Chapter 14 #2
The SUV feels too small, too charged with things I can’t admit even to myself.
I need distance. I follow him out, shoes crunching against the gravel.
Folding my arms across my chest like armor, keeping my gaze fixed anywhere but on him as we move toward the railing.
The turmoil inside me churns, wild and relentless, echoing the waves crashing against the jagged cliffs below.
The ocean stretches endlessly beneath us, deep blue meeting the horizon and bleeding into a perfect sky.
All the times before when I’d come up here, this view gives me space to breathe.
Today, it presses in on me. My thoughts twist, refusing to settle, caught in an invisible cage with Cyan at its center.
Why does standing beside him out here in the open feel more dangerous than everything else he’s done today?
Cyan leans casually against the railing.
His presence is my contradiction—warm , frightening, familiar, and impossibly unknown.
Our being alone here, me standing beside him, is like stepping closer to jumping off the edge.
The wind brushes over my skin, cool against the heat knotting low in my stomach. I wrap my arms around myself as I stare out at the water.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” I breathe. “From up here, it looks so calm. So harmless. It’s hard to believe something so peaceful can take a life.”
Cyan doesn’t look at me. He watches the horizon. “It’s moments like these that remind you how small our problems really are. How temporary everything is in the face of these vast waters.”
There’s something in his quiet tone that pulls my attention fully to him. The sunlight catches the flecks of blue in his eyes, deepening the green until it looks almost as if that is his true eye colour before it changes again.
Looking at him now… there’s a shadow I recognize.
A wound he’s buried so deep he probably thinks no one can see it.
Except I do. Because it looks too much like mine.
Neither of us moves. Cyan inhales slowly, turns his head, and his gaze hooks into mine.
His hand lifts, hesitates and my pulse starts a rapid beating.
Then his knuckles brush my cheek, his gentle touch so at odds with everything he is.
His warm fingertips trace the line of my jaw before his palm cups my cheek.
“I used to think the sea could wash everything clean,” he murmurs.
“Back home in Ireland, I grew up near cliffs just like these. The ocean was right there… endless and wild. When I was a kid, I believed its mysteries could hide me from the world.” His thumb takes the same path along my skin again, slow and deliberate.
“But it washes nothing away. It just hides its dangers under its calm surface. And when the storm comes… those blue waters pull you under and show you exactly what they really are.”
My lips part, but the words don’t make it out.
His touch, his voice, the damn ocean roaring below us, it all knots together.
I bite my bottom lip and try to focus on the slight pain, not on the sorrow, in his words but it doesn’t work.
Up here, with the wind and the waves and his hand continuously mapping my face…
it feels like we’ve stepped into a fragile truce.
A ceasefire held together by grief, silence, and all the wanting I’ve been pretending not to feel.
The moment wraps around us, and it says everything we won’t.
The waves crash below, rhythmic and wild, echoing the chaos in my mind, and in this moment, I realize whatever line I thought I held between us…
it’s disappearing, right here, right now.
Cyan’s sorrow coils around me, an invisible chain, pulling me deeper. This man has haunted my dreams and tormented my waking hours, twisted my mind into knots I can’t unmake. His thumb slides across my chin, tugging my bottom lip free from between my teeth.
Cyan swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Do you know how fucking perfect you are, Dove?” His voice drops, that deep brogue rolling over me like a dark promise. “Absolutely beautiful perfection.” His thumb brushes my lip again, slower this time, like he’s savoring the shape of me.
I’m desperate for a reminder of why my urges are fucked up. “You think I’m perfect compared to Elana?”
“Fuck Elana, it’s you. I’ve been jerking off every night, dreaming of the day when it’s your hands… not mine… on my cock.” His words are crude and filthy, exactly him, and mercy me, it makes something deep inside me ache.
“You do... don’t—don’t mean that.”
A dark, sinful laugh slips from him. “Are ya having a laugh, Dove? Do you think I just stroll into a woman’s life like some muppet? The only reason Elana showed up is that Thomas’s wife can’t keep her mouth shut. That’s the only reason she found me in Crescent Bay.”
His fingers trail down my throat, mapping the thrum of my pulse.
I should step back, tell him to go to hell and leave me alone.
But I don’t. Instead, something inside me boils to the surface, it’s wild and wanting.
My arms lift, looping around his neck. Cyan growls as his hands clamp onto my waist, dragging me flush against him, with no space left between us.
His mouth collides with mine; my glasses fall off my face.
My groan is low, and he swallows it down.
This kiss is consuming. Just one more second, I tell myself, one more second of me showing the supremacy I have over him. This is all about my hold over him.
Cyan’s taste is so addictive, like a forbidden fruit that ruins you forever once you’ve tasted it.
He sucks on my lower lip, soothing where my teeth had been biting into it, mixing pleasure with the sharp sting of pain.
I mirror him biting, teasing, and taking.
Cyan’s rumble of satisfaction sends a bolt of heat straight to my core.
His fingers sink into my curls, undoing the bun, setting wild strands free as he drags me closer, deeper.
Every reason this is wrong disappears. All I want is more.
His kisses are as demanding as the man himself, every stroke of his tongue a battle, a conquest. Me, taunting him with my power, but I’m also falling.
Cyan shifts, and before I realize what’s happening, my back slams against something solid; the railing.
His bulging erection grinds against my stomach, straining through his pants.
I remember his words... of him dreaming of my hands on his cock.
I let my hand fall. His hardness is rock-solid, pulsating.
The sound that rips from Cyan’s throat is pure, unrestrained pleasure, and I like it.
A rush of power floods through me, and I flick open his belt buckle, my fingers working his zipper down.
Then, I wrap my hand around him, skin to skin. His cock is massive. Thick in my palm.
“Ah... fuck, yes.” He’s dripping with raw need. His hips thrust into my grip. “My dreams didn’t do this justice, Dove. Your hands feel so fuckin’ good. Better than I imagined.”
I stroke him, slow at first, tip to balls, then back again.
Cyan’s head drops against my neck, his ragged breath hot against my skin.
“Fuck, that’s it. Pleasure for pleasure, yeah?
” Before I can process what he means, his hands move.
With a savage yank, he rips my blouse open, buttons scattering in every direction.
I gasp, but I don’t stop stroking him. I should care about the ruined blouse and that we’re in a public place.
But the only thing I can focus on is what I hold in my hand—the mushroomed head, plump, slick with pre-cum.
His hand moves down my body and under my skirt. Again, I hear the tearing of fabric, but the contact of his fingers sends a bolt of electric pleasure shooting through me as his fingers stroke over my clit.
“Ahhh... Cyan.”
“You’re dripping for me, love. This pussy knows it’s mine, doesn’t it?
” His teeth scrape my throat, his beard tickling, teasing, and then his finger slips inside, my world shatters.
I despise him. So why can’t I stop this?
“I like you with glasses, Dove. When you finally suck me off, I want you to do it wearing those glasses.” His words coil around my mind, wrapping tight like a noose.
The image of us together slams into my mind with an intensity that makes me squirm.
This is utter madness. I shouldn’t picture myself on my knees, my lips wrapped around him, those wicked glasz eyes staring down at me with dark, possessive satisfaction, me holding all the influence over him.
But the picture plants itself in my mind, and I can’t help myself; my body reacts with a pulse of aching heat that I can’t ignore.
I grip him harder in my palm, my strokes growing more aggressive, and he groans, his hips thrusting into my touch.
“Fuck!” The syllable sends a shiver straight to my core.
His hand matches my rhythm, fingers plunging deep, in wicked strokes that steal my breath.
I’m teetering on the razor’s edge, pleasure and fury warring inside me.
How can I dislike him and still let him do this to me?
But my thought flutters away, and all that I can think about is pleasure radiating through my body.
“Cyan, please don’t stop...”
“I can’t even if I wanted to, you’re so wet for me.” He pushes another finger inside me.
“Ohhh...” A strangled moan tears from my throat, my back arching into his touch, my fingers tightening around the cock.
“I ha... hate you.” He’s a killer, my stalker.
Yet his touch sets me on fire. He ignites a raw, uncontrollable heat that consumes every rational thought I have left. “This is so fucking twisted.”
Cyan’s answer is to nip at my neck, then raise to meet my eyes before answering. “Because you know there’s more to me than the savage.” His thumb brushes my clit. “You, Dove, see the man beneath all that, don’t you?”
I swallow hard, struggling to keep up, to breathe past the pleasure closing in around me. “May...maybe I do,” I admit, my voice shaking. “But I’ll fight you every step of the way, and all you’ll ever get is my hate.”
Cyan’s grin sharpens, something feral flickering in his gaze. “You say that, but the way your hand is gripping my cock tells a whole different story, doesn’t it, Aria?” His thrusts quicken, relentless, his fingers curling inside me in a way that sends white-hot pleasure crashing through my body.
“Fuck!” I grip him harder, pumping.
“That’s it,” Cyan groans. “Fucking perfect, my lady ain’t backing down.
She’s got that fire.” Our rhythm turns chaotic and uncontrollable, pleasure coiling tighter, winding me up like a string about to snap.
The scent of him, musky, raw, intoxicating, mixes with the salty ocean air and the sounds of our pleasure.
“Dove?” Cyan rasps. “Show me how much you hate this and fucking come for me.” He flicks his fingers just right, and I shatter.
Pleasure crashes into me, wave after wave, my body writhing as I cry out.
“Mercy me… yes.” My nails dig into his arm. The orgasm rips through me, unlike anything I’ve ever felt before, more intense, more consuming.
I barely feel his teeth sinking into my neck, marking me, branding me, owning me. I don’t care. I come undone, drowning in the sensation of him. Cyan’s cock straining still hard in my grip, slick with pre-cum.
His gaze is wild, like a man who’s barely holding himself together.
“If this is hate,” he rasps against my throat, “I wonder how you’ll be when that hate turns into something else.
” He pulls his fingers away, and I shudder at the loss.
But then he grabs my hand, the one still wrapped around his cock.
“Now it’s my turn.” He thrusts. The hunger twisting into primal strokes as he fucks into my hand, his jaw tight, his body coiled and desperate for release.
Then he looks at me, and I see it within the shadowed depths of his eyes, vulnerability.
Like he has two sides fighting for control.
He’s the merciless mobster and the man who holds me with the force of a hurricane.
Why do I like this about him? Cyan lets out a shuddering groan and comes.
“Fuck... fu—ck!” His hips jerking, ropes of hot cum spilling out, coating our hands, some landing on my skirt, my leg in thick streaks.
I stare, transfixed. My body is still humming, still aching, still wanting.
Cyan watches me; his gaze is dark and knowing. He grabs my chin, smearing the slickness of our release over my lips. Before I can react, he crushes his mouth to mine in a savage kiss.