Chapter 24
Kittie
A ny sense of where I am is gone. In a haze, I see and feel Dorian as he looms over me. His breath sweeps my face, and his hands trail beneath my blouse, leaving a trail of heat wherever his fingers touch. Need courses through me, hot and all-consuming.
I’ll put the man in the ground if he even catches a glimpse of you.
My eyes flutter open, heart pounding. I’m initially disoriented as a glimmering cluster of stars fills the window to my left. The room is familiar, but not my own. It’s not until I roll my head across a pillow to catch my bearings that I see Dorian at my side, a mischievous look strewn about his handsome face.
I reach out, fingertips grazing his cheek.
“Having quite the dream, were you?”
His eyes have a knowing glint, but his words only confuse me. My face feels flushed, and my heart rate is quick and uneven. I try to recall the dream fully, but I linger on what happened just before I fell asleep. How I got here and what happened is as much of a blur to me as the dream I just woke up from.
“You’re back,” I whisper, dragging fingers across his mouth.
“I’m back,” he agrees in a husky murmur. He pulls me to him, arms snaking around me and dragging me across the sheets to close the gap between us. His mouth descends on mine, stealing my breath.
I’m too deep in my fog of need to process anything other than his tongue in my mouth and his hands wandering up and down my thighs.
Only once Dorian pulls away from me, yanking his T-shirt up and over his head, do I hear something that yanks me from my stupor: a crash downstairs, a shout.
I cringe, but he doesn’t react. The sounds are far-off, muted, almost as if they’re otherworldly.
“Oh, Katherine,” he murmurs, getting to his knees over me. He fingers the elastic of my leggings and underwear. My breath catches as he slowly peels them down my legs, lowering himself to kiss my thighs. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”
Torn between the noise, my panic, and my need, I toss my head back and close my eyes, trying to focus on the sound again.
Freeing me from one of his shirts, he presses a mouth to my breast, a hand to the other. I arch my back, writhing beneath his fingers that carefully pluck my nipple. I shiver against his tongue, mind short-circuiting.
No, wait . The logical part of my brain fights to keep control. What’s going on downstairs?
I begin to argue, to say something, but Dorian moves his mouth from my nipple to my lips. I gasp against him, tongue intertwining with his.
Dorian stands up, breaking off the kiss, and secures his hands on my hips. Digging his fingers into my skin, he pulls me across the bed closer to him. “Come here, kitten,” he whispers, lowering himself to his knees at the side of the bed.
Say something , I plead with myself. There’s something terrible happening—
A moan falls from my lips as he buries himself between my thighs, plunging a tongue into me. I widen my legs, shuddering as he drags his tongue slowly upward, flicking my clit.
There’s a thump again. This time, a man shouting wordlessly in pain follows. It’s so far away, so distant from us, like it’s underwater.
I jolt at the shouting, hanging on to what sounds like an impact. Over and over again, something slams hollowly into something else, and yet when I strain to place an image to the noise, my focus is pulled away. I jump at nearly every impact, but my movements are indistinguishable from the way my hips buck against an oncoming orgasm.
Dorian’s grip tightens on my thighs as he softly nips and sucks on my swollen clit, eliciting cries of ecstasy.
Pleasure consumes me, like sinking into warm water. The soft waves wash over me, catching my breath and reducing me to a trembling mess.
Desperate fingers rip at his bedsheets, and I let out an abrupt cry as my climax burns up through me. I don’t even realize my thighs are nearly squishing Dorian’s head until I feel him gently parting them so that he can stand.
Slowly, I prop myself up on my elbows, watching him unbutton his slacks. I only get a glimpse of his member—full and at attention, mouthwatering in the moonglow—before he climbs onto the mattress beside me. I want to drink in the edges of his chest, the curves of his toned arms, but I can’t forget what’s unfolding just below.
I tune into the quiet of the estate. The dead silence confuses me. I tuck my legs under me and look toward the bedroom door. I hope for some hints to emerge that can help me understand what’s going on.
“Kittie, are you ignoring me now?” comes Dorian’s playful voice.
“But, there was a man before—”
A lick of pain cracks against my backside, hot enough to make me yelp.
“I had every intention of continuing to reward you, kitten, but now you’re giving another man your attention?” With that, he yanks my arms behind my back.
I don’t fight against him as he crosses my wrists over each other, clutching them both against the small of my back with his hand. The other grasps my hip, yanking me toward him.
As the heat of his head prods my entrance, the noises pick up again. Except they’re the same as before. Exactly the same. I can’t pick out the words or the tones, the voices, the thumps of impacts, the shouts of pain.
It’s as if something is playing on a loop in my mind.
Digging his fingers into my waist, Dorian plunges deep into me.
I let out a loud groan as he remains there, filling me until I bottom out. I struggle in his grasp, and he uses his grip on my wrists to arch my back. The stillness, the promise of pleasure, is almost worse than the slaps he delivers to my cheeks.
I grind against him. I’m split across reality and what I realize is a memory.
I recall the break-in and Raney unlocking the padlock on the chains keeping the door closed. I recall Cory’s voice telling me to run as he pushed me out into the night. My feet still ache from when I ran through the woods. The sound of Cory hitting Raney’s stepfather over and over again reverberates in my mind. The pummeling isn’t happening right now; it happened hours ago, but my mind is playing tricks on me.
Dorian grants me relief when he begins to drive himself into me. He starts slowly at first, then picks up the pace until he’s pounding into me, our skin slapping loudly together. My fingers go numb, but I relish the brutality with which he takes me. I cry out his name over and over again.
The horrific scene unravels below of Cory beating that man to death. The thumps are every swing of his bat against him until the man's shouts of pain cease. The cruelty of it should dampen my need and dash my arousal, but it only sends me higher.
The iron grip on my wrists vanishes. Whatever support I had to remain on my knees disappears, and I nearly topple over.
Dorian digs his fingers into my hair, coiling it around his fist, and forces my face down onto the mattress, cutting off another gasp.
Pins and needles dance up my fingers as I clutch onto handfuls of the sheets. From this angle, he hits something deep within me, rocketing me into the stars.
Rough fingers trail down my hips and find my oversensitive clit. I buck against the sensation, but the grip on my hair keeps me in place as he prods and strokes it. I’m knocked back and forth between moaning for him to go deeper and pleading for him to leave the pulsating bud alone.
“Give me another one, kitten,” he says breathlessly. It isn’t a request; it’s an order.
Tears well up in my eyes until, eventually, the only pain left is the strain on my scalp. The sensitivity morphs into euphoria, and I melt beneath him. Another slap brings me back to reality until the circular motions of his fingers drag me back beneath the surface.
Dorian tosses me back and forth between those two realms. Pain. Pleasure. Pain. Pleasure.
I don’t think I have another orgasm in me until it rips through me. I scream into the mattress as he withdraws his hand and delivers a harsh round of slaps to my stinging cheeks, not even slowing as he continues to slam into me. Eventually, as my ears start to ring, he slows. Everything throbs and pulsates; I don’t even feel his climax over my own.
Releasing my hair, he withdraws from me, only to flop down on the mattress. I’m pulled flat to his chest as he cradles me there, his chest heaving up and down.
I’m slowly dragged back under the surface, fading from consciousness. The last thing that echoes in my ears is the mingling of my screams of pleasure with that man’s screams of agony.