by Zara Cox
“Look at me, Cleo.”
She ignores me. I caress back up again. Her mouth slackens a touch, her breath expelling in the softest gush.
“Look. At. Me.”
Her gaze meets mine. Heated. Defiant.
“Are you wet?”
Her chin rises in mutiny.
I push her panties lower. My fingers slide over her stomach, my nails grazing over her smooth skin. The muscles quiver delicately beneath my touch.
I finally look down.
Fuck. The material clings to her taut skin, moves with her breathing and the restless movement of her hips.
Black lace panties with two dark purple bows resting on each hipbone.
Purple. Her favorite color.
I despise myself for remembering. I despise myself for a lot of things right now. Which is probably why my hand is a little too rough when I grip the fabric and rip it off.
“God, you’re—!”
“Open your legs.”
“No.”
I fling the torn panties away. “You think I’m going to force you? No, baby. We’re going to stay right here on this floor, all night if we have to, until you show me that treacherous little cunt. Until I prove you the liar that you are. And while you think about that, I’m going to indulge myself with something else.”
Wariness enters her eyes. Her wrists strain against my hold until she recognizes that I have the power here. “What?”
Back in Connecticut, I forced myself to resist. But tonight, tasting her was inevitable the moment I found her here. I recognize that now. Tasting her deep and long was always how I preferred it. Although a lot of things have changed, the way I take her plump, fuckable mouth isn’t one of them.
I close my hand on her throat and fuse my mouth with hers, devouring her with ravenous licks and greedy bites. She whimpers, but I know she’s not fragile. She never was. It was all a fucked-up delusion.
She never needed a gentle knight in shining armor.
So I become her marauder.
I savor the texture of her tongue, reacquainting myself with its rough slickness, before I suck hard on it. Keeping it prisoner, I bite on the tip. She jerks beneath me, a moan escaping our meshed lips. Then she opens her mouth wider, her greed for my kiss as powerful as my need for satiation on every level. My teeth sink into her lush bottom lip, drawing it into my mouth for a fuller taste.
Sweet fucking Christ, she tastes even better than I remember. Or perhaps now that I know who and what she really is, my darkness is ready to open itself up to hers. Whatever. I roll my tongue over and over on that juicy flesh, each lick pumping more blood into my pulsating cock. I’m harder than I’ve ever been in my life, my dick head already saturated with pre-cum. I press that aching part of my anatomy into her naked hip, my mouth hungrier with the need to taste what my cock can’t.
She struggles against my hold, her need for more air transmitted in the heart thundering wildly against my arm. I don’t let up.
An unhinged part of me wonders if anyone has ever died from kissing. Maybe we will find out tonight. I open eyes I don’t remember shutting. Our gazes connect, and whatever she sees in mine makes hers flare wider in alarm. Her punchy breathing washes over my face in frantic waves.
She presses her neck into the floor, backing away from me. I follow, my mercy nonexistent. Vicious teeth sink into my upper lip. I taste my blood and her saliva.
The tip of my tongue sweeps over the rough cut. The sting of it is sweet bliss. But not nearly enough. I chase the fading pain while a single word pounds through my brain.
Again.
I ease off a fraction, long enough to croak between our mouths, “Again.”
Her eyes are enormous pools of trepidation. Ferocious hatred. And wild anticipation.
Her gaze fixes on mine, and she slowly draws my lower lip between hers. She captures me between her teeth. Then, with a groan, she sinks her incisor into the corner of my mouth.
My skin splits, and pleasure twists through me.
The sensation that registers is like a white-hot spike through my brain. Or what I imagine it feels like to be struck by lightning. I can’t breathe. Or think. I’m floating above myself like a fucking ghost, wondering why the useless asshole I’m staring at is writhing in bliss and agony.
But it strikes me that I’ve always felt like this with her. Like two people pulling at my center of gravity.
Motherfucker.
Another surge of pre-ejaculate powers up my cock. I feel it soak my briefs, and I struggle to catch my breath. My vision burns blood red as I dive in for another mindless kiss. She takes it. All of it, her whole body a live wire, twisting and uncoiling beneath me.
Sensations flay me. Her skin. Her smell. The wild flutter of her pulse. Time ceases to register, our only anchor to reality the beating of dark hearts.
As I gorge, another thought takes hold. I warned her to stay away. She didn’t listen. Now I hold all the power here.
So I decide that perhaps dying can wait a little while longer. I’ve tasted hell alone for a decade. It’s time to taste it with her.
I break the kiss and lift my head.
Her mouth is swollen, ruby red, tinged with the savagery of our kiss and my blood. From head to toe, she’s racked with tremors, caught within the brutal grip of unexpended lust.
My gaze drops, lingering over the plump, inviting thrusts of her breasts, then lower to her hollowed stomach to stop at the neatly trimmed hair covering her sex.
Her unbelievable scent fills my head with every breath I take. Even with her legs tightly squeezed together.
“Open,” I command, the sinister power of my arousal bleeding through my voice.
The stubborn look on her face tells me she doesn’t want to, but the subtle twisting of her body implies otherwise.
The latter wins out. Her legs fall open. Her potent scent is like a hallucinogenic, robbing me of thought for innumerable seconds. Like the mind-altering drugs I once sought oblivion in, her essence pulls at me with unstoppable magnetism.
I pull her bound hands down onto her chest and slide lower on the floor.
“Wider,” I snarl.
Her knees bend upward, and I’m rewarded with the sight of her soaked, glistening pussy. I bend my head and inhale. My taste buds leap with excitement. My tongue thickens, and saliva floods my mouth.
Need stabs at me with agonizing brutality. It would be so fucking easy to taste her, to slide that pretty pink piece of false heaven into my mouth.
But that isn’t the aim here.
So I glide my fingers between her thighs, taking care to avoid, for now, the hood and hole that beckon me with a siren’s temptation. Her heat wraps around my fingers, her drenched labia hugging my digits.
A ragged moan tears from her throat, directing my gaze to her face. Her cheeks and neck are flushed, her head thrown back, eyes clamped shut. The tightness of her jaw tells me she’s fighting the sensation with every atom of her being.
Such a pity.
If only she knew that, from here on out, victory will be mine and mine alone. I increase the pressure on her sex, which in turn juts out her clit. The swollen nub pulses, screaming for attention. Another whimper escapes her throat. Her mouth opens and forms silent words.
“Got something to say, baby?”
Her eyes pop open, and she hastily shakes her head. I massage some more until her clitoris turns as ruby red as her lips and her thighs tremble uncontrollably.
Only then do I allow my middle finger free rein. I tap her once. Twice. Her hips twitch clean off the floor. I press against her. Dark satisfaction oozes through me as the engorged flesh greets my fingers. “There it is. There’s that saucy, pretty little liar. How she weeps for me,” I croon wickedly.
Her eyelids flutter. “Oh…God.” Her voice is a hushed, fervent whisper as if she doesn’t want to admit to the ecstasy rolling through her.
I tease and torment. Her hips pump, chasing my finger when I withdraw. My gaze stays on her
face. I can’t look away even if I want to. So I absorb every drop of pleasure and shame she reveals.
The pressure in my cock has passed the point of agony. I’m one shiver from exploding. But then, so is she.
I wait. Watch. Her full-body flush tells me what I need to know.
I withdraw my hand, and with every last ounce of self-control, I lurch to my feet.
Her shock is undisguised. Hard on the heels of that is a thick, hate-filled sob that jerks through her. As if the sound fills her with further loathing, she balls a fist into her mouth and rolls to her side.
“Get up.”
The rumble from her clenched jaw sounds like, “Fuck you.”
I reach down and grab her waist, pulling her upright. She staggers like a rag doll for several moments before she gains her feet. One hand pushes at mine while the other struggles to pull up her panties.
“Round two to me, I think.”
Her head snaps up, dark turbulent eyes lancing me through disheveled hair. “Fuck you.” This time the words are raw and succinct.
“No, thanks. Or at least not until a few things are repositioned to my satisfaction.”
She stills. “What does that mean?”
I reach out and smooth her hair off her face, the need to touch still a rabid fever in my veins.
“It means, sweetheart, that things are going to play out differently this time. Trust me on that.”
“What things?”
My fingers linger in her hair, and I feel a punch of satisfaction when she doesn’t push me away. “You’ll find out. For now, you will run back home to Finnan and tell him to fuck off. I won’t be visiting the house, and I won’t be having a conversation about Afghanistan.”
She gasps. “Axel, please.”
For the first time, I hear a stark note in her voice. It pierces the thick fog of arousal long enough for me to focus on other things besides the obscene cravings of my black soul
Bolton’s warning flashes in my head. Hot on its heels, B’s final words before I dismissed her. The questions I’m fighting off rush back, the demand for answers undeniable this time.
I take a step back, fist the hands that want nothing more than to drag her close, sniff the opiate of her skin.
I make a one-eighty-degree turn around the room, fighting an unexpected punch of something shockingly close to nostalgia. I face her again, note how small and mouth-wateringly breakable she looks without her five-inch heels and pulsating hatred. “I’m going to ask you a question now, Cleo. If you lie to me, I will know. So think very carefully before you answer.”
Chapter Ten
GAME ON
Her expression turns leery. Then resolute. She nods. “Okay.”
“Five days ago when I told you to deliver the message to Finnan, you said I didn’t know what he’d do if I sent you back empty-handed. What did you mean?”
Her expression shutters immediately. She attempts to look away. I capture her chin, raising her face to the light.
“You will not hide from me, not when you stand before me a ready and willing sacrificial lamb. Tell me.”
“Finnan doesn’t like to lose, you know that.”
“You’re generalizing. I prefer specificity. What did he do?”
“He was…having a drink when I told him. He smashed the glass. I called the maid to sweep it up. She took a little too long, he said. He beat her…dislocated her shoulder.”
That sounded like Finnan. Rage twists through me. About to let go of her, I sharpen my focus on her face. Her carefully blank face.
“What about you? You didn’t say what he did to you,” I press.
She shakes her head, or attempts to anyway. My firm hold of her doesn’t give much room for her to wriggle away from my demands.
A spark of anger flares into her eyes when I don’t release her. “Are you sure you want all the gory details, Axel? Have you never heard of discretion being the better part of valor?” she spits at me.
“I have. But let’s not kid ourselves that any one of us comes even close to being worthy of either of those words,” I snarl. “You obviously didn’t fuck him happy or he wouldn’t have sent you back to me the very next day.” The words taste like hot ashes in my mouth but, at the same time, I want her to confirm their accuracy.
She flinches. “No, I didn’t fuck him happy,” she whispers.
My relief is unlike anything I’ve felt before. I have the answer to the question I despised myself for needing to ask. I should move on to other subjects.
Like why this room, for instance. I don’t. “I’m waiting to hear what he did.”
“It doesn’t matter!”
“The fuck it doesn’t—”
She drops to her knees, the swiftness of her action dislodging my hold on her. Her hands fall on her bare thighs, and she tilts her face to me, the perfect supplicant. “This is what you want, isn’t it? Me, at your mercy? Groveling at your feet?” Her gaze lowers to my still-hard cock. “Is that what turns you on now?”
I have never been into power play in the bedroom. Never needed to establish my dominance over a woman. I have sex the way I want, the way that delivers pleasure to whatever woman I’m fucking. Sure, I like to control proceedings, but it’s never a pre-planned routine.
The sight of Cleo, so readily submissive, open and vulnerable, slices open a sinister vein of need so voracious that I stagger backward. Even as my cock swells to raging proportions.
She sees my body’s reaction. Her breath hitches, and her lips part. This time the image of sliding my cock between her lips powers bolts of lightning through my bloodstream. I can barely see straight.
An incoherent sound erupts from my throat. I’m not sure why the sound galvanizes her but she begins to crawl forward. But something about the way she’s moving isn’t right.
A warning tingles on my nape. “Stop.”
This time, the fear in her eyes is raw and unfettered. Every other emotion is stripped away. As I watch, frantically attempting to decipher what my brain is transmitting over the blinding roar of my hard-on, she shivers. “You have me, Axel. I’m begging.”
Potent words that should immortalize the flames of my retribution.
And yet…
My feet propel me back another step. “Stay there. Don’t say another word and do not move a fucking inch.”
I stagger out the door, slam it shut behind me. My fingers spike into my hair, and I pace, confused about why I’m confused.
A segment of my plan may have come to fruition earlier than expected but I meant it when I called her a pawn. She is by no means the grand prize in my fight with Finnan. Not when he’s sullied her beyond redemption.
So…why…?
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Distracted, I fish it out.
Bolton.
Bolton!
My finger hits the answer button.
“Why does he keep sending Cleo back to me?” I bark into the phone.
A weird little chortle. Then a harsh sniff. “Hello to you too, brother. You’ll be happy to hear that I’m in…or out…or wherever the fuck you want me to be. Are you pleased to know you have thirty-three percent of the brotherhood in your favor? Or should I say thirty-three point three three three three—”
“Why, Bolton?”
“Because she’s your fucking Achilles heel, brother. Always has been. Always will be.”
I don’t waste my breath denying the absurd assertion. “Why does she keep coming back?”
“Because he makes her.”
My vision blurs. When it clears, my hand is braced on the wall. “How?”
“Ask her—”
“I’m asking you! Fucking answer me.”
Another drug-induced chortle. “Why? Why should I give you shit when you made it plain you’ve cut us all out of your life?”
“I don’t want you caught up—”
“Boo-the-fuck-hoo. You think you’re the only one who bleeds when he’s cut? The rest of us bleed too. At least you got out.
Be thankful for that. Some of us didn’t get the chance. Did you ever stop to think about that?” He sniffs again.
He’s high as a fucking kite and soaring higher by the second. But I recall that Bolton was most veracious when he’s high. Unfortunately for him, his outpouring is possibly the worst-timed confession in history. Because I need answers about the woman on her knees in the bedroom behind me more than I want to hear my brother’s complaints.
“Answer me, Bolton. How does he make her?”
“How you do think? He keeps her in line the same way he used to keep Ma in line. Only difference is, Ma had a ring on her finger and the fear of a Catholic God’s retribution in her heart. Your little…piece”—he chuckles—“well, there’s no way to put this delicately, she stays for the shits and giggles.”
I stare at my hand on the wall. The shaking hand—
I snatch it down and ball it tight. “Let me get this straight. He treats her the way he treated Ma, and she stays of her own free will? Are you sure?”
“Hmm…wait…hang on.” I hear a clunk then a long, telling sniff. A handful of seconds later, he’s back. “Yeah…where were we? Right, of course I’m not sure. When have any of us been sure about what goes on in Pa’s head? You want to be absolutely sure, I guess you need to ask her,” he slurs.
I have no room for the heavy emotion attempting to drag me down. “You need to stop snorting that shit, Bolton.”
He goes silent for a minute. “If you care that much, brother, then step the fuck up.”
The phone goes dead. I shove it back into my pocket and charge back into the room. She’s exactly where I left her.
“Get up.”
She staggers to her feet, a glimmer of pain flashing in her eyes before she masks it. The hardwood floor couldn’t have been comfortable for her knees. To her credit, she doesn’t rub her skin or flex her limbs.
She takes it. As if she’s used to it.
Motherfucker.
My gaze probes her from head to toe. Every visible inch is creamy perfection. Unmarred.