12. Blood and Lies #2
If she wanted him to give in to her, she must first surrender something to him. The game had to start somewhere. “Please?”
“Please, what?”
“Please…” Was she honestly going to ask him for the things he promised?
Perhaps this was the start of the depravity he threatened.
She couldn’t think about how others might judge her.
She could only think of her survival. Beyond these walls, no one would ever know what she said to him in private. “Please, kiss me some more.”
He growled and took her mouth again, ripping open her shirt and sending buttons pinging across the floor. Cool air teased her skin, and she gasped when his hot palm cupped her breast possessively.
“Open your legs.” His knee wedged between hers, forcing her legs to open wider. His fingers groped and fondled, learning her at a pace she couldn’t fully follow.
A wave built on the horizon, strengthening in power until it was all that existed inside of her.
She rode his hand as he rubbed between her thighs, certain he was a force of nature that would destroy whatever stood in its path, whatever she was before, and leave nothing recognizable behind. She was going to?—
“Get up.”
Startled by his abruptness, a slight sound of fear escaped her throat when he ripped his hand away and yanked her out of the seat.
She clumsily tripped over her feet as he turned her, planting her hands on the back of the chair for support.
He yanked off the shirt she wore and licked down her spine, not stopping until he was on his knees, biting into her ass cheeks.
“Wait,” she gasped when she realized what he planned to do.
“That word doesn’t work here.” He cupped her sex and groaned. “Just as I thought. You’re soaked.”
He lifted her off the chair and tossed her onto the blood-red coverlet of the dark, canopied bed. There was no time to assimilate as he roughly tugged her forward.
Then time stilled and he paused, a strange ripple of hesitation skittering across his dark features. He cursed under his breath and balled his outreached hand into a fist.
“Who are you?”
“I…told you. I’m Wendy Darling?—”
“No.” He wasn’t asking her name. “There’s something else, something different.” He stepped back from the bed, spooked by something she’d missed.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“Stop talking,” he snapped, his dark eyes shifting with distrust.
She waited for him to continue, but he took another step back, putting more distance between them. Had she repulsed him in some way?
A sense of failure consumed her. That was when she acknowledged that part of her did want to please him.
What was wrong with her?
They should hate each other. She should be clawing out his eyes and cursing him to hell and back. But she needed to prove to herself that she could do this. Her need to succeed was driven by more than fear. It was driven by a dark and deeply buried seed of hope.
She wanted him to help her find this other side of herself. He might have intended his intentions as a threat, but the more he spoke about depravity, the more his words struck like a delicious promise.
Was that why he stopped? Did he sense her eagerness? Did that spoil his plans to torment her?
She wanted to pull him closer. She wanted to break herself on all his hard edges until she was so thoroughly shattered there was no salvageable part left of who she was.
Only a truly damaged woman would crave such things, but no one else had ever made such an exhilarating promise to her before, and she was curious about what she’d find on the other side.
“Turn around. On your belly. Face down.”
She did as he said and waited, flinching when he finally traced a delicate knuckle down her spine. She braved a glance over her shoulder.
“I said turn around.”
She returned her gaze to the blankets and frowned.
That gentle touch was more disarming than all his forcefulness.
She preferred the chaos. It made it harder to think.
The stillness left nowhere to run away. She had to bear the truth and acknowledge that she was allowing this not because he removed her choice but because she liked his hands on her.
The bed dipped as he pushed her thighs open. Warm breath moved over her as he leaned closer. She waited silently as he regained control, glad his little scare hadn’t spoiled his plans.
“Like a delicate flower.” He traced a finger along her slit, rimming her soft, pink folds without actually penetrating. “I wonder, what kind of woman responds this way to having her choice stripped away.”
She closed her eyes, wondering the same thing.
His stroking fingers moved so lightly over her skin her body rose to meet his touch. “I don’t even have to take it. You’re giving yourself to me.”
She could feel him in every cell of her body despite him barely touching her. He was in her veins, pulsing in places she couldn’t name, as if her heart pounded out his name, Hook, Hook, Hook, Hook…
“I can see you clenching. That’s your body begging for me.”
Anticipation stretched and consumed her. He seemed to be dragging it out on purpose—a new way of tormenting her and forcing her to see what she really was.
She gasped. Perhaps he was right. Maybe she was a whore.
His fingers trailed over her, steadily tracing her most private parts, then teasing every ridge of her spine. He was all she could feel, and it became a game to lay still for him.
“Nothing will ever feel as good as losing to me, little darling.” His finger slipped between her folds. “But first, we must clear the way.”
“Ah…” His finger pushed deeper with ease, gliding into her with a sense of ownership that deliberately forced her to face this new intimacy. He stopped when he reached the proof of her virginity.
“Imagine how tight you’ll feel stretched around my cock. I’ll own your innocence then, the way no other man could ever claim any piece of you.”
She shivered as his whispered words breathed across her spine, his finger making shallow dips in and out of her. Turning his hand, he teased her clit.
She might be his prisoner, but she wasn’t suffering. It only hurt when the shame came in. Because he was right. What kind of woman is aroused by having her choice stripped away?
He climbed over her, blanketing her body with his weight as he fingered her pussy and whispered in her ear. “I bet you taste like innocence when you come.”
He was fully clothed, but she felt the weight of his erection pressing into her back.
He changed the position of his arm, reaching under her and between her legs to finger her from the front as he ground into her from behind.
The pressure built and rubbed faster. Then, her body was overcome by sensation.
Her mouth opened in a silent cry as ripples of energy flowed over every muscle, bursting outward from the tiny storm he created inside of her.
“What a filthy little slut you are, coming all over my hand.” He laughed and bit her ear. “You hate how much you want me to take everything from you, don’t you? But there’s no denying that you love being set free. It feels good when we’re not so refined, doesn’t it, darling?”
She closed her eyes as the shameful truth became harder to deny.
He flipped her to her back and smashed her breasts together, holding them in the combined grip of both his hands. “I asked you a question.”
“Yes.” Her brow pinched. She couldn’t look at him. He was destroying her values and making her want things that were inherently wrong. He was a tyrant in the body of a god. If only he looked more like the criminal he actually was.
His hair trailed over her sensitized flesh as he bent to suckle her breasts.
Wet heat engulfed her nipple in an unbearable tight pull she hadn’t expected.
She gasped and shoved at his shoulders, unprepared for the sharp sting, but he only sucked harder, capturing her arm and slamming it down.
The more pressure he pinned her with, the more she wanted him to take from her.
How did he know her body could switch like that? It didn’t make sense that fear and pain could so easily convert to pleasure and desire.
Her body reflexively arched into him, and he released a growl of satisfaction. “Look at you.” He pinned her other arm above her head. “You’re starving for a hard fuck, aren’t you?”
She gave up the internal battle to lie and, instead, sobbed in defeat, “Yes!”
He’d ruined any sense of modesty she had left, so what was the point in denying what he could so clearly see?
“You’ve already given in. I didn’t even have to use force. I think we both know what that makes you, don’t we, darling?”
She closed her eyes, turning her face away to disassociate, but he caught her chin and forced her to acknowledge the truth.
“Open your fucking eyes. You’re not a child. Stop hiding like one.”
She compelled herself to meet his dark stare. He was right. She was hiding from the truth. Years of grooming and refinement shackled her in an emotional straightjacket, and he was untethering the most depraved parts of her, the parts she dreaded others seeing.
“Tell me what you’re thinking right now.”
She liked being his possession, and she might even be enjoying this more than any stable person should, but she still couldn’t form the words.
“Say it. I won’t judge you.”
All of her life, she’d put herself second to meet everyone else’s expectations first. Giving in to her darkest desires felt too much like she was disappointing everyone who mattered.
“Don’t think of anyone else. Only yourself. Only of your promise to please me. That’s all that matters right now. Throw everything else away and admit the kind of woman you actually are.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Please…” she begged, on the edge of corruption. “I can’t make myself say it.”