Heartless Hero

by Mary Catherine Gebhard

  I placed a slow, hot kiss on her cheek, until the tension in her shoulders faded, and she melted back into me.

  “But…” I said, lips still against her cheek, her jaw. “Maybe don’t aim for that.”

  She laughed—that fucking laugh. Abigail laughing? I hadn’t heard that sound in years. When Abigail really and truly laughed, it was spectacular. Not the fake, rehearsed pretty laugh she gave the world. The real one. The one with the little snort. The one that made her cover her mouth in adorable embarrassment.

  That more than anything had my heart pounding, my dick throbbing.

  “Your pace,” I reminded her, voice a lot rockier than I’d expected.

  She nodded. I was about to drag her to me for one last kiss, when she impaled herself, taking me to the hilt. A wicked gasp left her lips, nails biting into my chest. Every image I’d dreamed of her was blurry. This was technicolor.

  “Oh, fuck,” I groaned.

  “What?” Her eyes grew. “What’s wrong?”

  “You feel fucking amazing,” I managed.

  She smiled, biting that lip again.

  “The fuck happened to slow, Abs?” I asked.

  “You said my pace…” Abigail trailed off, rolling her hips, testing me inside her, and I pressed the back of my head into the pillow.

  Holy shit.

  Head still back, I found her eyes. “You good?” She sucked in a breath, focused on my chest, pretty pouted lips sucking in breaths. I squeezed her thigh. “Talk to me, Abs.”

  “I’m… perfect.” Her eyes lifted, finding mine on a smile. She twirled her hips again, grinding back and forth. Oh shit. I can’t remember the last time I felt like I was going to come this fast, but if she kept doing that fucking thing with her hips…

  I dug my fingers into her flesh, keeping her still. “Wait,” I said, voice hoarse.

  Her brow furrowed. “Is something wrong?”

  I bit the corner of my lip on a smile. “Nah, sweet girl. You’re perfect.”

  Too fucking perfect.

  Abigail was a dream in the hazy, smoky light, hair a veil across her breasts. Maybe it would shatter in the morning. Maybe I’d wake up and it would all be gone, but right now I pushed her hair behind her ear, anchoring my hand, the other on her hip.

  Her eyes found mine and the room disappeared, an irrevocable connection rooting itself deep inside. She looked at me with awe, with affection too close to something else, something deeper.

  “Ride me, sweet girl,” I said.

  “But…” I could see the worries, the fears spreading in the furrow of her brow like cracks in glass. “I’m not sure I know—” I pushed up inside her until all that came out of her lips was a perfect, beautiful sound. Not quite a gasp, not quite a moan.

  “Do what feels good.” I thrust up again just to hear that sound again, until her nails dug deeper and she fell on me a little more.

  Slowly, her insecurity faded as she lost herself in pleasure.

  I learned her rhythm. She liked it deep and gasped every time I pushed deeper, closer to the limit. Each inhale had me wanting to slam harder.

  Later.

  I slid my hands up her thighs, up her rib cage and her breasts, before spanning my palm along her neck and sliding my thumb into her open, gasping mouth.

  “I should give it to you hard,” I growled. “I should fuck this pussy until you can’t walk. Until you learn to listen.”

  She clenched with each rough word and that, almost as much as her bottom teeth biting into my thumb, her hot breath fanning the skin, fueled me—knowing how much she loved it.

  “You’d like that too much, wouldn’t you?”

  Her head fell back on a sigh, clenching so fucking tight around my dick. I knew she was on the edge, and I nearly fell right off.

  “Look at me, Abigail.” I gave a gentle squeeze to her neck. She sucked in a breath at the pressure, eyes dropping to mine. “Yeah, sweet girl, like that.”

  I gave another deep thrust, free hand finding her clit. She sucked in a sharp gasp and reached out blindly, gripping my jaw, thumb disappearing into my mouth.

  “I think I’m…” As she hit her peak, her eyes glazed over.

  I pulled her to me in a violent tangle of lips and limbs, consuming her gasps and sighs as she fell apart around me. She cried my name into my mouth and it dripped like whiskey into my gut, warm and empowering. The taste of Abigail Crowne’s utter and complete vulnerability, a secret flavor no one had ever known, ignited a possessive need.

  A protective urge.

  I held her tighter, even as her nails dug into my shoulder, even as she bit my lip bloody. I would carry the marks proudly, the scars of a secret only I know.

  Only I would ever know.

  My sweet girl was a meteor shower when she came, a blinding, life-changing, divine experience.

  When Abigail came back down to earth, she smiled. Fucking smiled. Her nose crinkled with it and I saw a little bit of her pink gums.

  I rubbed her smile with my thumb. “Look at that smile.”

  She buried her face in my chest, and I laughed, stroking her hair. “Fuck, I like this side of you. If I’d known all this time I could’ve been fucking the sweet into you…”

  I memorized her with my touch. From the slope of her shoulder, down her spine, to the bone at her ass, over the curves of her ass and back up again to her hair. I hadn’t stopped touching her, learning her. She has a small birthmark on her ass, and her goose bumps were small, like her.

  Part of me knew it was because I didn’t know the moment this would end.

  Abigail lifted her head, and I kept my fingers in her hair. Her own found mine, running through the strands.

  A wrinkle formed on her brow. I rubbed it with my thumb. “That’s not the face you should have right now.”

  “I’m worried you’re going to go away,” she admitted, voice too dark, too serious. “I’m worried all of this is going to disappear.”

  I dropped my thumb from her brow, trailing my knuckles along her cheek, and joked, “Worried you’re going to lose your dog?”

  The wrinkle deepened. “Yes.”

  I paused.

  I realized just how fucking much I’d been vulnerable. Instinct had me itching to get up and leave, but her eyes were open and watching me with so much affection it anchored me. I wanted to know everything in her head that made her look at me like that. I never wanted her to stop running her fingers through my fucking hair.

  “What are you thinking?” she whispered.

  I traced her lips, from corner to center. “All the dirty words your pretty lips are going to say.”

  A shaky smile speared her lips, and she lay on my chest. “I like this side of you too,” she whispered.

  I don’t know how long we were like that, her on my chest, me stroking her hair. It was an intimacy I’d never known.

  “Spoiled rotten Abigail Crowne has a sweet pussy,” I mused, her silky brown strands of hair falling through my fingers.

  By the way she stiffened, I could tell she wasn’t sure if she’d heard me correctly. I should’ve probably let her rest, but shit, she did have the sweetest pussy, and I never came. I was still hard.

  I lowered my lips to her ear, dropping my voice. “You have the sweetest pussy, Abigail. Makes putting up with all your bullshit almost worth it.”

  Her swallow was audible, and to me, that was a fucking invitation. I fisted her hair, pulling her head to the side, exposing her neck.

  “Admit it.” I licked a trail along the muscle of her creamy throat, back up to her ear. “Tell me all about your sweet pussy, Abigail Crowne.”

  “I-I…” Abigail stuttered in a way I was growing addicted to.

  With my free hand, I thrust two fingers up inside her, before removing them in the same breath and shoving them into her mouth.

  Gagging her.

  She swallowed my fingers eagerly. Her nails dug into my shoulder, her other hand anchored on my hip. Having Abigail splayed and twisted across
my chest as she earnestly deep throated my fingers ignited the possessiveness that had sparked earlier. It emboldened it, engraved it, fucking wrote it in blood.

  She was mine.

  “Fuck, I’m so hard watching you taste your pussy. You get me so hard, Abs.” I took her hand from my hip, dragging it, making her palm my still hard cock. “You come on this cock. Your hot, wet, sweet pussy only comes on this.”

  She nodded through my fingers gagging her throat, somehow also blushing.

  That was a sight.

  I slowly withdrew from her mouth and saliva dripped from her full bottom lip. I brushed it away with my thumb, her lips still parted. She watched me, transfixed.

  “I have a sweet pussy,” she whispered with a smile. That smile got me almost as much as the dirty words coming from it.

  “Yeah.” I crushed my lips against hers, bruising and hard. “You do.”

  I pulled her across me until her small frame was back atop mine. There was no better feeling in this world than Abigail’s soft body pressing into my hard one.

  Nah, strike that, her pussy clenching around my dick topped it.

  Suddenly she pulled away and sat up, thighs spread on either side of my hips.

  Fuck. Would I ever get used to a naked Abigail Crowne? I don’t even think she realized the effect she had on me.

  “Did you… you know…” She chewed her bottom lip. “I did…but did you?”

  Yeah.

  I really like this side.

  “Did I what?” I flipped her over and hoisted one thigh over my hip so I could grind my still hard dick against her pussy. “Did I come?”

  Abigail inhaled a melodic gasp that went straight to my cock, arching her back. I was learning the differences, what sharp inhales meant versus the ones she’d just made. How much to push, how much to let her take the lead, or when she needed direction.

  I nipped at her collarbone. “We have all night, sweet girl.”

  Abigail arched her back, pussy hitting my cock. Fuck. She was still so wet. I could slide into her, take her from above, behind, the side. Every fucking way until she couldn’t move.

  Except…

  I lifted my head, finding her eyes.

  “Unless you’re done,” I said. “Then your ass goes to sleep.”

  It was her first time.

  She could be sore.

  In response, Abigail clasped my cheeks between her palms and kissed my cheek. Then my jaw. Then my lips. She feathered soft, tender kisses all across my face until I melted into her lips with a groan, parting her mouth with my tongue.

  Abigail Crowne had the sharpest thorns and the softest petals. Maybe that’s why I was so addicted to bleeding by her, it made her soft touches, looks, and kisses all the more intoxicating.

  We took a breath, foreheads still pressed, as I reached for another condom from my discarded jeans.

  “You…” She swallowed. “You kept your promise.” Maybe she saw the confusion on my face, because she grasped my face in her palms, pulling me to hers.

  There wasn’t a single filter in her clay eyes. Emotion poured out of them like a broken faucet, drowning me. This was the dangerous part. Not the fucking. This.

  I’d do anything to keep that glow in her eyes.

  “There’s no going back. You said when you were done with me—”

  I slammed my mouth over hers. Kissing her deep, harsh, brutal.

  You’ll be ruined for everyone but me.

  “Sweet girl,” I said, eyes still closed, lips still pressed. “I’m not even close to being done with you.”

  Eighteen

  ABIGAIL

  I woke sore, rested, and happy for the first time in, I think, ever? Light filtered hazy through my curtains. The joint was dead and had burned the nightstand. I got a vicious glee thinking of how much it would piss off my mom if she ever cared enough to come in my wing.

  I stretched my arms with a small groan, turned my head—and shot up.

  Theo wasn’t in my bed; he wasn’t even in my room or at the doorway. I clasped my satin sheets to my chest, working the material beneath my fingers. Theo’s clothes were gone. Only the burned joint and the wine stain evidence anything had happened at all.

  Beneath my fingers the stain had set; in the morning light, it was bolder, a deep burgundy.

  Horrible, ugly, intrusive thoughts ran a mile a minute.

  It meant nothing.

  It was all just a game.

  This was his plan all along—the door opened, cutting off my thoughts.

  Theo.

  He leaned against the frame, face unreadable. Wild, chocolate hair fell over one eye. His cheekbones were sharper in the shadow of the doorway, the muscle beneath dark and hollow. He folded his arms, back to his regular bodyguard uniform of a shirt and jeans, designed to blend in. Once again, that was a fool’s errand. He looked like a clandestine picture of a celebrity.

  His shirt read: YOU’RE TOO CLOSE.

  “Get up,” Theo said. “We have a plane to catch.”

  He turned around, leaving the door open and empty in his wake. I could hardly breathe.

  Did it really mean nothing to him?

  I suddenly felt naked. So very naked.

  We were in the air for an hour before Theo spoke to me. He was too close to me. His jeans rubbed against my bare thigh, and it was all I could think about. I was doing my best to act like I wasn’t bothered, and that meant I stared out the window.

  For an hour.

  I should’ve known he could see through me.

  “Something wrong, Abigail?” His breath was against my ear, voice low and sultry like an intoxicating drug. I folded my arms.

  Clouds. Focus on clouds.

  “No.” The grumpiness in my tone must have been much too obvious, because he smirked.

  He placed a hand on my bare thigh, and I nearly startled at the contact. When will I learn to wear pants? I looked around to see if anyone was watching—of course not, no one ever paid attention to me.

  A sudden thought came to me. “Did you tell my mom anything?”

  He was acting weird again, and paranoia was taking hold.

  At my question, he turned, rotating me with him, and slid a jean-clad knee between my bare thighs. His eyes locked with mine.

  “Maybe.”

  Mischief floated in his pale eyes, and fear collected like beetles in my gut. At my face, he grinned, sliding his knee deeper between my thighs.

  “I told your mom you needed more security. She told me a lot of stories, like how you skinned your knee to get her attention.”

  My gut dropped, and I tried to focus on anything but his jeaned thigh sliding between my bare ones, getting closer. Everything blurred—his eyes, his thigh—the plane’s engine the only thing clear.

  “She really painted a picture of Abigail Crowne,” he said lowly. “A desperate, attention-seeking liar.”

  Hurt and pain at being once again betrayed, and in the most brutal and primeval of ways, somehow heightened Theo. He slid deeper, getting closer to the apex between my thighs, and I was stuck on his eyes. His hand on my thigh. The coarse sensation of his jeans against my bare skin.

  Move, Abigail.

  Run.

  I swallowed. “Oh.” It was all I could manage.

  The plane hit some turbulence, and I broke out of his spell, using the opportunity to run away before Theo could do any more damage to an already brutally bruised heart, sprinting to the bathroom. Before I could even close the door, Theo slammed it open with one hand. The mirror shivered.

  I should have known I wasn’t safe.

  He shut the door behind us with a snick.

  Inside, my mind was screaming: Please don’t do this, please don’t obliterate me once and for all.

  I couldn’t let him see my vulnerability, so I looked left, right, eyes landing on a vase, and chucked it at him. He dodged it easily with a laugh and it shattered to pieces behind him.

  He took a step closer and I turned around, focused on
the black marble sink. The bathroom was the size of some of our guest bathrooms at Crowne Hall, but it felt too small. Much too small.

  He wrapped his body around me, and I felt every inch of him—the roped muscles of his forearms, the warmth and security of his biceps.

  His sharp hips.

  His hard cock.

  I tried not to like it, tried not to melt into his embrace. I turned into my shoulder so he couldn’t see my cheeks heating.

  He pushed into me, and a small, treacherous groan fell from my lips. I ground back against him, losing myself.

  “That was the moment I knew, Abigail.”

  My stomach dropped. He was going to gut me, but I was a junkie searching for her next fix. Even though I knew he would hurt me, I couldn’t not ask for the pain.

  “Knew what?”

  “There was no going back. Not with you. I’d rather be kicked to the curb by you than brought home by anyone else. You could leave me over and over again like the fucking dog I was, it didn’t matter. All I could think as she spoke was…” His lips found the side of my neck. “I’m yours forever, Abigail.”

  Our eyes met in the mirror. “Don’t you know that yet?”

  He bit the skin he’d previously been sucking and his name fell from my lips, relief flooding my veins like an opioid.

  Theo tortured me. All morning he’d kept me on the brink of misery. And the sick part? I liked it.

  Because Theo knew me. In the same way he’d physically kept me on the edge last night, twisting the high inside me until I rode the razor-thin line between pleasure and pain; he did it emotionally. Fuck me physically, emotionally; I needed what only he could give me.

  “Where were you this morning?” I practically breathed.

  I felt his grin on my skin before I saw it light up the mirror. “Miss me?”

  Yes.

  I glared back. “No.”

  “Liar.” He buried his face into my neck, then reached one arm over my shoulder, dangling something shiny.

  I couldn’t tell what it was at first, but then it focused. A small, rose gold key chain of a little dog, with crystals for eyes.

  “You were worried about losing your dog,” he said into my neck, lips warm. “Now you’ll always have one.”