Endgame

Chapter 18 Aurora

AURORA

“Aurora, it’s time to wake up.” Everett. He’s here. Sitting on the bed beside me.

Behind closed eyelids, I can tell he opened the blinds. The sun is up.

It’s Monday.

“No.” I squeeze my eyes shut, as if it can save me from him.

Maybe it can. He didn’t sound as mean as he was the last time he woke me up.

“You can’t stay in bed.” He might not be mean, but he is stern. Very. “You have to go to the hospital today.”

What he’s really saying is, Time to face your trauma. The babies who’ll be an insight into what I must’ve looked like all those years ago.

With no one to hug them but a stranger.

Molly and Winston were the worst kind of strangers. My nannies too.

I doubt any of them held me or hugged me unless I was screaming or needed a diaper change.

I was trapped then. I’d been just as trapped years later.

And I’m trapped now.

I can’t do it. I can’t.

I won’t.

“Leave me alone.” I pull the blankets over my head, wishing to disappear.

Wishing to never think or talk about orphaned babies ever again.

Everett’s relentless fingers hook around the covers, pulling them down my naked body.

He didn’t fuck me last night after our blowout in the library. He just ordered me to strip, so I stripped. He ordered me to go to bed, so I did.

Na?ve me thought that obeying my husband would win me points with him.

I thought wrong.

“Aurora,” he growls. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

My eyes crack open, still swollen from crying for hours.

His gray gaze is narrowed and harsh. His broad chest is on display, his abs flexing.

His cock is hard in his pajama pants.

He isn’t ready for work. He’s ready for battle.

Fighting me turns this sick bastard on.

Him and me. My nipples pull tight, I almost cry again in shame.

Now he knows more of my secrets.

“Pick a job,” I plead. His heated attention won’t distract me. “Any other job, and I’ll go. I’ll work any hours. You’ll never hear me complain. I promise.”

In the face of my shameless begging, Everett’s the picture of calm. And in my desperate, panicked state, I wonder if this is a good sign. If he might change his mind.

Until that happens, I stay exactly as I am. Docile and obedient as he removes my collar.

I bend my knees, spread my legs, and give him access to the butt plug he forgot or didn’t want to remove last night. I’m silent, clutching the sheets as he twists the plug and slides out of me.

I don’t tell him how wet I am for him. I don’t dare admit how strange it feels, to be one moment full, the next empty.

Besides, he’s already down there on his knees between my legs, seeing all of me anyway.

What I do tell him is the same desperate plea: “I’m not going, Everett.”

His stormy eyes are all the warning I get.

“The hard way it is.” In a split second, I’m ripped out of bed. Screaming in Everett’s arms as he carries me to the bathroom. “Remember, wife, that you’re the one who started this.”

“I’m not going!” I say again, screaming it so loud my lungs burn, “I’m not going!”

“Shut up.”

We’re inside his bathroom. Without breaking his stride, Everett turns on the hot water in the shower.

“You can’t make me!” The black hole in my chest turns me into this wild, unhinged animal. “You can’t do this to me. You can’t. Put me down.”

I’m fighting for my life, my sanity, as I tug his hair.

My husband doesn’t so much as blink.

He simply puts me down, right under the showerhead.

Water cascades down my face and his. Down our bodies, soaking through his pants.

My curiosity is a force as powerful as Everett, and goddamn him—I look down.

Both heat and awareness set me on fire. He’s harder than before, his dick pushing against the wet cloth.

I’m overwhelmed by this need. I almost forget that Everett is the enemy.

I have to clench my fists; otherwise, I’d do something really stupid like cup him. Pleasure him.

How I wish the circumstances were different for us.

When I finally ready myself to run off and lock myself up somewhere, I make a huge mistake. I stare back up at him.

Then I’m being hit with the full weight of his attention.

“You’re my wife.” His hand squeezes my throat. Locking me in place. “You’ll be where I tell you. Go where I tell you to go. You’ll spread your legs, warm my bed, and take a shower because I own you. Do we have an understanding?”

Water drips down his handsome face. Heavy drops on dark eyelids. On full lips.

And his voice, it’s hoarse. Rugged. Strained.

Because of me. It pains him to hurt me, I’m sure of it.

“You don’t have to do this.” I reach up, stroking his stubbled cheek. “Please. I’ll do anything. Don’t do this to me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” His gaze, something’s wrong with it, with Everett. “I have to go through with this. There’s no other way. None.”

The rest of my please and let me stay here go unnoticed. Everett, with one hand steadying me, rubs shampoo into my hair and lathers soap over my body.

Kicking, screaming and appealing to his conscience all fail me. He has a job to do, and he won’t stop until he’s done.

I give up.

Eventually, I’m clean. I smell nice and refreshed, despite the horror I know is coming.

Everett won’t let go of my throat even after he’s done. He holds me in place while he shrugs out of his pants and boxers.

I get weak in the knees at his nearness, from watching his muscles rippling when he squirts soap over them.

His cock jerks, his biceps flex.

The heated glances he pins me with, it’s melting me.

I’m sure he sees more of my shame. That I lust for him when I absolutely shouldn’t.

Briefly, he stares at me as if I’m precious to him.

Then Everett shakes his head and moves on to washing the suds off his sculpted, infuriating body.

The moment we shared disappears as quickly as it came.

“I’m not going,” I whisper again.

“Yes, you are.” He turns off the water, guiding me out of the shower.

Everett’s efficient, toweling me off first before he dries himself.

“Am not.” I’m aware of how I sound. A child. A brat.

What else can I do? I’m at the end of my rope here.

“Do you hear me?” I call after him as he walks over to the closet.

I’d follow him. Except I might do something stupid like get on all fours again just to pleasure him and myself without any hidden agenda, which is terrible.

“Everett.” So here I am. Raising my voice instead of joining him there.

“I heard you.” He storms back in, a wrathful god in a dark, expensive suit.

A force of a man charging at me. His long gait throws me off balance, and I stumble back.

His hand around my arm is warm, catching me. Steadying me.

Trapping me.

He’s everywhere, and yet I feel so hollow. So needy.

“I heard you…” Everett lowers his face, his lips at my ear, making me shiver. “Begging to be punished.”

“No.” The world turns upside down. My body is being swept off the ground, and I’m on Everett’s shoulder, being carried out of the bathroom. “No, you bastard. Stop. Don’t take me out there naked.”

“Jesus Christ, you just don’t get it.” I think I hear compassion in his tone. A sliver of it.

He’s careful, sitting on the edge of the bed and manhandling me so that my stomach is over his lap.

“I get that you’re an asshole.”

He’s done being careful when his hand lands on my ass. No warm-up, no testing. An agonizing crack that sends humiliating heat directly to my pussy.

A scream rips out of me.

“If I fuck you”—crack, and I feel his cock poking my belly, throbbing—“we’ll be late.”

“Who said I wanted you to fuck me?”

“You did.”

“No, you did,” I lie. With one look, I begged him to have me. Me, all me.

One hand spreads my legs apart. Two fingers shove into my sex.

A humiliating moan tears through my throat before I lie again, “Not me. I didn’t.”

Crack. My pussy grows more sensitive, hotter by the second. I’m soaking my thighs, ruining his suit.

“Your body sure fucking did.” He’s right and he isn’t. I don’t want just his cock. I want all of him, can’t he tell, that sadist asshole? “I could see it in your eyes.”

Crack. Crack. Crack.

“You need my fat cock ripping that tight cunt in half.” He invades me using three thick fingers, curling them inside me.

Rubbing the spot that makes my toes curl and hips grind without my permission.

“You need it to calm the fuck down. It’s not the first time you’ve begged me for it, and it won’t be the last. I’ll always be here to take care of you, and you’ll live to regret it.

I won’t be sweet, won’t be what you imagined your husband would be, but life isn’t fair. Life”—crack—“isn’t”—crack—“fair.”

His strokes turn to spankings that turn into strokes again. I’m a panting, writhing mess, entirely at his mercy.

“You can’t make me come.” So fucking floaty. “I won’t let you.”

The orgasm building inside me suggests otherwise. It thrives on the pain. On his vicious fingers rubbing my pussy.

I’m the center of Everett’s attention, and God help me, it’s the worst and best thing that’s ever happened to me.

I’m feeding on it like a starving animal. Breathing it in like I’ll die without him.

He’s right.

I need this more than anything. I feel just how much I need it now that I’m losing the last of my restraint, coming on his hand.

I cry and moan, cursing him and begging him for more.

“That’s it,” Everett hisses, stroking my walls, waiting for me to settle. His cock throbs against me. “Stop fighting me, Aurora. You have a price to pay. You can’t run from it. Your parents can’t either.”

“For what?” My tears fall at a steady pace onto the hardwood floor. Drip, drip, drip. “What did I do?”

“Be quiet.” His command is more of a groan. “Dammit. Fuck.”

Still high from the orgasm and stinging pain in my ass, it takes me a moment to realize why he’s cursing.

While I’ve been on his lap, Everett’s control has snapped.

I see it in his eyes as soon as he puts me on my knees before him. He’s untethered, nostrils flaring. Chest rising and falling as he slides his hands over the sides of my neck.

“Damn you, Aurora.”

The kiss he gives me is unlike any other. His lips are possessive, rough, and demanding. His tongue swipes along mine as if I’m the best thing he’s ever tasted.

Everett catches each tear that rolls down my cheeks with his thumbs.

“Hold still.” The way he rips himself from me is almost violent.

Releasing his belt, he pulls out his cock, a powerful show of his dominance.

I obey him, holding still without any ulterior motive. I’m not trying to get on his good side. Not thinking about the horrible day ahead.

I’m captivated by him. At this moment in time, I long to please him, though I absolutely shouldn’t.

His elegance is mesmerizing, even when he’s being crude. Even when he leans back, jerking off as he’s watching me. Studying me.

Not for the first time, the full force of his attention slams into me. His hand makes obscene sounds as it pumps himself, his breaths rough and jagged.

Then, somewhere between one stroke and the next, pressure begins to form between my thighs. A sharp ache builds until a whine slips out of me.

I don’t think I can stay anymore. I’m hot. I’m desperate.

Any second now, I’ll rub my clit. Either that or I’ll burst into flames.

“Oh, fuck.” He squeezes himself hard. Rubbing faster. Leaking for—for me. I can’t breathe. “You’re trying, aren’t you? Trying so hard not to be a brat for me.”

I’m being demeaned yet somehow revered. Needed. He needs me, and I—

“Yes.”

The word is barely out of my mouth, and he’s there. Grabbing my hair, tugging me to him.

“Close your—fuck, Aurora—close your eyes.”

A sick part of me rebels against this particular order. Against missing out on him fisting his cock.

At the last minute, when his legs close around my body, I slam my eyes shut.

Hot cum sprays all over my face, landing on my eyes, my cheeks, my lips.

Confusion and need turn me inside out. There’s nothing else I can do but stay here. On my knees. Jaw slack and mind reeling.

“Filthy fucking princess.”

I guess Everett’s right, since I part my lips wider for him. I long for his depravity, for his cum-coated fingers to be pressed onto my tongue like he does now.

“Suck. That’s it. Harder. Lick it. Good fucking princess. My broken wife.”

He removes his fingers once I’m done. The sound of his zipper comes next, and after that, I’m up and off the ground.

Even with my eyes sticky and closed, I sense we’re headed to the bathroom. He’s going to take care of me.

The evil monster, the big, bad wolf.

Relief and a strange kind of tenderness roll over me.

And maybe over him too?

“Everett,” I plead. “Don’t punish me.”

“I already told you.” His voice is as cold, as impassive as his expression. “I will. It’s a done deal.”

At that, my hopes come crashing down. My chest caves in on itself.

“Now be good while I get you cleaned. You have a long day ahead of you.”