Chapter 18
DOVE
I thought I knew what adrenaline flooding my system felt like earlier, when he had me bent me over the desk.
When he spanked my ass, and growled into my ear, and promised he’d be fucking me when I least expected it.
When he warned me “Fly away while you still can, little bird.”
I’m fully realizing now that I should have fucking listened to him.
Because suddenly, with Bane's full weight pinning me to the locked door and his words still humming in my ears, this all feels more real.
This isn’t going to end in him fingering me to orgasm. Or even coming on my face, or in my mouth.
This time, he’s not going to stop until he’s tearing me apart.
I shiver as I feel his muscles coil and clench. A hard bulge pulses against my ass, and when the realization hits, dark, malevolent need coils through my center.
It’s his cock—already hard, huge, waiting to pound into me.
My mind flickers back to the night in my carriage house, with Evie sleeping down on the couch.
When Bane woke me up straddling my chest, fisting his dick above my face.
No, not a dick. Not even a cock. The thing between this man’s legs can only be described a fucking monster. He’s huge; thick and long. I could barely get my mouth around him, let alone my hand.
Fear ripples through me.
There’s no fucking way that thing is fitting inside me. Not without ripping me in two.
Bane’s mouth dips to my ear, and I gasp sharply when I feel his teeth drag over the flesh.
“Now, where’s that needy little fuck-toy who came barging into my office earlier, demanding that I fuck her?”
I bristle, even despite the pulsing intensity of the moment.
“I didn’t—”
“Oh, but you did, little bird,” he growls. His tongue licks at the lobe of my ear, and a dark, sultry ache twists through my center.
“So desperate. So annoyed that I hadn’t fucked her yet.”
He grinds his hips against me, and my breath catches when I feel his body and the sheer mass of his cock press against my ass.
“N-no…” I croak.
“Yessss, little bird,” he murmurs into my ear, licking it again. “And you know what they say about curiosity and cats…”
He uses one hand to keep both of mine pinned above my head and wraps the fingers of the other around my waist. I jolt, my body tightening and clenching heatedly when Bane lets the full weight of his body sink completely against me, pressing me tighter to the locked door, as if he might just fuck me right here.
His mouth drags up and down the side of my neck, his hot breath and low growls sending me into a delirium, as if there’s a wild beast or an actual monster from a horror movie snarling into my flesh, deciding which spot is the most tender to tear into first.
I whimper brokenly when his huge hand slides around my waist, drags across my belly, and then deftly pushes down over my sex, cupping it through my yoga pants and underwear.
“Well, curiosity is going to get this little pussy fucked.”
He tightens his grip on me through the fabric, and I whine a low, mortifyingly needy sound. Bane just growls a low, deep chuckle into my ear as he starts to rub my soaking cunt through my clothes.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he murmurs coldly into my ear. “You’re getting fucked tonight. Hard, without mercy, multiple times.”
My fingers curl against the metal of the door above my head as he slowly grinds his body against me. Anticipation shudders through me as I feel the enormous, hot bulge of his monster dick rubbing against my ass.
“I’m not going to stop when you say no. I’m going to ignore you when you say please.
When you beg me to slow down, I’m going go even harder, and deeper, and faster.
” I cry out when his teeth viciously bite the shell of my ear.
“I’m going to ruin you, little bird,” he snarls, in a tone I haven’t heard from him before.
This is more than somno-play. More than filthy words growled in my ear and the rough way he fingered me to orgasm.
This is something darker, deeper, and much more real.
“Pirouette,” he murmurs darkly. “That’s the one thing you can say that will make me stop. But if it does…stop, that is…this whole thing with us is done.”
Wait. If I say the magic word, he stops this mad game, lets me go…and I can go home? And not marry him? Did I hear that right?
“You’re not imagining things, little bird,” he rasps, grinding his erection into my ass. “Say the safe word, and the game ends. And with it, our entire arrangement. The marriage, the contract…all of it.”
He stills, and so do I, my breath coming ragged and choppy.
I twist my head slightly to the side. “I…I don’t under—”
“But if it ends,” Bane continues, “it all ends.” His mouth hovers an inch from my ear. “And that includes discovering the truth about Lark.”
The world goes still. My throat tightens, and coldness slithers down my back.
“There’s more to her than you know,” he rumbles in a deep, sensually low voice. “Secrets you’ll never uncover.”
I swallow thickly, my breath skipping. “And…if…if I play this game…”
“Then maybe you’ll find out,” he muses. “Or… Maybe you won’t.”
I start to shake my head. “That’s not fai—”
“No one ever said life was fair,” he growls. “But I can make you one promise. If you end this game by saying that word, Lark’s secrets remain buried with her.”
There’s nothing threatening or malicious in his tone. It’s like he’s just stating facts: play, and not say the safe word, and let him fuck me, which I know is going to be…well, intense is an understatement. If I do all of that, I might learn something important about my friend.
Or I can walk away and never find out.
I shiver, breathing in the cold metal of the door. “How do I know—”
“That I actually have something to tell you about her that you don’t know?” I feel him shrug. “You don’t. But walk away, and you’ll always wonder, won't you?”
He lets go of my body, his hand sliding from between my legs and where they're pinning my arms above my head before stepping back.
Fuck. He’s right.
“Fine,” I choke, steeling myself as I place my palms against the wall. I close my eyes and arch my back a little. “Do it. Do your fucking worst.”
The silence hangs for three long seconds. Then, quietly, Bane starts to laugh.
“Oh no, little bird,” he murmurs with dark amusement. “That’s not how this game goes.”
His mouth returns to my ear.
“I told you: I don’t want to be served my meal of you.” His teeth nip at me, and I whimper pathetically. “I’m going to hunt you. Not chase. Hunt.”
My heart jolts violently in my chest.
Fucking what?
His large hands slide over my hips, twisting me to face the dark, glass-covered rooftop.
It was colder earlier, but it’s warmed now, turning the air hazy with misty fog.
“I’ll give you a sixty-second head start,” Bane murmurs behind me, his large hands still splayed over my hips. “You can run, you can hide. But this door stays locked…and there’s no other way down.”
His hands slide from my hips, leaving me shaking as my eyes struggle to pierce the gloomy maze of trees, gargoyles, and hedges.
“Don’t forget your word,” he rasps in a haunted, dark tone. “Sixty. Fifty-nine.”
I whirl. “Wait, we’re starting now?!”
“Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven.”
Holy fuck.
I don’t even think. I just turn and run into the garden, letting the dark mist swirl around me and leaving him counting by the door.
It’s a big roof, but not huge. I get to the far side in less than twenty seconds, and the width is even less than the length.
This won’t be about putting distance between us. It’ll be about hiding.
Moving quietly.
…Like the prey he wants me to be.
I shiver as I duck behind a row of low hedges and dart down the length of it. I almost scream as I round a corner and practically crash into the leering, snarling face of a carved gargoyle.
“Thirty!” I hear Bane bark out.
Fear and panic explode through me as I scurry behind a huge Japanese Maple and then slide behind another statue, this one of a huge stag with its front legs mounting a boulder.
“Ten.”
Doom thunders through me as cold, anxious dread pools in my stomach.
I lied to him before, when he asked me how many men I’d been with. I knew what he was insinuating based on my addiction.
It pissed me off, which is why I said dozens, just to stick it to him.
But it wasn’t dozens. It wasn’t a single dozen.
Or a half dozen.
Or three, or two.
I’ve slept with a grand total of one person: Scott, my high school boyfriend from seven years ago. And I don’t even remember any of it.
Since then, there haven’t been any other men.
I know that hyper-sexuality, promiscuity, and casual, even transactional sex go hand in hand with both the sort of nightmare I experienced and hardcore drug use.
But ironically, the trauma that pushed me into heroin addiction in the first place is the reason I could never bring myself to engage in that kind of behavior.
Being chained to a cot and listening to your best friend being raped and murdered in the room next door has a way of eradicating your sex drive.
So, yeah, there haven’t been dozens.
I’ve slept with exactly one person, seven years ago in a previous lifetime, and I literally have no memory of it. For all intents and purposes, I’m sneaking around the misty dark of this rooftop, waiting for the villainous shadow hunting me to find me and fuck me, as a virgin.
And that maybe is what gives me the harshest reality check. Some part of me is clinging to this romantic notion of how your first time should be.
…And this sure as fuck isn’t it.
Part of me screams that I can’t lose my virginity like this, in a fucked-up game involving a man hunting me in the dark. Catching me. Pinning me down and tearing it from me.
But that’s exactly what’s about to happen.
“Zero.”
The number thunders out like doom. But doom isn’t supposed to make your insides liquefy. Doom shouldn’t send heat flickering through your core, forcing your thighs to clench together and making your nipples tighten.
“Ready or not, here I come,” he rasps from the misty darkness.