Chapter Sixteen #3
My watery eyes opened and only saw Henri.
Savage, secretive, sadistic Henri.
His shirt already off and dead by his feet. His loafers gone. Fingers fumbling at his zipper as he wrenched off his shorts and boxers, revealing the same cock I’d felt against me three separate times. An angry red scar marked his otherwise perfect thighs.
He fisted himself as if he cursed the part of his anatomy that’d gotten him into this place.
I saw every tiny detail.
I imprinted his beauty.
But beneath our physical connection, I sensed him.
Just like Krish had taught me.
Just like I’d been sensing him ever since I first laid eyes on him.
Henri was dark and dangerous, but beneath all that...deep, deep inside him, there was goodness and kindness and a soul that screamed to mine.
He visibly shook on the grass, his attention locked on my tears.
The kick in my chest. The smoke in my heart.
The way he looked at me made me believe he’d gladly pay two million per droplet just to drink the rain from my eyes.
Slowly, Victor removed his poisonous touch and tossed his brandy glass into the nearest bush. Spinning on his heel, he spread his arms. “Two million...going once. Going twice.” His blue eyes glowered at the other naked men. “Two million going a third and final time.”
With curses and twisted faces, the men began picking up their clothes. One by one, they shook their heads.
“One last time, gentlemen.” He sucked on one of his fingers that’d been inside me and gave an obnoxious groan. “She’s worth every penny, I assure you.”
A grumble of annoyance.
More clothes being hauled back on.
“Two million...” Victor dragged out the suspense, the drama, before smashing his hands together in a loud clap. “Sold! To the man—”
“—who is finally going to claim what’s belonged to him ever since he first saw her,” Henri growled.
He didn’t cross the bridge. He waded into the moat, waking water over the grass and lapping it at the platform as he planted his hands on the wooden dais, shot upright as if he had wings making him immune to gravity, then stalked toward me.
Victor grabbed Henri’s bare bicep. “Fuck her however you want. But then you and me? We have a transaction to complete. I expect every euro you promised me.”
Henri didn’t reply.
He shook Victor off with a snarl, then marched directly into me.
With quaking hands, he grabbed my hips, ran his thumbs over my hipbones in the softest caress, then dug his fingers into my waist and hoisted me high.
“Legs around my hips. Do it.” His voice sounded inhuman, possessed by the devil and charred with soot.
I couldn’t look away from his steely-grey depths. I forgot about our agreement. I didn’t care that this was all an act. The way he looked at me gave me a place to hide, a place to thrive.
Fresh tears fell in gratitude, and he fell on me like a starving beast.
Shoving me painfully against the pole, he reached between us and grabbed his thick, hard cock. Bending his knees, he shifted me higher so my core lined up with his crown.
And then, he paused.
For half a heartbeat.
And whatever existed that shouldn’t exist billowed and gusted between us.
“I’m sorry,” he grunted, and then...
He impaled me.
Took me.
Fucked me.
One savage thrust.
One violent claiming.
I cried out.
He groaned.
Two bodies suddenly became one with vicious brutality.
The wetness he’d conjured in the library with his whispers and promises, with his reluctance to hit me and his pleasure at my bruises, wasn’t enough. I’d grown dry thanks to Victor’s heinous touch.
My body revoked him.
I pinched.
I pained.
Wincing, I jerked against the pole as his large length invaded and possessed, selfishly and resolutely. But I didn’t tell him no. I didn’t say a damn word.
This was him.
The demon I’d made a bargain with.
A man I’d given my trust to...for better or for worse.
His mouth fell on my cheeks. His tongue lapped up my tears, swift and hot, cleaning me of grief, washing me free from this place.
His cock twitched inside me.
His nostrils flared as he inhaled me.
A rumbling growl echoed in his chest as he ran his tongue to my ear and breathed, “Fuck, you feel—” His hips thrust forward, wedging me harder against the pole. “You feel—” He withdrew and stabbed again.
I flinched.
I hurt.
He pulled away just enough to look at me.
Our eyes locked, and this time...my body had a different reaction.
A quickening.
A fluttering.
His hips rocked in a questing pulse, almost as if speaking to the darkest part of me.
It answered.
Reluctant arousal melted deep within, soothing the pinch and pain, lubricating his invasive penetration.
His jaw clenched as my body slowly submitted.
Heat gathered in my belly.
My thighs trembled around his hips.
The chain jangled above my head as he coaxed me to melt even more, rocking into me with savage little pumps.
And...it did.
I felt it.
Felt liquid heat soothing the last fiery pain he’d delivered.
Felt moisture easing his entry until the smallest threads of passion unspooled.
God, he felt so powerful, so consuming, so...real.
Sex had never felt this intense with Sam. This all-consuming. This deep.
Not that this was sex.
This was survival...for both of us. With him inside me, I didn’t have the space to feel alone or afraid or fragile.
I felt...safe.
Safe because...I’m not alone.
“I never thought. I didn’t know...” His grunted whispers drifted into nothing as he pressed his forehead to mine and sucked in a tattered breath. He groaned as I shifted my hips, seeking that perfect moment when invasion became completion, where two singles wondrously became one.
Withdrawing a little, he arched back into me.
And there it was.
The snick.
The latch.
The binding.
We felt it at the same time.
That key slipping into place.
The lock falling open.
No more pinch.
No more pain.
Only need.
Joined and connected, surrounded by filth and fear.
His eyes shot silver as he captured a tear he’d missed and moaned as it soaked onto his tongue. His hardness jerked inside me, and we stared at each other, not understanding, not able to comprehend that we could feel this, this...hunger all while surrounded by monsters from hell.
What did that say about him?
What did that say about me?
A cop and a gemmologist.
A boy and girl trapped in horrible circumstance.
Almost as if he suddenly remembered our predicament and the script we were supposed to stick to, his hips shot forward. Stabbing his canines into his lower lip, his forehead furrowed as he drove into me again and again, setting a punishing, relentless rhythm.
My breasts bounced. My ass throbbed against the pole. My cuffs clinked and chains jingled.
It all faded the more he took me. The deeper he took me.
“Christ—” His lips claimed my other cheek, lapping up every dried tear before drifting down and hovering over my mouth.
I shivered.
I tipped up my chin.
I wanted him to kiss me.
Wanted to feel that unexplainable magic between us. Wanted to fucking drown in it because who knew when I’d taste such power again.
But as his lips skated over mine, he suddenly wrenched away. His eyes flared as if he hadn’t meant to go that far before he buried his face in the hollow of my throat and bit me.
I cried out as he rode me.
Harder than I’d ever been taken.
His bunched thighs drove up and his strong arms held my weight. His washboard stomach flexed against mine with every plunge. Over and over and over.
I didn’t look behind him at the many men watching. I didn’t label myself as a whore or a slave or a jewel. For a few precious minutes, I was just Ilyana, and he was just Henri.
A man intent on devouring me.
Bruising me.
Making me his in every way.
“Christ, I never thought you’d feel like—fuck.”
Frustration built. Three times he’d started that sentence and three times he’d cut himself off.
I wanted to know.
Needed to know.
“Tell me,” I gasped into his ear as his pace increased, his cock thickening into iron. His grunts poured fuel on the decimating flames in my heart.
He froze for a second before driving painfully deep.
I worried he wouldn’t answer.
That our whispers were too dangerous, especially in full view of everyone, but then...his lips tickled my ear, sending a scattering of goosebumps. “You feel... merde, j’ai l’impression que tu es faite pour moi.” (You feel as if you were made for me.)
I sucked in a breath.
I tried to unravel the complications of that confession, but Henri lost himself.
He switched from stiffly fucking me in front of an audience to giving me everything that he was.
His hips pistoned with feral claiming.
His touch wild and animalistic.
Wedging me against the pole, he dragged one hand to my mouth and clamped his fingers over my lips. With his forehead on mine, he pressed his mouth to the back of his hand, kissing me through his gag.
And then, he let go.
Barbaric and vicious.
Over and over, again and again.
Bruising and gasping, taking and having. He used me. Claimed me. Killed me.
He didn’t last long.
His entire body went tense. Eyes snapped closed as he strained for a different kind of death.
He came.
As quickly and explosively as a firework.
Deep, deep inside me, he spurted and shuddered, coming with a guttural moan, feeding me his release, coating me in seed after only knowing me for a single night and day.
I did the only thing I could.
I accepted his marking.
Accepted this wasn’t a simple hook-up or a normal situation, but somehow, he’d given me a few moments of reprieve. With him pulsing inside me, I clung to hope that we might survive.
With a heavy groan, his climax ended.
He stayed speared inside me, frozen.
His voice twisted with remorse. “I’m sorry. So fucking sorry.”
He’d apologised as he’d entered me and now apologised after coming. Maybe one day, I could accept his apologies, but right now, he had nothing to apologise for.
I was grateful it was him.
Thankful it wasn’t someone else.
I didn’t have the words to say such things.