The Lost

by Cole McCade

  “Say. It,” he repeated, digging her wrists harder into the bed. “Or I’ll give you nothing, little girl.”

  Her breaths bound tight below her ribs. He called her little girl like he knew the sick depraved wanting inside her, the broken corrupted part of her that wanted to be his little girl, that wanted him to make her obey, that flooded wet and slick and dripping when he looked down at her like he owned her.

  Heat climbed her cheeks, and she turned her face away, closing her eyes. “Gabriel,” she whispered. Then louder, begging, “Gabriel” the same way she’d once begged Daddy. She closed her eyes, and waited to be broken.

  But he did nothing.

  The bastard did nothing, and Leigh cracked one eye open with a soft sound in the back of her throat.

  He looked at her like she was his drug, and he wanted to burn her into his veins and ride the high. His fingers stroked down her arms, and she trembled as their coarse tips traced the sensitive undersides, skimmed the sweet dip of her elbow, followed a path over the curve of her shoulders and hooked into the straps of her tank to draw them down with an agonizing deliberation. Inch by inch he bared her breasts, peeling the cloth away until chill air licked at the points of her nipples and she whimpered as his devouring gaze raked over the nudity she had concealed from everyone until now. She started to draw her arms down to cover herself—but he caught them again and gripped her forearms, shoving them back into the bed.

  “Don’t,” he said hoarsely. “You hide too much. Don’t hide yourself from me.”

  She squirmed, closing her eyes. “It’s only skin. Skin doesn’t tell you anything.”

  “It’s your skin.” One broad hand spanned both her wrists, keeping them captured—and freeing him to curl one hand over the swell of her breast, kneading it harshly against his palm. “And who you choose to show it to tells me everything.”

  He had the touch of a man who didn’t know how to be gentle, work-worn roughness dragging against her nipple and fingers digging in with just enough possessive pressure and those perfect dull points of pain that hit all the right notes between not enough and too much. She whimpered, sliding her thighs against his hips and arching her back into his touch and losing herself in the feeling of that strength that overpowered her so easily. Friction and fire made starbursts behind her eyelids, heightening each point of contact against the dark until she could pick out every whorl of his fingertips scraping against her in fine shivers that gave his touch teeth.

  “Look at you.” A grating, dark whisper as palpable as his touch, sliding over her skin. His thumb flicked her nipple, and she choked on a sound in the back of her throat. “You want me to force you, don’t you?”

  Her eyes flew open; pain and need and pleasure and shame tangled up in a knot of thorns wrapped around her throat. “Don’t say that.” She tugged at her captured arms. “It’s…I’m not like that…”

  “You want me to take control out of your hands.” Unrelenting, unyielding, he flayed her heart with every word and laid bare the sickness at the core of her need. He stroked her flesh, broad palm sliding down over her stomach until her belly tightened and sucked in as his fingertips traced the sensitive skin around her navel. “All this time spent ruling over your little boys…but all you really want is someone who’ll hold you down and make you take it.”

  He crumpled a handful of her skirt with a slow purpose that bordered on menace—then ripped, tearing the skirt off her with the grating sound of threads snapping. It bit in hard at her hip, digging in and burning before shredding and pulling away, leaving only bare thighs and clinging panties and the tank top pooled around her waist, more naked than she’d been with any man since he had come to her in the dark, years ago, and shoved his hot fumbling fingers into her skimpy pajamas.

  She wanted to hide, wanted to shield herself from the vulnerability of lying nude before Gabriel while her body spoke more honestly than her lips ever would, but he didn’t give her a chance. Insistent fingers plunged past the hem of her panties and traced a deftly knowing circle around the wetness of her outer folds, already spread against her will. His bulk forced her open, leaving her bared and trembling and gasping to every twist of pleasure that coiled and bit and stabbed into her with every touch of sweet punishment he gave her.

  “You want someone who makes you feel small. Helpless. Violated.” Each word felt like the accusation of a crime, reciting her sins, writing them on her flesh as he stroked up and down, suddenly so very delicate as he slicked his finger over and over before playing against her clit so lightly she could have screamed with the perfect sensitivity of it. He lit her up in mad bright colors, pleasuring her by denying her, turning every light brush into the foreshocks of an earthquake. “You like when people look at you and see the sweet little girl, because that just makes it dirtier. Can you even get off without it, little girl?”

  “Bastard,” she snarled, before he drove his fingers into her.

  Gentleness vanished to leave only the sweet burn of thick fingers sinking deep, two then three, thrusting, pounding, surging into her with a roughness so primal he touched, stroked, awakened some deep primitive animal thing inside her. A thing that screamed as she writhed and bucked her hips, tossing against the bed while every breath she took in flushed into her veins and spread hot to the buds of her nipples and the throb of her clit. Tight shivering spasms rocked the depths of her cunt. His fingertips probed her as if searching for secrets, and brushed every place that whipped her with the stinging lash of pleasure.

  This was wrong, that he knew her this way and said those things to her. She parted her lips to tell him to stop, but all that came out was, “Ah—ah! Gabriel…Gabriel!”

  His name on her lips. His touch setting fire to her blood. His body caging hers, forcing hers, and she fought him and struggled against that pinning hand even as she wet his fingers in a shamefully slicking rush each time his fingers sought deeper, deeper, ever deeper. She couldn’t budge him, couldn’t stop him, and the more she fought the deeper her arousal curled—until she didn’t know if she wanted to kill him, or spread her legs and beg.

  “Would you be happy with just anyone?” Gabriel demanded. He curled his fingers inside her to stretch her until she strained, whimpering as he pressed her inner walls. “Or is it me?”

  “It’s…” She couldn’t even find words, every thought scattering into fragments. She dug her toes into the sheets and curled her fingers helplessly, until her nails bit into her palms. Heat flushed down her neck; every fine hair on her body prickled like static. “It’s you…it’s you!”

  “Why?” he snarled, then more fiercely, fury and lust interchangeable in that growling voice. “Why?”

  “I don’t…I don’t know.” She bit back a sob as he punished her with a deeper thrust, one that felt like it would split her apart and fill the empty spaces with molten darkness. She cried out, tension snapping through her as she dug her knees into his sides. “I don’t know!” she panted, tossing her head back. “You…you make me so angry, I…part of me w-wants to hate you!”

  His touch softened, slowed. He delved into her with twisting fingers that stroked so sweetly, as if licking her wounds with wet washes of heat. “Admit it,” he growled. “Part of you wants me to love you.”

  Then that brutal thrust again—and she clenched her teeth on a scream, while the knots inside her pulled tighter and she refused to say a word, the only thing straining out past her aching jaw a broken, strangled cry.

  “I’ll make you say it one day, little mouse,” he promised.

  His fingers slipped free of her body, leaving her cold and empty. Doubt stabbed into her—doubt and fear and the ugly ache of rejection. He’d done it before, teased her and played her and left her humiliated and hating him for making her want him. He’d do it again, and she would never, ever give him another chance to shame her like this again.

  Then “Mine,” he whispered, and dug his fingers into her hair to drag her head back and leave her open for the savage dominance o
f his kiss. He bit her mouth until the metallic taste of bruises mixed up in an addictive cocktail with that smoky wild taste of Gabriel. She melted, moaning as his tongue stroked along hers until every rough caress felt like it slithered and teased over every sensitive inch of her body. Her senses were as raw as an open wound, yet everywhere he touched brought not pain, but pleasure without even the thinnest skin of protection to shield her from its intensity.

  She hardly heard the rasp of his zipper, but she felt the moment the naked heat of his cock seared her, sliding against her panties and rubbing them into her slit. That hardness was a dangerous, pulsing threat. She trembled, nipping his mouth, twisting away just to feel his fingers digging hard into her hips and dragging her back, holding her down, giving her no choice. His thumb dragged her panties aside just the way she liked, baring her to that first cool kiss of pure nudity only for the intimacy of contact to burn it away.

  The tip of his cock pressed against her as if he belonged there, the flared ridge of the head parting her folds, holding her open, baring her. She waited on the trembling edge, walking a thin cutting razor line between fear and desire and anticipation, until she couldn’t tell one from the other. She was broken. She was so, so broken that she needed it this way, pulling on her arms just so he would force her back. His fingers wound into her hair until her scalp burned; her pulse pounded deep inside where she wanted—needed—him to touch and take and violate.

  Her eyes opened. He arched over her, a dark angel with every line of him carved and shaped from all the sins of man. Shadowed eyes met hers. He said nothing, even as tension rippled over him and raised that bestial shudder that she loved in a man, that taut tremor of sinew that promised his leash was about to break.

  “Do it,” she whispered.

  That trembling hold snapped.

  And Gabriel Hart unleashed.

  The powerful roll of his body was as sudden and vicious as a predator striking; just as vicious was the red-hot rush that swelled into her and filled her with the intimate, burning slick of flesh to flesh. Pain electrified her with confused shocks of pleasure, and shot streaks across her vision—pain and that perfect sick sensation of being pierced so deep, touched inside in ways so wrong they went beyond sin into depravity. His cock spread flame into her flesh and painting her inside with filthy shades of stroking pleasure. She screamed, twisting beneath him, but the cruel grasp of his fingers wouldn’t let her escape.

  God, he was so perfect. The caged violence of that short, sharp, relentless thrust. That heavy thick fullness that stretched her to the point of shattering, until she felt small and vulnerable and on the verge of tearing apart. The way the tip licked and teased at that hungry place inside her, that place that shuddered and begged for more. The lust inside her craved the pain in her wide-parted thighs, the wet slickness pouring down her inner walls, the scent of his animal sweat dripping down on her.

  She couldn’t breathe. And he didn’t give her even a moment to try, as he drew back with the liquid-hot slide of flesh on flesh. The head of his cock parted her folds with its flare. Then he rolled forward again and again, low thrilling husky snarls escaping as he sought deeper and deeper, sought to invade and conquer and mark her in ways she could never escape. Every time she’d thought she’d taken him all, another hard, tearing inch sank into her, until she sobbed and tossed her head and struggled against the sensation of splitting apart at the seams.

  She couldn’t take anymore, couldn’t hold anymore, couldn’t stand this fire bleeding inside her. But even as she parted her lips to beg please, he hooked rough fingers under her thigh and dragged her in close. Their hips slammed together with a crashing finality that locked him into her, filling a deep-seated core that resonated with every need that had gone unanswered for years. She found what she burned for in his harsh breaths, in how her thighs wrapped around his hips, in the way every inch of his cock fit into her with a luxuriant agony that concentrated her world down to that single rough brand of pleasure throbbing inside.

  “Leigh,” he growled, and it shuddered through her with the power of a lightning strike. This wasn’t a nameless stranger. Wasn’t someone she could use and throw away. This was someone who spoke her name like she’d given him power over her, while she trembled beneath him and begged without words: use me, break me, love me, hate me, hold me down and hurt me…but just don’t let me go.

  “Please,” she answered, gasping. “Gabriel…please.”

  His lips touched hers. The softest brush, a benediction, a blessing, an arrow to a heart that beat too hard and too fast, racing to match the rhythm of his breaths. His grip on her wrists relaxed, only to find her hands, press palm to palm, lace their fingers together and pin them back against the pillows. His tongue darted out, traced the line of her lips, her jaw, her throat until she whimpered and strained into him.

  He shuddered, arched his back in a taut surge of writhing muscle, and gave her everything she’d ever wanted but never found in the beds of a hundred strangers who could never take her the way Gabriel did. This was wild animal mating, two beasts in heat, and she gloried in her own wickedness as he rutted into her with a ferocity that promised to destroy her. Her cries were the cries of a sinner at confessional, each one an unrepentant and defiant declaration of her transgressions. I am unclean, she gasped without words, and lifted herself into Gabriel’s body and begged him to make her dirtier still.

  Hard musculature rolled over her, feral power enveloping her in his musk and sliding against her body until the beauty of sleek, flexing sinew imprinted on her flesh like a tattoo. He surged into her and her cunt throbbed, trembling from inside. She was too full, too hot, but still she wanted more, and couldn’t stand those moments when he left her empty and pleading and willing to do anything until he slammed so violently deep again.

  His strength tore her apart as his cock branded her faster, harder, stroking inside until she became a wild little animal drugged and possessed, a bitch in heat and high on her own pheromones, sinking into the sheer madness of it and reaching for more. She was sick—but he was sick, too. He knew everything she wanted, and filled her with that deranged, crazed lust that broke her against its unforgiving demands and made her need to feel twisted and used and shamed if she ever wanted to feel good.

  And God, did she feel good—like a willing whore, desperate for it, consumed by it, losing control. She spread her legs wider and tossed her head back and let herself feel small and helpless and overpowered, let that weak feeling run through her to take the strength out of her body and leave her liquid with a mounting, undeniable need that hovered on the edge of breaking. The hissing voice in her head told her not to give in. Not to come. Because only dirty girls came with men like Gabriel on top of them; only dirty girls would let a man tear them open like this and force a hard filthy cock inside them and paint them from the inside with the slick darkness of this pleasure. Only dirty girls wanted things like this.

  And Leigh was a dirty girl, because she lifted her hips and squeezed herself up tight inside and sobbed as her pleasure burst—and flooded over her in a drowning haze, plunging her deep into the sea of her own sin and washing through her with a power that brought her low. She felt the throb of his cock in every inch of her body, and answered with sharp, perfect spasms of heat that engulfed her bruised, tender folds in wetness and spilled in dripping threads to coat their flesh.

  And when he stiffened, when his shoulders tightened and his teeth bared and the tattoo on his arm flexed like it was trying to take flight, she knew it was coming. She arched into him and keened in the back of her throat like the needy little thing she was as a searing flood poured into her—filling her in that way she had never let any other man, coating her inner walls like molten silk and soiling her with impurity. As if no other had touched her before, she had become a chaste thing ruined and tainted, a virgin defiled. All because of Gabriel Hart.

  All because he knew how to use her in just the right way to make her feel loved.

  CHAP
TER SEVENTEEN

  IN THE COOLING HAZE OF sweat, Leigh sank against the pillows and melted, with Gabriel’s weight atop her. She soaked in the lazy sensation of his muscles going lax and boneless in that way that said he’d bled himself out, bled himself into her, given everything he had to leave him languid and spent. That pained, crazed tension had eased to leave only relaxation. She loved it, and loved the way he smelled tangled up in her with his heat still locked between her legs, buried wet and warm inside her where she could hold on to this strange feeling of mingled contentment and delicious shame for just a little bit longer. She smiled to herself, nuzzled into Gabriel’s shoulder, and wondered if this was what was meant by Catholic guilt. Passion from punishment, sensuality from shame, rapture from the ravages of a brutal touch.

  She’d take it, even if she didn’t particularly want to sleep in the wet spot.

  …wet spot.

  The haze of warmth vanished, turning the sweat on her skin from a pleasant slickness to a clammy chill. Oh…oh, she was so, so fucking stupid. She was a fucking cock-crazed idiot, and she couldn’t believe she’d just done that.

  “Oh god,” she choked. “Oh fuck. Ohhh fuck.”

  Gabriel pushed himself up. Hazed silver eyes sharpened and focused on her. “…what? What is it? Are you all right? Did I go too far?”

  The quiet earnestness in his voice was almost too much—a tenderness more genuine than any time Jacob had asked did I hurt you, baby? just so she’d say yes and stroke his ego a little bigger. And she couldn’t stand that honest warmth right now, not when she’d been such a fool.

  “No. No, I am very much not all right.” She shoved at him, hissing as every movement scraped against all the raw places inside her. “We didn’t use a condom. I’m on birth control, but…but…fuck.”

  Gabriel’s brows stitched into a furrowed line. He gripped her shoulders, stilling her wriggling, then drew back—slowly, but it was impossible to be gentle when it felt like he was ripping her apart all over again and leaving her shaking, shivering, scoured inside with razor lashes of bruised flesh and self-loathing.