Clinging to Rapture

by Megan D. Martin

  “Oh, come on!” I threw my hands in the air. “That’s what you’re going to say, some sort of pathetic story that you were trying to do right by me by marrying that stupid bitch? Please just fucking spare me. Don’t try to act like some sort of hero in this. Like marrying a beautiful woman like that would have been some sort of penance.”

  “I’m not trying to act like a hero!” he yelled. “I’m trying to tell you the damn truth. I deserve to be with someone like her, because of what I’ve done to you. Stalking you for more than two years, coming into your life like I did.” He shook his head. “Fuck, Julia. You deserve so much more than that. I was supposed to marry her because that’s what my mom wanted. And you didn’t want me anymore.”

  “Just shut up, Cole. This isn’t making me feel better.”

  “Really, Julia. You just don’t get it.” He came back to stand right in front of me. “If I couldn’t have you, I didn’t want anyone else. But my mom had been pushing Elaine on me. So I did it. I told her to go pick out a stupid ring and I would marry her. It wasn’t some romantic venture. It wasn’t me going back to the love of my life. It was me letting go of the love of my life. If I went back to Elaine it would keep me from you. It would make you hate me even more.” He touched his hands to my cheeks. “That’s why I brought her in the gas station that day. I wanted you to see just how heartless I could be. I wanted to see the hate in your eyes when you looked at me.” His voice had softened just below a whisper. “But you didn’t. You looked at me with so much love in your eyes, it took my breath away. And then you saw her…” He hesitated. “And the pain on your face. I will never forget it. Never.”

  My heart exploded love bleeding from it, seeping into every molecule of my being. His words saturated me, drowned me, making me desperate to cling to him.

  “You don’t mean that,” I whispered.

  “I do.”

  You have to let him go. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep him forever.

  I closed my eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t feel that way about you.”

  A painful heart wrenching noise tore from his chest before he released my face and gripped one of my arms.

  My eyes flashed open. “What are you doing?” He jerked me forward, dragging me into the bedroom. “What are you doing?” I asked again when he didn’t answer.

  “Shut up,” he growled.

  “You need to leave.”

  He pushed me on the bed and yanked out the bottom drawer of my dresser. I knew what he would find there and I jumped off the bed, my heart racing in fear and excitement.

  He grabbed me before I could get out of the bedroom and forced me back on the bed. “I’m not letting you do this.” The clink of metal drew my attention. My handcuffs.

  “Do what, Cole? End this? It’s my choice!”

  He snapped a cuff around one wrist, securing the other part to the bed post, then stood back and looked down at me, his predatory gaze assessing every inch of me. “It’s not your choice. Not anymore. I gave you the opportunity to end this. I let you walk away before. I told you that in the swamp. I told you it was your one chance to take it back. Your one chance to end things, but you refused.” He moved until his face was only inches from mine. “You chose me, Julia. You gave yourself to me. You can’t take it back.” He straightened up and started unbuttoning his jeans.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, my eyes glued to his fluid movements.

  “I’m going to show you just how much you love me.”

  TWENTY-SIX.

  I held my breath as Cole unbuttoned his pants and slid the denim down his legs. They made a whisper of a noise. He was magnificent, standing there before me like some sort of vicious villain. Push him away.

  But I knew the truth. He wasn’t the villain. He was everything but the villain. He was damaged, scarred, maybe more so than me. There was more to him than even I knew. I could tell by the way he moved, the way he acted toward me. He cared about me. And I cared about him, too much.

  “Don’t do this, Cole. Walk away now before it’s too late,” I pleaded as his cock sprang forth, thick and proud between his legs. My pussy clenched.

  “It’s already too late.” He jerked his shirt over his head revealing the thick muscles of his torso. The tattoos on his arms bulged with his movement. He stepped over and tugged my shorts down my legs. “Don’t you see that? It was too late from the moment I laid eyes on you.” He dropped them on the floor and grabbed the hem of my shirt, looking from it to my bound hand before ripping it completely in half. He did the same with my sports bra underneath. “I was a goner.” He trailed his fingers up my stomach to cup my breasts.

  I bit back the moan that threatened to slip from my lips.

  “You were on your knees in front of that dumb prick Victor and you looked at me. I thought you would look vulnerable, resigned to your place at the feet of this man who was about to fuck you.” He swirled his finger around one nipple. It pebbled instantly. “But you weren’t. You were far from that. There was a spark in your eyes. This vibrancy. It fucking ripped me apart. It turned me inside out and made me someone new. It made me ravenous. Desperate for you.” He leaned in and blew hot air against the pebbled peak. “It was the spark I’d been missing all my life. Just one look from you…and I knew. I knew you were the one for me.” He sucked the nipple into his mouth.

  “Oh God, Cole. Yes!” I moaned, closing my eyes against the sweet pleasure. His words soaked into my skin. Could he have really felt that way about me all this time?

  “I was lost to you.” He trailed his lips down my body. “I broke things off with Elaine that night after you turned me down. I was done living the lie, but I was bitter because I wanted you so badly. So fucking badly.” He bit down on the sensitive flesh on my pubic bone.

  “Fuck Cole.” I touched my free hand against his head.

  “But I didn’t know how to deal with it.” He spread my legs. “I didn’t know how to handle it. My life has been so fucked up, Julia. So fucked beyond what you even know. I didn’t know how to make you want me.” He lapped at my core in a soft stroke. My legs trembled.

  “I was scared. Can you believe that?” He lapped at me again. “I was fucking scared of what you could do to me. I already wanted you. I already felt like I needed you. What did that mean for me?” Another lap. “What could you do to me once I knew you?” Another lick. I tightened my legs around his head, the orgasm building deep in my core. “I knew you could destroy me.” Another. “So I wanted to destroy you. I had to. I had to prove you were nothing to me.” He swirled his tongue. I moaned, clenching my thighs. “I had to prove to you that I was more.” He worried his teeth along my clit.

  “Fuck. Fuck.” I chewed my lip, the pleasure pulsing deep in my body.

  “But I didn’t prove any of those things. I proved you were even more than I thought you were. You were better. So much better. And I was less than I ever knew. I was nothing.” He sucked my clit into his mouth and that was my undoing.

  “Oh my, yes Cole. Yes!” I moaned, letting the pleasure rip me apart, letting his words mend me back together. My orgasm had barely run its course when he was on top of me, spreading my thighs, the head of his cock rubbing against the tight bud of my clit.

  I looked up into his eyes. Those eyes that captivated me, pulled me in, until I was drowning, lost. He was the only one I could see. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” I whispered. I knew it was pathetic. I shouldn’t have let it go this far. I wasn’t being convincing. I wasn’t making him go. I was pulling him in. I didn’t want to let go.

  Cole smiled down at me, his lips crooking in the most handsome way. “Not being with you hurts. I’d die a thousand deaths before I let you walk away again.” He thrust his hips, burying his cock deep inside my pussy.

  A strangled sound escaped my lips as my back arched. I pulled on the cuff link that bound me.

  “It’s you I crave. Every day.” He thrust harder. “Every fucking day.” His hands fell on either side of my
head as he bent forward pressing his lips against mine. “Only you.” He bit down on my lip.

  Utter bliss gripped me as another orgasm approached.

  “I wanted to own you.” Cole’s words were full of emotion, thick, like tears were hiding behind his eyes, though his pace never slowed. “But that’s not what happened. You owned me from the very beginning.” He looked down at me, his expression soft and hard at the same time. “With just a look, I was yours. I’m still yours.”

  The orgasm caught me by surprise. Triggered by words that ruined me forever. It blasted through my body and I spasmed in its ecstasy. I danced in its perfection and let reality rain down on me as I came back into myself. There would never be anyone else for me either. I knew that. Had known that all along, though I never wanted to accept it.

  Cole pumped into me several more times, prolonging the sweet bliss. “Julia!” He called my name as his dick pulsed inside me. The hot spurt of his cum bathed my insides. I clung to him with my free hand, never wanting the moment to end.

  He pulled back several moments later. Sweat dripped from his hair onto my chest.

  I reached up and pushed the hair off his face. “I love you.” The words came tumbling out, spilling from my lips like they’d wanted to all along. “So much.”

  “I love you too, Julia.” His voice cracked, full of emotion.

  “You were right. I’ve loved you.” I smiled up at him, rubbing my hands along the stubble on his cheek. “I lied earlier. But I’m telling you the truth now. I love you.” A hot tear rolled down my cheek. “And that’s why I have to let you go.” Another followed it.

  Cole stared down at me in disbelief. I watched the emotions flicker across his face. The hurt, the anger. I saw it all. “No.”

  “Cole, you’re in danger because of me. I can’t do that to you. Not anymore. Look what happened to Mandi. If I can save you, then I will. I will save you.” The tears came faster now.

  He stood up, pulling his semi-erect cock from me. It left me feeling empty, lost.

  “You didn’t listen to a damn thing I said, did you? It’s too late for that, Julia. I’m not going anywhere.” He grabbed his pants off the floor and stabbed his legs into them. “You can’t protect me like that. I’m going to protect you.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I will protect you. And you’re fucking stupid if you think I’m going to walk away from the woman I love when she needs me the most, even if it means chaining her to the bed until she gets her head out of her ass.” He turned and headed for the bedroom door.

  “Wait! Where are you going?” I jerked at the handcuff, half sitting up.

  He turned around. “I have business to take care of.”

  “You can’t leave me handcuffed to the bed!”

  He leaned against the doorframe, his arm up over his head, a dark smile on his handsome face. “Watch me.”

  I hope you enjoyed Clinging to Rapture! To learn more about Bound by Rapture, the third and final book in the Rapture Trilogy, visit my website.

  http://www.MeganDMartin.blogspot.com

  About the Author

  Megan D. Martin is a multi-published author, editor and mother. She writes New Adult Romance with a bloody, sexy twist.

  In her spare time she enjoys decorating her house with strange things that do not match, playing her old school Nintendo Entertainment System, and buying fish for her many fish tanks.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Special thanks to my mom and dad who are always so supportive of myself and my writing.

  A BIG shout out to my awesome editor Rosa Sophia for all of her hard work on Clinging to Rapture.

  Last but not least I want to thank Jade Eby and D.T. Dyllin for being my no non-sense beta readers. Y’all’s input made all the difference. Love you guys!