently. My underwear diffused the sting into pure pleasure.

  “Then you didn’t answer my question.” He tapped again, a little harder. “What should I do with you?”

  He seemed so comfortable in his dominant role that I could have begged for anything, but through the intensity of my arousal, I still had doubts that he was capable of taking me the way Cold Caden had. I didn’t want him to push himself so hard he regretted it. I needed a consent so clear its echoes would be felt in ten years.

  “Whatever you want,” I said.

  “You are stubborn.” He tapped hard, and it stung before turning into pleasure.

  “I’m yours,” I groaned. “It’s up to you.”

  The next tap was a slap. It hurt. The pain was tenacious, and I twisted away. He held me down, pulling my legs apart again. He drew his fingernail over the fabric covering my clit, triggering every nerve ending.

  “When I tell you to ask for something,” he said, closing my legs, “I want you to ask for it.”

  He reached around my waist and pulled my underwear off before opening my legs again. My cunt was bare to him. There was no fabric to diffuse the pain now.

  He slid two fingers inside me. I pushed toward him as if he were magnetized, keening toward the familiar unknown.

  “I can do this until I have to show up at the hospital… or until you answer me.” Pulling out, he flicked my clit.

  I wanted to come so badly I thought desire would break me.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “My body is your toy.”

  The slap came fast and hard, and the sting was unmitigated, bursting into exquisite pain before it blossomed into excruciating pleasure. He held me down by holding my legs apart at the knees.

  “Say it,” he said. “I want you to say it.”

  His head was tilted toward the window, and in the moonlight, I saw the completeness of his power. The sexual command was part of a whole man.

  He needed consent as much as I did.

  “I want…” Breathless, I collected my thoughts. “I want it to hurt the most when it feels the best. I want to come with pain.”

  Watching his face for reticence, I saw only satisfaction.

  “Use your
teeth,” I said. “Your hands. Your belt. Break me. Please.”

  He took his hands off me, letting my knees drop. I had half a second to worry before he spoke. “Good. Turn over onto your stomach.”

  When I did, he laid his hands on my hips and pulled them up.

  “Get your knees under you. Put your ass up.”

  Behind me, I heard him undressing. I looked back.

  “Turn around.”

  His grace was apparent in his shadow moving against the opposite wall. Shirt. Undershirt. Pants. He took his sweet time. I’d never wanted to fuck a shadow before.

  The bed tilted when he put his knee on it.

  When I saw the shadow twist, I thought he was going to fuck me. Instead, a slap and a burn landed on my ass. I gasped.

  “Shh, baby. Keep it down.”

  “Okay.”

  “This may sting a little at first.”

  He slapped me again.

  And again.

  He slapped my ass until he had to shake out his hand. Until I was raw and tears streamed down my face. He caressed the skin and slapped again. He hit me until it burned even when he wasn’t touching me.

  “This is so hot,” he said, running his hands over my sore skin. “So fucking hot.”

  He cruelly drove four fingers along the length of my seam, and yet I came with that single touch, exploding involuntarily with a cry I had to choke back.

  He knew I’d come. He had to, but he didn’t mention it. He slapped my ass again. It wasn’t hard, but it hurt.

  “Open up. Show me what you have.”

  Laying my cheek on the bed, I reached back to my raw ass and gingerly touched it, sucking in air from the searing pain. I braced myself and grabbed it, pulling the cheeks apart so he could see.

  The bed shifted. His shadow got taller as he kneeled between my legs and ran the head of his cock along me. “Open wider.”

  He could get in. I knew that. But he wanted me to touch that reddened skin so I could hurt like I’d begged to be hurt.

  “Nice, baby. That’s nice.”

  I was so wet he got his dick in me to the root with no resistance, pushing deep against my sore bottom. Moving out slowly.

  “Is this what you wanted?”

  “Yes.”

  He slammed into me. “I love fucking you. I love hurting you.” Bending down, he put his weight on my back, flattening me as he fucked me. “I love being inside your sweet little cunt. Your tight ass. I love seeing my cock in your face.”

  My ass was on fire with every thrust. Had he left me any skin? Or had he seared it all off to break me?

  “You’re beautiful when you cry,” he said. “When the pain surprises you. When I’m fucking you so hard you forget who you are. You fucking glow. You break like a queen.”

  God, I wanted to be broken. Shattered. I wanted him to rip everything from me because I trusted him and I knew he’d put me back together.

  “Do it all,” I cried.

  He got back on his knees and flipped me onto my side, draping a leg over his shoulder before he re-entered me so hard I wept anew. He stuck three fingers in my mouth and put his palm under my chin, driving my head back until all I could see of him was the shape of his body bound to mine in the shadow.

  “There’s so much I’m going to do to you.” He growled the threat with my spit on his fingers. “And you’re going to take it.”

  He was deep, rubbing my clit and my spanked ass with his body, swirling pain and pleasure together in a whirl. Consciousness at the deep end funneling away into submission.

  “Come, baby. Come.”

  I came, crooning around his fingers. All the pain surrendered to the pleasure of his will.

  Caden held me for a long time. A cloud-like fatigue had taken me over. I was conscious but enervated, like a woman on a strong opiate. The pain was gone, leaving behind a deep satisfaction. He stroked me in that way he did, absently running his fingers over my face and body in silence.

  I wasn’t much of a lotion person. Caden searched the bags I hadn’t unpacked yet and found Vaseline to rub on my bottom.

  He inspected my skin for damage, kissing my lower back. “You’ll be fine by tomorrow afternoon.”

  My half sleep drained away, leaving space for a soft tug on the string between us. “Stay.”

  He lay next to me and stroked my arm like an artist appreciating his work. The room was dark and warm. Crickets chirped outside. The world was far away, and we were cocooned in moonlight and warmth.

  “I have an hour to get back.”

  An hour was nothing. A blip. I knew better than to demand more. He took his obligations seriously. If I asked for more, I’d become a responsibility and he’d be torn between the two. I didn’t want to do that to him.

  “Was it all right?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer right away, and in my passive state, I didn’t worry that he’d tell me he’d been uncomfortable or disengaged. His response didn’t matter as long as it was honest. He and I were made of a single solid mass that could not be separated.

  “I should ask you that.”

  “I’ll tell you.” I got up on one elbow. “But I want you to say first.”

  He shifted to get on his back, and I bent over him. Light from the night sky caught his eye, draining the color to the cast of the moon.

  “I fell right into it,” he said, looking out the window. “This kind of detachment. When you cried, I liked it. Part of me was hoping you’d tell me to stop, but even that part was happy you wouldn’t.” He looked back at me and touched my cheek. “It wasn’t the same though. It wasn’t split apart. It was normal doubting. But Grey?” He held my face still as if he wanted to aim his words at my brain and he was more likely to hit the bullseye if I couldn’t move. “I can live without it. I don’t have to do that anymore if you don’t want me to.”

  I kissed him. “It’s totally hot.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I put my head on his chest, and he ran his fingers through my hair. Facing the window, the spotlight of the full moon was setting over the cinderblock wall and birds perched on the barbed wire.

  “Can I tell you something weird and gross?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Will you still love me?”

  “Nope.”

  His answer only highlighted the stupidity of the question. My husband had no time for bullshit.

  “When I was a girl,” I said, “I used to have fantasies about being injured in the forest. I got there different ways. Didn’t matter. I was in a big forest, alone and desperate. A man would find me and take me back to his cabin. He’d demand sex before he gave me first aid or a splint or whatever it was. Sometimes he was nice, and sometimes he wasn’t. I know that’s rapey and weird, but it turned me on… this idea I could give someone my pain.” I lifted myself up so I could look at him. “And the thing was, I couldn’t ask for that from anyone. I never trusted a man enough. I couldn’t even ask you, but it was like a part of you knew.”

  He considered the curves of my face, tracing them silently.

  “I don’t want to be thankful this happened,” I said.

  “We would have gotten here eventually.” He pulled my leg over him from behind my knee until I straddled him. He was hard and thick under me, and I slid along the length of him.

  “When we were ninety.”

  “Baby,” he croaked like an old man, reaching between us, “bend over your walker so I can hit you with my cane.”

  When I laughed, I raised my body a little, and he got his cock against my opening.

  “Oh, honey,” I made a sad attempt at an old woman voice, “I can’t feel it through my diapers.”

  We laughed, and I pushed down until he entered my sore, wet pussy. I moved over him as he ran his hands over my ribs and breasts.

  “It’ll be just like that,” he said. “Old as dirt and still fucking. You and me.”

  “You and me.”

  We fucked like a sweet couple with nothing but h
appiness in front of us.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  CADEN

  I felt great. For the first time since I’d first felt Damon’s hiss or the nameless buzz, I felt truly whole. Six days went by with neither a relapse nor the threat of one. I went on a medevac, and though the heights still bothered me, I did my job and came back without a voice or a sound or an errant perception.

  “You seem weirdly happy,” Boner said over Thursday beers on the roof.

  “It makes me uncomfortable, gotta be honest,” Stoneface added.

  “My wife.” I shrugged. “What can I say?”

  “Thanks for the mental images,” Boner said, tipping his bottle to me in mock appreciation.

  The evening prayer call arced over the city as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon.

  “So,” Stoneface asked, “what’s she doing exactly?”

  “That, my friend, is none of your business.”

  Agent Orange laughed. Boner shook his head. Heartland was on duty, but he would have changed the subject.

  “Nah, I mean… here. What’s that shot she’s doling out?”

  I sipped my beer. That wasn’t any of his business either. Blackthorne had worked out a permissions system that didn’t exactly override army medical, but since it was through the DoD, it didn’t give them the authority to ask specific questions.