Chapter 36
My eyes drag open with effort, burning and stinging. What … happened? I must’ve passed out. Or cried myself to sleep.
I turn my head and see him beside me. He’s flat on his back, face aimed at the ceiling, and his eyes are closed.
“Rise and shine, little orchid,” he says without opening them.
“What happened?” I push myself to sit against the headboard.
“You just had a nap.”
I swallow hard. “And you stayed like this the whole time?”
He gives me a sidelong glance. “Is there a problem?”
“No, I mean …”
He pushes himself up and leans against the headboard.
“You might not believe it, but sometimes I crave the silence. That moment when everyone finally shuts the hell up and I can actually hear myself think.” He drags a thumb across the bridge of his nose.
“Even though being alone with my thoughts isn’t peaceful. ”
My gaze snaps to him. His expression is vacant, his eyes fixed on the infinite. “Like something in there wakes up when everything else shuts up.”
“Still. Quiet’s quiet.” He gives a small smirk, finally glancing at me. “How are you feeling?”
My chest heaves as I try to process what he just said. “What do you mean? Do you hear voices?”
“That’d at least make things interesting,” he says with a shrug. “But no. Nothing that fun.”
I chuckle quietly as if I’m relieved. Then my expression falls again.
“I’ve been so alone in my life that even that wouldn’t sound bad. I spent my whole life feeling unwanted, useless, a burden … and I never understood what was wrong with me.”
He shakes his head.
“Now you know there was nothing wrong with you. They just needed someone to dump their crap on.”
I exhale through my nose, all the revelations from earlier flooding my mind.
“Who told you?” I ask.
“Anderson.” He chuckles. “He was quite chatty right before I chopped off his head.”
“You what?”
“Oh, come on. You’d have done it too if you’d heard him.”
“But …”
“He was a problem. I removed the problem.”
That should’ve frozen me and flipped some survival instinct I swear I used to have. Any sensible part of me should be screaming to run, to get away from someone who can say something like that without blinking.
But it doesn’t.
Instead, this awful mix settles in my gut. That grim, quiet understanding I don’t like examining too closely. And I hate that. I hate that some twisted corner of me thinks he isn’t wrong. It feels like justice, or something sickeningly close to it, and maybe that says more about me than it should.
If that makes me messed up, I don’t have the energy to deny it.
Suddenly, he shoves a hand into the pocket of his pants, grabs something, and opens his palm in front of me.
“My hairpin,” I breathe, my lashes flicking. “I thought I left it in the house.”
“I’ve had it since our gym meeting.”
“Thank you,” I say, taking it.
“What’s so special about it?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I just like it. I’ve had it since we lived in Italy.”
He studies me for a moment. “Orchids will always remind me of you,” he says, voice low enough to make me look up.
“You stand apart. You don’t fit with everyone else …
and you don’t need to. You’re always off to the side, alone, cut off from everything.
Yet somehow you’re the one thing everyone sees.
” He takes the pin and twists it into my hair the way I always wear it, his eyes melting into mine.
“People ignore what they don’t understand, and they push it aside because it’s easier to pretend it never mattered.” He doesn’t look away. “Like you.”
“And you.”
I stare into his eyes. Those dark and far-more-complicated eyes than I ever let myself believe.
Those eyes that have learned to bury loneliness and damage so well it almost looks natural on him.
But it’s there, all of it, sitting just under the surface, waiting for someone careless enough to notice.
“You’re different with me,” I say.
“I’m fucking mellow.” He snickers.
“You’re Dr. Jekyll. Which is hilarious, considering I’ve seen the version you don’t show anyone.”
He lets out a dark chuckle, taking his eyes away from mine.
“I told you before. You gave yourself to a monster, little orchid. I don’t stay the same. I show whatever face works. Trusting any of them is a mistake.”
“Then why did you risk everything for me?”
“Because I will always choose you,” he says, without hesitation. “You will always be the first thing on my mind when I wake up, and the last before I fall asleep. And I will always. Fucking. Choose. You.”
I can hear my heart pounding in my ears. It’s ridiculous how he makes me feel safer than I’ve ever felt, even while calling himself a monster. Maybe he is one. Maybe I just don’t care.
And fuck me, whatever he thinks he is—or he really is—I’m drawn to it, and I can’t pull away. I’m drawn to his darkness even more than I was drawn to his hero side. How is this even possible?
I always thought I’d find someone to save me from my parents. Don his hero cape and rescue me. Maybe steal me from them—I wouldn’t mind. I always thought I’d be lucky enough to find the prince of this fairy tale, and for a moment, that’s what I thought he was.
I was wrong.
It’s the part right before everything goes bad, and I am already stepping into it. He’s a monster, the villain in my story, yet somehow, his darkness feels like home. It terrifies me, but I can’t run. I don’t even think I want to.
I lean in and press a soft, unsure kiss to his lips. He answers without hesitation, mouth rougher and more demanding. My lips fall into step before I even realize it.
In an instant, his hands grip my waist and he rolls me onto the bed, following me down without breaking the heat of our kiss.
His hand is in my hair, holding me still. The other slides down my spine slowly, until it curves over my ass and pulls me tight against his cock, thick and hard through his pants.
I whimper into his mouth, my hips moving instinctively.
His grip tightens.
That soft kiss shifts in an instant. He growls low in his throat and kisses me harder, like he’s starving. Like I’m the only thing that’s ever satisfied him.
I moan, dizzy from the heat between us.
“I want you to fuck me,” I whisper.
The words leave my mouth before I can second-guess them. He freezes for half a second. Then his eyes darken.
“Are you sure?” he says, even though he already knows.
I nod.
“No,” he groans. “Say it again. Say it like you mean it.”
I look up at him, completely exposed and soaked already.
“I want you to fuck me.”
His lips curl into something feral.
“Good girl.”
Slowly, he takes off my clothes, leaving me almost naked beneath his stare. He leans closer and grips my chin, tilting my face up.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he growls.
He pulls back and takes off his shirt, revealing his strong, muscular body.
He spreads my thighs with his hands and places me exactly where he wants me.
“You’re soaked,” he murmurs, brushing his fingers over my panties. “All this from one kiss?”
My face burns. I don’t deny it.
He pulls them down and tosses them aside. I’m bare, and the way he looks at me makes my breath hitch.
“Fuck, I can finally taste you properly.”
He kneels between my legs and runs his tongue up my inner thigh.
I whimper before I can stop myself. My back lifts off the bed, thighs shaking.
“Oh, fuck—”
“Patience,” he says, then his mouth finally closes over my pussy.
The sensation hits me hard. His tongue is warm and wet, pressing on me, licking me slowly. I gasp as my hands fly to the sheets. I’ve never felt anything like it.
He grips my thighs and holds me open while he eats me like he’s starving. His tongue flicks my clit, then flattens against it. A low groan leaves him against my pussy. My hips start to move without permission.
“Stay still,” he growls, but his grip tightens.
He slides a finger into my core, and I cry out. It burns, but he doesn’t stop. He fucks me with his finger slowly, curling it inside me while his mouth keeps working my clit.
“Still tight,” he mutters. “Still not ready to take this cock.”
“Oh God,” I gasp. “Oh—”
“That’s it,” he says. “Take it.”
He adds another finger, stretching me. He keeps sucking my clit while fingering me, and my body spirals again, too fast. I can’t stop it.
I’m shaking, my thighs trembling, my pleasure building too fast. My orgasm crashes over me before I even know what’s happening.
I sob as I come.
He doesn’t pull away until I’m finished, until I’m boneless and panting.
“So needy.” He licks his fingers clean.
He moves back up the bed and kisses me, like he wants me to taste myself on his tongue, before he stands and yanks his pants off.
His cock is hard and thick—bigger than I remember—and fear curls low in my stomach, but not enough to stop me.
“Get up,” he says. “You’re on top.”
I blink, still dazed. “What?”
He grips my hips and pulls me into his lap, sitting on the bed now, his cock hard between us.
“I want you to fuck me first,” he says. “I want to watch you take me the way you want.”
My breath catches as I look down at his cock. My pussy clenches again at the sight.
“I don’t know how,” I admit.
“Yes, you do,” he says. “You ride it. You enjoy it. I’ll be right here, watching every fucking second.”
He holds his cock in one hand, guiding it closer to me. I hover above him, already trembling.
“Take a deep breath for me.”
I do as he says as I lower just an inch, until the tip of his cock brushes against my entrance.
He groans, gripping my waist as I sink down inch by inch. “That’s it. Take your time.”
The stretch is deep, and the burning is almost unbearable.
“Oh fuck—” I gasp.
His fists tighten on my hips. “That’s it, baby. Just like that. Take it. Take this cock.”
I sink lower, my pussy stretching to fit him. God, he feels endless. My body fights it, then adjusts.
The pain dulls.
The pressure sharpens.
I can’t breathe.
When I finally bottom out, he curses under his breath. His jaw is clenched so tight it looks like he might snap.
“That’s my girl,” he says quietly. “You feel how good you’re taking it?”
I nod, moaning. “It’s so … deep.”
“Fucking perfect.”
I start to move slowly, lifting and lowering myself. The pleasure builds fast, replacing the burn completely. I ride him harder, grinding down, chasing more.
“Fuck, you’re tight,” he mutters. “So fucking wet, squeezing me like this.”
My moans get louder, my pace faster.
I don’t even realize how close I am until my thighs start to shake again. My hands grip his shoulders for balance as I grind on him, my clit getting overstimulated so effortlessly all over again.
He rises and tangles his fingers through my hair. “Come on me. Use me the way you want,” he whispers against my lips.
My mind is blank.
I cry out as I come around him, my pussy spasming hard, my legs trembling, but I don’t stop moving.
God, I’m breathless, but I want more already.
Then he grabs my waist tightly.
“Enough.”
“What?”
He lifts me off his cock and flips me onto my back in one fluid move. He’s over me, eyes wild, body tight with control he’s about to lose.
“I’ll take it from here.”
He climbs onto the bed, positioning himself between my legs.
“Now let me fuck you properly.”
He grips his cock and lines it up with my pussy.
“Look at me,” he says.
I do.
He thrusts into me in one smooth stroke, burying himself to the hilt. I moan.
The stretch is intense again, almost too much. I gasp, nails digging into his shoulders as he sinks in inch by inch.
“Fuck,” he mutters.
It hurts. It burns all over again. My eyes sting.
He grabs my wrists, pinning them above my head with one hand, the other gripping my thigh and hiking it higher.
The new angle punches a cry out of my throat.
“Ah!”
His mouth finds mine between ragged breaths, biting, panting, swallowing my moans as I writhe beneath him.
He pauses, forehead pressed to mine, holding himself still until my body eases around him. Then, his hand comes up to cradle my face.
“You’re mine,” he says softly.
I nod. “I’m yours.”
He starts to move.
Slow and controlled at first. He fucks me carefully, but there’s power behind every thrust that makes me gasp every time he pulls out and pushes back in.
When the pain fades again and pleasure starts to take over, he feels it immediately.
He slams his forehead against the bed next to me, panting hard, like he’s trying not to lose control.
“Mine,” he growls possessively. “Mine. Mine.”
The word shudders out of him, thick with heat and obsession. He’s trembling, his body barely holding back, and the way he’s gripping me tells me he’s seconds away from completely losing it.
But I’m already gone. I’m drunk on the way he sounds, the way he feels, the way he owns every inch of me without asking.
And God, I don’t want him to stop. I don’t care how desperate he sounds.
I want more.