22. Harper
Chapter 22
Harper
My right hand throbs, and my lungs heave for oxygen like I just ran a mile. That must be the adrenaline born of striking a jackass.
Besides my recent orgasms, that slap is the most involuntary experience I’ve had in a while. The satisfaction, confusion, and horror the act elicits all but overwhelms me.
Cian touches his cheek with one hand, rubbing the skin like he’s assessing the damage I’ve done to his perfect face.
Eerie silence falls over us.
A dangerous gleam enters Cian’s eyes. “You wouldn’t like it if I slapped you.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.” Careful of my aching hand, I cross my arms. “But you wouldn’t like it if I ruined your perfectly fine life.”
“That is exactly what you did to me.”
I open my mouth to retort, but it’s too late. Cian closes the distance between us in a millisecond and grabs me, and for the first time, I’m suddenly scared he might hurt me.
When I flinch away, he stares at me with a muscle ticking in his jaw. But though anger radiates from him in hot waves, his hands don’t dig into my skin. “I would never in a million years hurt you, Harper. Not like that. Not after I spent half my life watching my father abuse my mother.”
The shock of that announcement is still sinking in when his smile turns wicked. “But I’m more than happy to hurt you in other ways. Especially if you beg.”
He tosses me face-first onto the bed like a blanket. Before I can even move, his hands appear at my waist and rip my jeans down to my knees with a vengeance. His rough, unforgiving fingers drag my ass up and toward the edge of the squeaking mattress.
“What are you doing?” I hate my breathy, slutty voice.
“Shut up.” His finger dips between my folds, and a low laugh skates across my skin. “Oh, Harper. I’m starting to think you like fighting with me.”
Half a second of rustling follows, and then the crown of his cock presses my clit like a doorbell.
I swallow down a moan. We haven’t even started, and this is already better than I remember.
And what I remember is out of this world.
I know I should close my eyes and pray for mercy, but instead, my defiant mouth opens and says, “If I…ruined your life— Mmph !”
Some combination of a squeal and groan escapes me when he rams his cock inside me.
Oh, god, my body’s already trembling.
“Oh, you definitely did.” Cian exhales a jagged, shaking breath, shoving himself all the way inside until I’m feverish in every place.
“Then why…” Already panting, I try not to enjoy him, but it’s a challenge. “Why are you fucking me?”
“Because you deserve to be punished .” Lust and anger fuel his voice.
I drop my face into the sheets. This is the first time a man’s ever had me face down on my knees. Why does this submissive pose arouse me so much? Ugh.
“Oh, god,” I whimper against the fabric as Cian undoes me a little more with every thrust. My arms fold up beneath me on the inside of my knees.
Even though I hate him, even though I’m furious at his dumbass behavior—mine too—my body remembers what happened last night and craves more.
Given the way Cian screws me hard and greedy, I think it’s safe to say I’m not the only one.
This time, he stands at the edge of the bed, using the full power of his legs to slam in deep. It’s unbelievable how different this position is from standing in the shower and making love on this mattress.
My jeans act like restraints around my knees. I can’t move, and I don’t want to as Cian’s fingers dig into my waist, pulling me tighter around his cock while he shoves in as deep as he can go.
“Ah!” Squeezing my eyes shut, I grasp the sheets for dear life.
Cian railroads my pussy like he hates it, like he wants it to be destroyed by the time he’s finished. The bed squeaks with every thrust, Cian throwing his cock into me and me taking it all inch by glorious, girthy inch.
I don’t think this can get any better until Cian smacks a rough hand on my ass. The burning sparks of pain awaken my body further, adding definition to the influx of pleasure rocking my world.
“Why…are you such…a brat all the time?” He slaps the other cheek, and the starburst of pain changes the way I moan.
Cian must notice, because the spanking continues as he drills me with his unforgiving shaft.
“Mm!” Now I’ve got the cotton sheets between my teeth.
“You like this, don’t you?” He thrusts harder just to prove his point.
Humiliation pries my eyes open. I’m about to go into cardiac arrest, he’s fucking me so hard, and he has the energy to tease me?
“Stop it,” I mumble, caging my cries of pleasure deep in my throat.
“What was that?” Cian draws his cock all the way out without warning, leaving my body shuddering, shaking, and on the verge of collapse.
Feverish and achy, I answer him with the little bit of defiance I have left.
“I…” I’m panting. “I hate you.”
The words scare me. Because they’re not true. And the second they leave my tongue, a desperate worry that Cian won’t touch me again eats me alive.
Cian continues to slap my ass with one of those baseball mitts he calls a hand.
I wince and moan simultaneously.
Embarrassment heats my cheeks and covers me in a mask of sweat. I bury my face, self-conscious and ashamed as Cian laughs while my shivering, naked ass waits for him.
Part of me wants to die. How did Cian mold me into his own personal whore?
The other part’s obsessed over the pleasure only he can deliver.
“Maybe you hate me.” Cian teases my opening with the massive tip of his cock, and I squirm against him. “But you love my cock.”
“No…”
“Admit it.” Cian slaps his cock against my clit, prompting me to gasp and cling to the sheets. “If you do, I’ll keep fucking you.”
Are you kidding me?!
He does all this to me, and then wants me to ask for it?
As terrified as I was of losing myself in him this morning, I still hoped we’d have another shot at each other before this was all over. I knew denying it would be difficult, but I never imagined giving in would be this hard.
Cian drops another hand on my ass. I’m ashamed to say the sting pushes me dangerously close to orgasm. Everything he does pushes me closer to ecstasy. Even like this.
It’s horrible.
And also amazing.
“Look at you, shaking.” Cian spanks me again. My eyes flutter closed. “This is more serious than I thought.” He smacks me five times fast, driving me crazy. “You really love my cock. Don’t you, Harper?”
Delirious, defiant mumbles wobble from my mouth.
“Speak up.” Cian leans over me, his thick fingers forming a fist in my hair and pulling my head up out of the covers.
“ I love your cock !” I moan loud enough for the room to hear.
“There’s a good girl.”
I cry out like some kind of animal when Cian grinds his cock all the way inside me again. And sweet Jesus , when they eventually find my body, the cause of death in the coroner’s report is going to say Death by Dicking , because the way Cian fucks me this time is nothing short of homicidal.
He laughs once more when I start to fill the room with shrieks of satisfaction.
“A minute ago, you said you hated me.” He swipes another rough hand across my ass as he buries his cock once, twice, five times. Ten. And it’s so good, I almost pass out. “How many times are you going to fucking lie to my face?”
“How many times,” I gasp for breath, easing the retort between my lips, “are you going to shove your dick inside me?”
Cian clamps his enormous fist around the back of my neck and somehow starts to rail me harder. He can barely talk, he’s giving it to me so rough.
“As many times…as I…fucking…want to.”
“ Good, I want you there ,” I confess while he stretches my burning hot body around that work of art God gifted him.
“Aren’t you…going to say… please ?” He’s mocking me again.
Cian releases my hair, but instead of letting my face fall forward into the sheets, I glance over my shoulder at him. His tall, imposing frame towers over me. It’s a long way up to meet his drunken gaze, glazed over with lust and power. Watching him stare right at me when I’m all sweaty, red-faced, and incoherent is somehow hypnotic.
I can’t look away.
“Please. I need it…harder.”
Cian’s eyelashes fly up in momentary surprise, then lower back down. He appears even angrier, but I don’t have time to analyze it.
Right then, Cian punches in deeply enough that I see more stars.
“ Oh, god, Cian. I’m gonna?—”
“You don’t deserve it.”
He reaches between my legs and rubs my swollen flesh anyway.
After a few more strokes and thrusts, something magical happens.
Cian and I orgasm together.
He moans outright, bracing himself on the bed, still hulking over me. His hands appear on the blue sheets on either side of my head. Like two harmonies in a single chorus, I fly off that euphoric ledge at the same time he paints the inside of my pussy.
The sensation has me spiraling into ecstasy. My soul exits and doesn’t return until I’m convulsing with the aftershocks.
Still naked from my waist to my knees, I slide off the end of Cian’s cock and land on my side, breathing heavily. His semen drips out as my pulse tries and fails to regulate. My mind and body reel from the force of climax.
The fullness of the experience…
The depth…
Nothing in my life has ever been so right. It’s terrifying, but I’m too satisfied and exhausted to care.
Darkness closes over my mind as pleasure-wrought exhaustion drags me beneath the surface of consciousness.
When my eyes peel open sometime later, the afternoon light coming through the window has dimmed. The amazing sex charges through my memory, and I glance around, anxious to find Cian sleeping somewhere nearby, but there’s no sign of him.
Cian’s gone.
Horrified by my still half-naked state, I reach for the hem of my jeans.
Clank.
The way the final girl looks behind herself and finds a killer, that’s the same dreadful anticipation with which I turn my head and find a pair of handcuffs shining in the little bit of light left.
One cuff is folded around the motel bedpost, and the other is clamped around my right wrist.
Panic closes my throat.
This is my nightmare.
Being confined.
Oh, god.
Cian left me here.
What if he’s gone for good and the De Lucas show up to find me waiting on a platter for them, unable to escape? Every bad thing that can happen to a person starts right here, being confined and unable to move, fight, resist…
I start hyperventilating.
What happens now?
I’m trapped. Alone.
Cian might not come back.
Even if he didn’t leave me here with the intention of abandoning me, what if De Luca soldiers found him and attacked?
What if he’s in the same trouble I’m in somewhere, confined and soon to be killed?
Doomsday thinking pounds my cranium. The hotel phone sits out of reach on the opposite side of the bed.
Upon closer inspection, I realize that no calls would be happening even if I could grab it.
Cian cut the damn phone line.
This is the part where I should scream at the top of my lungs. As loud as I can for as long as I can, until someone comes in here to save me. I don’t care if the cops are called.
If the police show up here, I’ll tell them everything. I’ll beg to be put into witness protection, no matter what happens to the Kings, in exchange for my cooperation. I don’t care. Nothing matters except getting away from?—
The motel door squeals open and Cian strides through, wearing new clothes and an unreadable expression.
“C-Cian…” I warble. “What’s going on?”
He tosses a paper bag at me. New clothes spill out onto the mattress.
“I fixed the car.” His tone is gruff, disinterested.
“What?”
He produces the key to the handcuffs from his pocket. He opens them, careful not to touch me. At all.
I retract my wrist at once, panic and discomfort still clanging around inside me.
“Get dressed.” The resolution in Cian’s rough voice chills me to the bone. “We’re going back to New York.”