Chapter Eleven
Everything is Mine
Ginger
Today was one of those days when I was simply grateful to make it home in one piece.
With a sigh, I locked the door and hit the security code, hung up my purse and kicked my boots off. The bra came off next, pulled through an armhole of my turtleneck, and I let out a groan of relief.
Nothing better than freeing the girls from boobie jail.
I didn’t even glance at the kitchen when my stomach growled. Usually I enjoyed cooking, but with a hint of my hangover headache trying to claw its way back, the last thing I wanted to do was figure out what to prepare.
Which was why God invented ordering online and prompt food delivery.
With the promise of egg drop soup, kung pao chicken, lo mein and shrimp egg rolls on its way, I toyed with the idea of ordering dessert as well. Everyone knew I was the world’s biggest fan of ice cream and would happily eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I could get away with it. But being the responsible adult I was, I talked myself out of looking to see if Baskin-Robbins delivered, laid down on the couch and clicked on the TV to catch up on the local news. In half an hour I’d be elbows-deep in yummy Chinese goodness…
It was completely dark when I opened my eyes again.
Disorientation hit hard, and for a second I couldn’t remember where I was. Bedroom? No, couch. I’d been watching the news… Automatically my gaze snapped to the TV. It was now dark and silent, a barely discernable rectangle in the darkness.
What in the world…?
Did I turn it off? I couldn’t remember. Maybe I rolled over the remote in my sleep and that was what turned it off? I sat up to look for the missing remote, only to jump about a foot when the soft fuzzy throw I kept on the chair several feet away—a fuzzy throw I never used—fell off of me.
Oh, shit.
The unmistakable sound of teeth crunching down on something crisp hit my ears.
Instinctively I clutched the throw to my chest as if it had suddenly turned into fluffy body armor. Wildly my eyes searched through the gloom to a silhouette of a man seated at the dining table several feet away.
“Is that shrimp in the eggrolls? Gotta say I prefer pork. Don’t forget that the next time you order, yeah?”
“ Tyr .” It came out on a pent-up breath, a word that was both his name and a curse. “Goddamn it, you startled the shit out of me.”
“Sorry, baby girl.”
He didn’t sound sorry. Not in the least. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Eating dinner.”
Oh, my God . “Have you lost your mind?”
He seemed to ponder the question while munching away in thoughtful silence. “I don’t think so. Not completely, anyway.”
I had to kill him. Really, he’d left me no other choice. “I know I locked the door this time. I know I did.”
“Mm-hm.”
“And then I set the alarm.”
“It’s a good alarm. Best that money can buy.” He reached over to some sort of formless lump on the table that I couldn’t make out in the semidarkness. With the rustling of a plastic bag, he pulled out what I immediately knew was my dinner in a clamshell box, opened it, and inhaled deeply. “Mm, kung pao. My fave. Thanks, baby girl.”
The low screech that escaped me didn’t even sound human. “That’s my dinner, not yours. Stop eating it and tell me how you got in.”
Thanks to the city’s ambient light trickling in through large industrial windows, I could see him wave chopsticks in the vague direction of the sliding door. “I walked in through the front door, of course. No big mystery about it. And there’s enough food here for two, you know. You weren’t expecting anyone tonight, were you?” His tone strongly suggested that I absolutely should not be expecting anyone ever again for the rest of my life.
“That’s none of your business, and I happen to like leftover Chinese food for breakfast—leftovers you’re now sucking up for yourself, I might add.”
“Kung pao for breakfast? I always knew you were brave.”
Okay, I was done. “You need to leave.”
“But I haven’t eaten my fill yet, Gingersnap.”
I hopped to my feet, dropping the throw onto the couch. It didn’t matter that he’d obviously draped the throw over me and thoughtfully tucked me in as I slept, I thought as I marched over to him. When it came to men like Tyr, a woman had to stand her ground. “I don’t care that you haven’t eaten your fill yet. Get up, get out, and never break into my house again.”
“I didn’t break in, Snap. In fact, in all the countless times I’ve come over to check on things, I’ve never broken in. How can a man break into a place that’s already his?”
My breath caught so audibly I swear it echoed. “Wait… God, there’s so much to unpack in that one sentence, it’s making my head swim.”
Again he gestured with the chopsticks. “You probably need to eat. You hungry? Grab a chair and make yourself at home.”
“I am home, goddamn it! This is my home, not yours. This is my table you’re sitting at, not yours. That’s my dinner you’re eating, not yours. Nothing here is yours, so get up off your a—”
The scraping of the chair against the hardwood floors was the only warning I got. In the darkness he seemed little more than an indistinct blur of movement, a darker shadow among shadows. But there was nothing indistinct of the hands that gripped me and spun me around, nor was there anything indistinct about the way my feet suddenly lifted from the floor. The next thing I knew, I was lying flat on the table, my back against the polished wood. Tyr was between my knees, leaning over me until we were almost nose-to-nose, his scalding-hot body lying on top of mine. His weight was shocking, inescapable. Having him press down on me like he was desperate to imprint the feel of me onto his skin made my heart run away, half in panic, half in something else my brain refused to label.
“It’s time for you to know the world you’re actually living in, my little Gingersnap. The world you live in? It’s my world. All of it.” Through the gloom, I looked up into his whiskey-colored eyes and saw with growing alarm that something vital inside his head had slipped its chain and now he was rolling without even a hint of brakes to slow him down. “You live here in this loft, in this building , because I want you to live here. Same thing for your shop. All of it is mine .”
“What? No .” The denial tore from my throat. “No, you told me—”
“I told you what you wanted to hear so you would stay exactly where I needed you to be. That strip mall is mine, just like this building is mine. Blue Horizons, LLC is mine , Ginger. I wanted that talentless tattooist neighbor the fuck away from you, so I evicted him because you’re mine. This table, this food, the fucking air you breathe when you’re here or at Vixen’s Den—all mine. Everything is mine.”
Horror sank through me as his mouth slammed down onto my lips. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, but not because Tyr’s warrior’s body crushed me into submission. I was in shock, the kind that went all the way to the soul, because the world as I knew it was no more. It was as if a tornado had come through to destroy everything I’d built from the time I’d moved out of Tyr’s place.
Because I hadn’t “built” anything. I hadn’t managed to find my feet and stand on my own. Tyr had always been there as an invisible force, constantly propping me up.
My life wasn’t real. It wasn’t even my life.
It was Tyr’s.
“Kiss me.” His lips, so hot, lifted from grinding against mine, and he glared down at me as if I were responsible for all the things in the world that made him unhappy. “Goddamn it, kiss me back.”
“No.” He might own every aspect of my life, but he didn’t own me. “I told you, I hate you. I mean that now more than ever.”
“And I told you I’ll never allow that, Snap. Now more than ever.”
A furious hiss escaped me as he pushed deeper between my legs, letting me feel the full, stiff length of his cock. Pure sexual excitement exploded on the landscape of my inner resistance, and as those two aspects went to war with each other, I lashed out, landing a decent punch on the point of his chin. Even in the darkness I could see the shock bloom in his eyes, and for a split second I knew the deepest satisfaction.
But it was only for a split second.
God-tier rage poured into his eyes, turning them molten. Again he moved faster than my eyes could track in the semidarkness, and before I knew it both my hands were twisted above my head, held there with one of his powerful mitts. His other hand struggled to reach something in his back pocket while his weight crushed me down into the table. Escape was impossible, made that much more so when I realized the thing he’d fumbled out of his back pocket was, of all things, my discarded bra. He’d tucked it into his pocket for some reason and was now quickly twisting it around my wrists.
“You know better than anyone that I’ve never raised a hand to a woman, so punching me is pretty goddamn unfair of you. I can’t let that go unpunished. It’s the Gravedigger way.”
“The Colgrave way, you mean. Punishment was always your uncle’s answer for everything.” I spat the words out as he angled my body across the table, pulling my hands toward a corner. The material around my wrists tightened a second before he straightened away from me, and in an instant I made to follow him off the damn table, only to find I couldn’t.
The bastard had tied my hands to the table leg.
I was in serious trouble.
“My uncle’s way of punishing you and my idea of punishing you are two very different things. Something you can thank me for later.” With that, he reached for his belt buckle.
Panic and anticipation rose in equal measure. “If you think I’m going to thank you for-for raping me, you’re as fucking insane as Hades!”
“You tell me, Ginger. Is it rape when you wind up begging me for my cock? To insist I fill you and never leave you because with my cock inside you, you know you’ve found your place in the world and your reason for being?”
When he loosened his pants, then pulled his long-sleeved Henley over his head, the panic began to edge out anticipation. I wanted him, yes, but I also wanted a fucking choice in the matter. “You think way too much of yourself.”
“No. I just know you. I know how brutally honest you are, even with yourself. I’m counting on that now.” His voice turned soft, almost crooning, and I hated myself for taking comfort in it. Maybe that was why I didn’t completely freak out when he worked the fastenings of my pants. The freak-out came as he abruptly ripped them off along with my panties, leaving me naked from the waist down. “I’m counting on you begging to take my cock, baby girl. All I’m doing now is getting us both ready for it.”
“Tyr, don’t.” My throat was so tight all I could do was manage a whisper. I didn’t want to beg, because goddesses didn’t beg. But in that moment I was nothing more than a mere mortal on the verge of being forced to face something I’d been instinctively avoiding my entire adult life. “Don’t do this.” My throat was closing, closing. I could barely whisper. “P-please.”
That one word seemed to reach him, as if he knew how much it cost me to let it free, and for a long moment he seemed to freeze. Then he shucked off his jeans, and I heard his boots hit the floor along with them. “Deep down you know I won’t hurt you, but you’re still afraid. Of what, I’m not sure, but I need to get rid of that fear you have of me. Maybe all you’re seeing right now is a Colgrave, and not me. Maybe you only think pain can come to you from these hands, though I’ve never once used them to harm you. I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve got you where I want you, and you’re going to learn that of all the terrible things there are in the world that can hurt you, I will never— ever —be one of them.”
“I do fear you.” I could barely hear myself now. My voice was leaving me, a true measure of my fear. “I don’t know why, but… I do.”
“Maybe fearing any Colgrave is the burden you’ve been cursed with—a bone-deep fear of me and my family, and it’s there no matter how hard I’ve always tried to protect you. But maybe both our curses can be broken if we just… break right through them. Prove that we’re stronger than they are. Maybe if I can save you from your curse, you can save me from mine.”
I don’t know what your curse is, I tried to say, but nothing came out. Goddamn it. Tears of frustration slipped from the corners of my eyes as I tried again, and nearly choked.
Nothing.
Fuck .
My heart pounded so hard I half-believed it would punch a tunnel out of my chest as Tyr once again positioned himself between my knees. I kicked out trying to fend him off, but he dodged easily, gripping the backs of my knees to spread me as wide as I could go. I would have screamed profanities at him if I’d have a voice, and ultimately the deep silence finally seemed to get through to him.
“You still with me, baby girl?” He draped my legs over his biceps, his hand clamped down on my thighs as his eyes found mine in the gloom. When all I could do was try to kill him with my glare, he shook his head in what seemed to be genuine disappointment. “Scared you into muteness again, huh? That’s twice in one day, damn it. Let’s see what I can do to help you find a way out of all that fear and get you your voice back.”
Try taking no for an answer, I wanted to shout at him, but my throat remained so locked it barely let air in.
“Have I ever told you how breathtaking you are?” With my legs now secured in a way that couldn’t hurt him, he bent over me again to touch his lips to mine. He didn’t linger, though, apparently intent on moving lower. “My obsession with you started young. I once told my old man you were going to be my back-warmer when we were all grown up. He laughed and told me to go after whatever the hell I wanted and to never let anything get in my way. My old man may have been a mean sonofabitch and he wasn’t often right, but that was some excellent advice he gave me that day. In my own time and in my own way, I always go after what I want. And I am never denied.”
His hands smoothed down my torso, found the hem of my turtleneck—the only piece of clothing I had left—and exposed my breasts. Despite my pounding pulse, the brainless feminine pride in me wanted to see his reaction to my near-total nakedness. With my breath coming in silent, shallow gasps, my eyes clung to his as he backed up to drink me in.
“By God, woman, you can’t be real.” His words resonated with an almost awestruck reverence, and I hated myself for the thrill of delight that went through me. “Ginger Sisko, you are the truest form of perfection these eyes have ever seen. And all of you—every stunning, flawless inch that I see before me—is mine .”
Not even if I lived a hundred lifetimes, I wanted to scream at him. And I would, the moment my voice came back. What I would never do was admit that his words of claiming, of hard-won triumph , hit me like a tidal wave, rocking me in all the best ways to the very core of my soul.
Then his hands touched where his eyes had roamed. His touch glided up the ladder of my ribcage to claim my breasts, and his hands were so hot they set my skin on fire. I closed my eyes, but I didn’t know if it was to shut him out, or to better drink in the feel of his callused hands caressing over my sensitized flesh. He squeezed my breasts, his rough thumbs abrading my nipples so fiercely it became a painful delight to bear. In my mind, I threaded my fingers through his hair and guided his head down to my breasts, encouraging him to put his mouth on me. But since I couldn’t do anything like that, I arched my back like a cat begging for pets while a breath that was no louder than a whisper escaped me.
“I heard that.” His voice took on that crooning, praising quality that turned me into mush. My stomach muscles quivered with achy need, and wet heat slicked my intimate folds. Damn, that tone really did make my toes curl in the worst way. “You like my hands on you, don’t you? That’s my good girl. You’re going to like my mouth on you even more.”
That’s what I was afraid of.
Afraid of… because it aroused me so much.
There. I finally admitted it, if only to myself. The mere thought of Tyr’s mouth on me aroused me so fiercely I couldn’t help but squirm with needy hunger.
His dark blonde hair fell over my body in an intimate caress as he lowered his head over me. Every muscle clenched in anticipation as his lips glided from the valley of my breasts up to a hyper-sensitive peak. His tongue circled the aureola in a wet caress and toyed with my pebble-hard nipple, before he closed his mouth around it and sucked hard . A faint squeak broke free from the paralysis in my throat as the pleasurable, near-painful sensation rocked through every nerve. I ground my body against his mouth, needing more, needing everything from him even though I didn’t know what his idea of everything was.
“There you are.” The triumph vibrated low through his voice, his breath feather-light against my skin still wet from his mouth. “Fear. Excitement. Need. Hunger. All of it, rolled into this. Into us . Who we are to each other. You’ll never feel anything more intense than me, Ginger. You’ll never want any other hands on you, or mouth on you, or cock inside you. All you’ll crave from this point on, is me .”
“Shut up .” It was barely a hiss of sound, because my voice kept dinking out while he predicted terrifying things like my life being forever altered because of him. Sadly, he didn’t shut up. Instead, he laughed under his breath before lowering his head to once more bathe my skin with the glide of his tongue and lips. Eventually he made it down to my navel, where a chandelier charm made up of small opals rested.
“Ooh, I like this, baby girl.” As if to prove his point, he tongued the charm into his mouth and gently tugged at it with his teeth before eventually moving lower. “Got any other undiscovered piercings I need to know about?”
I shook my head, though where he was headed he’d find that out soon enough.
His low chuckle sounded like a purr. “That’s probably for the best, at least for now. I’ve heard horror stories about people tangling up their body piercings while fucking, and I sure as hell don’t want my piercing getting caught up with yours. I want this to be perfect, Gingersnap.”
That was oddly sweet, but what he said got all my attention going south of his navel in a hot second. Piercing? What piercing? With him bent over me, I couldn’t see his cock, and even in the semidarkness something like a piercing might be tough to spot. Then again, I wouldn’t know. I’d never seen one before, but suddenly…
I couldn’t wait to see his.
I wriggled a bit on the table, trying to get a better look, when all at once his muscular arms looped around the backs of my legs, his fingers digging into the tender inner flesh of my thighs mere inches from my slit, holding me wide open.
“ Don’t. Move .” The command in his tone shocked me into stillness more than the words themselves. “I didn’t give you permission to move, so you be a good girl, Ginger, and don’t. Fucking. Move.”
Was he serious? But even as those words flitted through my head, I never tried to give them life. Of course Tyr was serious. I could see it, feel it. I wasn’t going to be allowed to move until he wanted me to, so there was no point in even trying to do otherwise. My eyes stayed glued to his, before he at last turned his head and skimmed his lips along my inner thigh.
“That’s my good girl.” He kissed my inner thigh, sucking hard on that tender flesh, and I knew that by tomorrow morning I’d have a mark there that would match the hickey on my neck. Tyr definitely had a thing for marking me, a deep need driven by something primal inside that I never would have guessed lurked within him. He’d always been so controlled, so icily calm even when the world went sideways, but I was learning fast that was just the face he wore for his brothers. Now that it was just us, I glimpsed something else beneath the mask, something wild straining to come out. Even now I sensed him trying to keep himself on a tight leash, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he would be like if that leash ever snapped.
Just the thought made the ache between my legs worse.
Then his fingers moved from clutching my thighs to slide along my channel, and all thought came crashing to a halt.
Yes.
My whole body jerked as he stroked over my clit, and another small sound escaped my throat, no louder than a whisper. He heard it, though, because he made another crooning murmur of approval before stroking me again, his fingers hard and bold as they explored my channel.
“Wet,” he gloated—there was no other word for it—before placing another sucking kiss on my opposite thigh. “Can’t hide it now. You want me.”
Damn it.
“I don’t expect you to fall over yourself admitting it. Hell, no. That’s just not you.” His smile looked downright demonic as he placed another sucking kiss near the place where leg met body. A place no mouth had ever touched, and the sensation was unbelievably erotic. “But don’t think you’ll ever be able to pretend otherwise now that I know the truth. I make you wet. I make you hot. I make you quiver. And if there’s one thing you love, you love having my hands on your tits, on your skin, and on this sweet, sweet pussy that’s so wet and ready for me.” With that devil’s smile still in place, he inserted first one finger past my threshold while his thumb circled my clit. Then he inserted a second finger. Then a third. “You love me inside you.”
“Too much.” My groan was barely audible, my attention torn between the pleasure of my clit being stroked and the uncomfortable sensation of having my threshold being stretched. “Too much.”
“That’s what you’d say about my dick if I didn’t prepare your pussy this way. Not bragging, just experience. You’ll accept this in a minute. Just let me fuck you the way I need to fuck you, yeah? Trust me, you’ll find it’s the only way you’ll ever want to be fucked for the rest of your life.”
Oh, the arrogance.
My expression must have betrayed my thoughts, because he gave a scoff, lifted a shoulder that seemed to say, “You know what, fuck it,” and lowered his head.
That was all the time I had to brace.
The sensation of him tonguing the hard cluster of nerves of my clit was instantly unbearable in all the best ways. My lower abdominal muscles spasmed with an instant mini-orgasm while the muscles in my thighs quivered with each stroke. My incoherent cry was loud enough to be heard even as he pushed his fingers deeper into me. The discomfort was still there, yes, but it was nothing compared to the pleasure of his tongue stroking me. Delight rippled through my nervous system to fill me with a rich, drugging pleasure, and I closed my eyes again to fully savor it as it built to scream-inducing levels.
His fingers moved deeper to push up against that internal wall behind my clit, as if wanting to expose even more of those hyper-sensitive nerves. It felt so damn good I arched my hips, moving them in a primal need to fuck the hand that gave me such pleasure. Exquisite tension flirted around the edges of every touch and stroke, unleashing a growing wave a bliss to flow through me. With each shallow breath, my voice grew stronger with low, helpless moans, my alarm at being tied up long forgotten as I lost myself in sensation.
There could be no room for fear when I felt this good.
“I want you saying my name, woman.” Another sucking kiss on one thigh, then the other. At this rate, my thighs would be covered in hickeys. “Whispering it. Breathing it. Yelling it. Screaming it. I want my name to be the only word you know. Say it for me, Ginger. Now .” With that, he dropped his head once more, and this time he closed his mouth on my clit and sucked.
Pleasure stabbed through me so hard it flung me into another frigging realm. I came immediately, plunging into that magnificent madness like my life depended on it. My body, my mind, my everything exploded into the purest bliss, and the only word I knew was the one word he’d planted in my head to say.
“ Tyr .”
His response was almost immediate. While I still rode the crest of the best orgasm I’d ever had, Tyr rose between my knees, and moved to cradle my ass cheeks in his palms to tilt my pelvis up. I glimpsed a glimmer of something silver near the head of his cock a fraction of a second before he thrust, and I closed my eyes again on a wave of pleasure so intense I thought I might die of it. A second climax broke through me as his thrust seated his cock all the way to his hilt against me, and the impact rocked my world.
“ Tyr . God, Tyr, yes !”
That internal leash he had himself on vanished.
He plunged into me like a damn piston, and I heard the table’s legs scrape across the floor with the power of his thrusts. I’d never been filled so completely, so damn powerfully , in my life. His hands squeezed my hips to bring me to him, as if slamming me that much harder into his thrusts would deepen his penetration to the point where he didn’t know where he ended and I began.
It was a wild, insane ride, an unadulterated fucking at its most basic level, and I loved it. Each impact drove me closer to him, to becoming utterly one with him in every way possible, and as his ragged breaths grew into savage grunts, and then into muted shouts I came a third time, winding my legs around his body to hold onto the one man who made me feel whole.