Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Savannah…
The apartment above the garage at Corvus’ was a tiny one-bedroom, if it could even be called that.
I led the way up the stairs from the tiny side door in the garage and keyed my way into the little studio and then some.
It let right into the small living room, which was open concept with the kitchen and a small area enough for a four-person table if you were pushing it.
There was a fireplace, set back under the overhang of the bedroom loft which overlooked down here, and one of the features I appreciated the most?
Was the fireplace down here shared a chimney with a fireplace up there.
So, it was sort of a two-fer. Of course, I didn’t think either of them were functional, as many fireplaces and chimneys around the south; especially in Savannah, weren’t.
Usually due to old age, disrepair, and modern HVAC systems.
Still, I would happily do the same as I’d done in my old place and put a small heater set back in them to give me the aesthetic.
“Oh!” I turned at the sound coming from the kitchen. A man looked up from where he’d had his head in the fridge and he shut the door.
“Hi,” he said with a grin that could only be described as wicked.
“Um, who’re you?” I asked.
“Yo, Reap.” He gave a nod to Reaper behind me. “I’m Torment. I’m here to satisfy your every kitchen need…” He looked me up and down and his grin became lascivious. “And any other need you might like to have entertained.”
I rolled my eyes and said, “I’m good, I promise. It’s nice to meet you.”
He laughed and said, “Where do those go?”
I turned and Reaper stood, just holding the boxes still.
“Um, upstairs in the loft. I need to check out the closet up there.”
“Original to the place, so tiny,” Torment called after us.
Shit.
The rest of my afternoon was spent trying to spirit away what was my wardrobe – which was not inconsiderable, away into what was the closet space up here and working out what I would do with the rest of it.
It was furnished, the apartment, but Torment had assured me this was all going to come out and my furniture would be moving in – which was at least slightly comforting. I had enough dresser and armoire space to work with up here, and the bed was indeed a queen – as mine had been.
There was a bathroom up here, with a shower; and downstairs, just off the kitchen, there was a water closet with just a toilet and a sink.
I was trying to adjust to my new surroundings and get things unpacked and put away as quickly as possible in at least the bedroom so that I could function throughout the rest of the week and get to work on time and dressed to the nines.
For the most part, the men stayed out of my way just bringing things up and down as needed and leaving me with boxes to sort through of my personal belongings.
I just heard an occasional “Dude what the fuck?” from my kitchen and Torment as he judged just about everything that came out of my kitchen boxes as he sorted the kitchen out for me.
I wasn’t going to complain. I was just grateful for the space; they could be as judgy as they wanted over my cheap Faber ware cookware.
It was late, my furniture was in, boxes still piled on the kitchen counter, dining table, and couch. I was exhausted, but blessedly alone, and went in to take a shower.
I stood under the hot spray for a while and got into my comfiest pair of pajamas I owned.
I hated the mattress here; and missed my own, but it would be something I would have to get used to as my old one was definitely done for.
I texted Fabian and let him know all about the afternoon adventures, but after five minutes or more with no response, I figured he had retired early. Which was a little bit of a bummer, because I honestly wanted his perspective on all of it.
I mean, if Corvus didn’t care more than just a little, he wouldn’t have gone to all of this trouble, would he?
I thought it would take me a long time to fall asleep, it being a new place and a new to me bed, and all, but I must have been more tired than I thought.
I slept, hard, dark and what I thought was dreamless; only for the night to be shattered by a hand over my mouth and lips next to my ear growling out, “Don’t scream, Bright Eyes, I’m not in the mood to listen to it.”
I froze, heart hammering in my chest, and I couldn’t see the mere inches in front of my face. There wasn’t enough light for that, just a hulking dark figure in the dark, darker than the deep shadows of the room behind him.
“Good girl,” he murmured. I swallowed hard and waited for him to take his hand away from my mouth, but he didn’t.
Instead, he let out a low and appreciative sound somewhere between a purr and a growl and moved the blankets off my body to get a better look at me.
“Now I’m going to make you come, and you’re going to be a good girl and take it, aren’t you, Kitten?” he asked.
I made a muffled sound from behind his hand and he chuckled, a decadent sound and said, “I’ll take that as a ‘yes, sir.’” His free hand slid into the waistband of my satin shorts, and his fingertips found my pussy, delving at the apex of my thighs to stroke at the heat and gathering wetness there.
“Oh, I like that very much,” he murmured, and he started stroking me slowly, working me up, drawing the wetness from my opening up and around my clit.
I made sounds behind his hand, and felt almost as though I couldn’t get enough breath through just my nose, but he seemed to like it that way, his fingers pressing against my tender flesh, making a circular motion that he knew would drive me absolutely wild.
I wrapped my hands around his wrist, but he wouldn’t take his hand away. I made pleading begging moans behind it, and he just smiled harder, his teeth white in the dark, a Cheshire cat’s smile.
“Mm-mm,” he said. “I have you right where I want you.”
I panted, and writhed against the sheets, and he was relentless with his sweet tortures, working my clit expertly, my body his instrument, a symphony he played just to himself and the captive audience of one that I was at his hands.
He eventually took his hand away from my mouth, and I cried out his name; “Corvus!”
He traded having his hand over my mouth to holding me down by my throat.
Not choking, not cutting off my air or the blood flow to my brain, just pressing, just enough to let me know that he could if he wanted to; that I was thoroughly at his mercy and whatever dark and twisted desire lay at the heart of him.
“That’s it, baby, sing for me, sing my name,” he urged, and I cried out as I shattered completely in his hands.
I writhed, my body convulsing on wave after wave of pleasure as he laughed in triumph, that rich raucous sound like a murder of crows – at which point I really did wake up, to my own hand at my pussy and my own hand at my throat, and the real Corvus leaning against the wall at the top of the stairs down to the living room.
I shrieked and jumped up onto my knees on the bed, half-assedly covering myself with the blankets and clutching them to my chest as he laughed and applauded me.
“That was wholly unexpected and quite the fucking show, Kitten!” he cried as I tried valiantly to swallow my heart back down into my throat.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“I didn’t intend to wake you or to interrupt. I just… hm,” he hung his head, hands buried deep in his pockets and I glanced at the glowing numbers on the bedside clock. It was a little after midnight, pushing half past the hour but not quite there.
I swallowed hard and looked at him.
He was still dressed in his slacks from that morning, and I recalled the expensive Armani suit he’d worn. His jacket was gone, as was his tie, but the sleeves of his tailored to fit dress shirt were rolled back over his forearms and he looked… tired.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, and I held out a hand to him, beseeching him to come sit by patting the bed beside me.
He pushed off the wall and meandered over, taking a seat beside me, putting an arm over my waist, and leaning in for a kiss, which I gave him.
“I missed you today,” he whispered against my lips.
“Missed me?” I asked softly, and searched his eyes in a room that was much brighter than the one from my dream, the shadowed blue light of the moon pouring in through the windows along the exposed brick wall on either side of the room.
“That doesn’t sound like no strings attached, friends with benefits, or whatever you would call us,” I said when the silence had pooled between us for too long.
“I think it may be time to upgrade you to the girlfriend package,” he murmured, tracing a finger along my hairline, tucking a long length of it behind my ear.
“And what comes with that package?” I asked with a faint smile, because honestly, that sounded really good.
“Well, we still maintain our own spaces, for now. I’m not exactly sure that I make for the best boyfriend material. It’s been a long time.”
“Yeah?” I asked softly. “How long?”
“Twenty years give or take,” he said.
“What? Why so long?” I asked.
He was silent, and dropped his eyes to my hand, pressed against the bed by my hip, tracing a fingertip over my left ring finger.
“She cheated, with one of my brothers, and I never got over it.”
“I’m… I’m sorry,” I stammered, in part because that sounded a little excessive. I mean… I’ve heard of heart break but holy shit.
“She wasn’t who I thought she was, and I’d given my heart over to her completely. It was the kind of pain that… Well, it wasn’t very easy to get over it. The broken trust something even more so. I swore never again…”
“Then…” I formed it as a lingering question, because I wasn’t sure what I had done to break the curse so-to-speak.
“Then this obnoxious blonde with a fake-as-hell souped-up southern accent showed up and made my work life actual work,” he said with a chuckle and I had to laugh.
“Oh, the horror,” I said rolling my eyes.
“You have no idea, I hated that she was better than me at the real estate game, and then, one night, I got a text from her that was meant for somebody else and I found out in the intervening weeks that she was nothing like I thought she was. She was something entirely different. Entirely wonderful… and I almost missed out.”
“Well, I’m sorry to say,” I said lightly and dryly, “You were everything I thought you were.”
“Oh, yeah?” his smile was almost shy and he tweaked my nose. I jerked back with a laugh and he said, “This, I’ve got to hear. Please, do tell…”
“Overbearing, arrogant, insufferable, incorrigible, oh, and gorgeous…” I ticked off each point on one of my fingers and his eyebrows went up in amusement.
“But what I hadn’t counted on, was just how useful those things could be and how they also equated to, protective, confident, tenacious, unstoppable, and that you were as gorgeous on the inside as the out when you wanted to be. ”
His expression was inscrutable as he searched my face.
“You know, I found myself thinking the other day that I would gladly let you put me through no end of trouble and hell just for those moments where you were so gentle with me. The way you hold me, the way you wash my hair, and the way you sometimes forget when we’re in the thick of being intimate and it almost feels like loving rather than fucking. ”
He snickered then and said, “Busted…”
“I asked you this morning if it would be so terrible if you loved me and could only be with me… I’ve been second guessing your answer all day.”
He hooked a hand behind my head and pulled my mouth to his, kissing me thoroughly until I was all but totally breathless.
He pulled away and murmured against my lips, “No need to guess, bright-eyes. I love you, and you’re mine. You’ve been mine from the second I first licked that delicate pussy of yours on that dining room table.”
“You say the sweetest things,” I murmured, and then we were kissing again, hands roaming, and before I even knew what I was doing, my fingers were at the buttons on his shirt, undoing them one at a time.
“No condom,” he whispered against my lips.
“Shit,” I swore softly.
“You’re on birth control?” he asked.
“Yes, I have the five-year implant.”
“We doing this whole commitment thing?” he asked and I pulled back and looked him in the eyes.
“Absolutely.”
“Then it’s just you and me, baby. I haven’t so much as looked at another woman since you came into my life that night.” He swallowed hard at the confession and I felt a soft smile paint my lips.
“I don’t think any man could honestly measure up to you even if he tried,” I murmured. “Only way any other man is getting into my pants is by force.”
“They’d die for it,” he said flatly and that did make me smile – some of his darkness rubbing off on me, I suppose… either that, or maybe being with him had woken some darkness of my own.
“I believe you,” I whispered against his mouth, as we both slid down to lay with each other, “and I hope you’d make them suffer.”
“That’s even if they got to you in the first place,” he growled and we were kissing again. Something primal, something feral, something that was a touching of souls that’d been laid bare.
We’d been quietly baring them for however many minutes in the freest exchange of words I think we’d had to date.
It felt good.
It felt even better when the clothes were off, and he was inside of me.
He was gentler, more sedate this time than in past encounters, and I loved it, but I missed the Corvus of my dream at the moment.
The man of surety and confidence who wouldn’t hesitate to drive me into the bed so hard I thought we might break it.
I bit his bottom lip until he made a noise and let it go, begging him “Harder.” And he obliged. Driving into me harder, deeper, but not faster and it was perfect.
“Yes, oh, yes!” I held him close, burying my hands in his hair, writhing in counterpoint to his movements and oh, oh, oh! There, right there.
I was breathless with anticipation, the pleasure mounting, my body his to play with how he saw fit, and God, lord, did he know how to play me.
He played me so finely, I never wanted him to stop, and the sounds of his moaning just served to push me that much closer to the edge.
We came together, both shuddering, both trembling finely in each other’s arms, our bodies touching and essence mingling, and it was fucking perfect.