Chapter Thirty-Five
Squealing metal,grating stone… something in the air shifts. I can taste… I don’t have a word for it other than luxury. Rich, faintly metallic, with an underlying tone that’s almost… spicy, maybe?
A sound snaps through the air—the unmistakable flick of a lighter.
“All right,” Ryker says. “Open your eyes.”
I lower my hands from my face.
“This,” he says, “is Count Verdo’s more personal haven.”
A door-sized portion of the brick wall has swung inwards, revealing a whole new room, easily as big as the one where I’m standing now. Ryker’s phone light is switched off, replaced by the buttery gold illumination of a candelabra perched on a mahogany side table…
A side table adjacent to the biggest bed I’ve ever seen.
A velvet canopy. A heap of tasseled pillows. A thick, decadent comforter of the richest crimson.
I barely register the other parts of the room—a clawfoot bathtub in one corner, a wall lined with wine barrels, a dusty-eyed taxidermy hawk… they all pass distantly through my awareness as I walk up to the bed.
“More personal,” I repeat. The wallpaper in here is deep red to match the blankets, and the impression is an unnerving one, as though the two of us are inside of a living, beating heart. “What… exactly does that mean?”
“A number of things. Sex. Torture.” Something new is creeping into his tone, an eager sort of purr that sends a shiver down my spine. “Whatever you prefer.”
“It’s like stepping back in time.” I trace the polished wood of the nearest bedpost with a slow, careful finger. “This is unbelievable, Ryker.”
“Unbelievable,” he echoes—something about his voice compels me to turn around, and there he is, watching me intently.
“What?”
“Just… you’re one to talk about unbelievable.”
Heat sinks into my cheeks, undoubtedly painting me as red as the blankets on the bed behind me. “Oh, come on.”
He doesn’t smile at my embarrassment. Instead, he steps closer, probing my body with that hard, unblinking stare. My heart flutters faster. He’s sizing me up like a hunter measuring its prey, gauging the opportunity to pounce. I take a step backward, then another, until the solid wood of the bedframe nudges my waist.
“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he demands. “How you’ve possessed me, ever since that first night?”
“Possessed you?”
There’s nowhere left for me to go, and yet he’s still approaching, narrowing the gap between us. Not just watching me, but consuming me somehow with his eyes alone, leaving me so vulnerable that I might as well be stripped nude.
“Possessed me,” he repeats, his voice scraping low in his throat. “In a way that nobody should. That nobody ever has. It frustrates me how much I want you, Lia.”
He sounds… angry.
Have I angered him? It crosses my mind briefly that I’ve been foolish to follow him here—but I know all the same that I wouldn’t go back if I could. I’m where I want to be… even if I do get hurt.
The outside world is a thousand miles away, but Ryker is right here. Closer and closer, the candlelight flickering over his chiseled face, down his neck, towards the collar of his shirt—the first button is undone, and I can’t seem to look away from the stretch of skin below it.
“Not going to answer me?” he demands.
“I… don’t know what to say.” My tongue darts over my lips, and I can see his chest tightening below his shirt—his hands, fisted at his sides, strain until the veins stand out.
“I hate when you do that,” he growls.
Hate is the word he uses, but his tone tells a different story. Head buzzing, I utter the only words that come to mind: “When I don’t know what to say?”
He scoffs and gives his head a sharp jerk. “When you bite your fucking lip like that.”
I can smell him, musky and potent. One of his hands wraps around a bedpost, and he leans over me, forcing me to bend back until my shoulders strain.
“Do it again,” he whispers, his warm breath ghosting across my own parted, trembling mouth.
“But you said that you?—”
“Do it again.”
Slowly—not sure if this is what he’s asking for—I drag my lower lip between my teeth, sucking its corner into my mouth. He watches me with heavy-lidded eyes—not blue in this light, but pure black beneath his long, dark lashes. His legs aren’t touching mine, not quite, but the heat emanating from them is a pressure of its own, enough to send a ripple of shivering pleasure through my core. My hands scrabble for a hold behind me—I can’t find purchase on the sleek, thick blanket.
“Good girl,” he breathes.
He leans forward and his lips graze my neck, lightly at first, tracing over the barely-healed bruises that he left last time. His teeth test my skin, and I can’t hold back the gasp that flies from me.
“I’m ready,” I sigh—more than ready, wet and throbbing, yearning for nothing more than his bare body against mine once more. “Please, I can take it…”
He withdraws, and the sudden lack of his weight spurs another gasp. I don’t even know when I closed my eyes, just that I’m blinking them open again, taking a moment to adjust to the candlelight. He’s doing something, messing with his neck—his shirt—no, his tie. The tie that, for some reason, he decided to wear today.
His eyes narrow. “Can you?”
It’s not a question—it’s a dare.
“Because last time, dove, I was gentle. Very gentle. I didn’t know how much you could handle, and I didn’t want you running off.” He finishes undoing the tie and grips it at both ends. “You say you can take it. Do you know what you can take?”
My lips ache for him. Quick, pulsing pains of pure need run from my hips all the way down to my half-numb feet.
“Of course not.” My voice is breathy, weightless. “But I’m ready to find out.”
His eyes flash.
“Good answer.”
He pounces, knocking me back onto the huge mattress and robbing the air from my lungs. Before I can make sense of my new alignment, he’s grasping my shoulder and forcing me onto my stomach—firm but not harsh. Methodical. He knows what he’s doing—knows it very well. His fingers are around my wrists, pulling them behind my back—I whimper, the sound muffled by the pillows.
“People have bled out in this bed, you know,” he whispers, his lips scorching my ear. “Their last thoughts were incoherent. Pure fear. Are you afraid, Lia?”
Soft fabric slides across the sensitive undersides of my wrists. Pulling them together—binding them there, leaving me helpless.
Of course I’m afraid. And it feels amazing. Heightening my every nerve ending, leaving me primal and desperate and absolutely aching with need.
“Yes,” I mumble into the pillow.
The tie tightens, biting viciously against my wrists. Within seconds, my fingertips go numb.
His mouth is at my ear again. “Do you still think you can take it?”
“Yes.”
Fingers at my thighs, my waist, grasping the hems of my skirt and underwear and ripping them both away at the same time. The shock of air against my lower half is harsh but brief—he grips the back of my thighs and shoves them forward.
“Get your ass in the air,” he snarls. “Get it the fuck up?—”
I bend at his request, my practiced dancer’s body folding easily in on itself—earning a rumble of pleasure that seems to move straight from his throat to the soaking, desperate place between my legs—and then his mouth is there, framed by his thumbs on either side, keeping me wide open for his hot tongue to plunge in.
The softness of his mouth builds a delicious contrast with the rough graze of his stubble. I thrust back against him, and it’s so close, so close but not reaching the spot where I need him, where he knows that I need him.
“Still tight.” He speaks into me, and all I can do is whimper in response. “Still mine.”
He’s kissing me now, indulgently and reverently, drawing his tongue up and down, in and out until all I can do is squirm. My arms strain against the restraint of his tightly knotted tie—I need to grab something, the pillows, the sheets, anything—but I can’t, and the friction of the blankets against my body drives me even more wild—I hear something tear, maybe my blouse, but couldn’t care less.
His breaths are heightening now, betraying a trace of desperation—but at the same time, I can feel him pulling away from me. I whimper in protest and try to turn back over, but he stills me with a hand planted between my shoulder blades, fingers curling so tightly that I can feel their bite even through my shirt.
“Stay right there,” he hisses. “I’m calling the shots now, and you’re going to take it like the good—fucking—girl that you are.”
His last few words are punctuated with the squeal of his zipper, the shuffling of his pants being discarded—this time, I recognize the sound of foil being ripped open, eliciting a moan of anticipation that shudders through me from head to toe.
“Don’t you dare.” He grasps my thighs and spreads them wider. “Not without me.”
“’M not…” I’m almost choking on the pillow, a mess of heat and sweat, tearing up with the pure sweltering intensity of it all.
“You’ll come when I tell you to,” he orders me, “and not a second before.”
Come. I haven’t heard the word used like that before, but I know instinctively what it means, and I can’t help but whine in response—earning me a hand around my throat, stifling the sound into a ragged cough.
“Not. A. Second. Before.”
Still gripping my neck in one hand, he delves the other one between my legs, feeling his way into me. I shudder and jerk, white light blazing behind my eyes—biting down on my lip until I can taste blood, and I know he would love that, no matter how much he claims to hate it, but I can’t tell him, can’t form words at all because he’s doing it, he’s—in Harper’s words—fucking me, pounding his way inside of me, and I’m rising up to meet him, but still I have to constrain myself, not a second before, and I can’t displease him, can’t disobey.
Rough breaths, feral heat, skin on skin. I can feel my climax coming, and repressing it only builds the desperate pressure—wait, wait, have to wait—have to hold back?—
“Lia,” he pants into my ear, tongue drawing frantic swirls along its edge.
All I can do is scream for him, my throat vibrating against his tightening fingers. I’m growing dizzy, either from his grip or from the strain of holding back or both, I need, I need?—
“Good girl…”
Oh God, how those words overcome me. How easily I bend beneath him, a prisoner to his desire, a servant to his pleasure.
“Fuck, fuck, damn it—damn it, Lia… you precious perfect thing?—”
I can sense it now, not just in me but in him, and my body convulses just as he lets himself go with a rough, shuddering shout, so much louder than before—my own voice entwines with his, a wail of pleasure that I needn’t suppress because this is our place, ours alone, ours forever.
He keeps going, pumping inside of me, stretching me to the point of pain—and even then it doesn’t matter, because it’s pain from him, and I savor every last second of it.
I don’t know when it ends. For all I know, it doesn’t end. The physical sensation eases, leaving me limp and pliant and soaked in sweat—but the ecstasy lingers. I can’t believe this is him. I can’t believe this is real.
But it is. The most real thing I’ve ever felt.
I’m barely aware of the tie loosening around my wrists. My fingertips hurt as the blood flows back to them, a thousand little stabbing needles, but I couldn’t possibly care less.
Ryker lowers himself to my side and wraps one arm loosely around me. His breath stirs my hair, rapid but steady.
I know I can’t fall asleep here. It can’t even be past mid-afternoon, and my friends will wonder where I am, and I have homework, responsibilities…
But when I start to move, Ryker’s arm tightens, and everything else leaves my mind.
For now—just a tiny bit longer—I’ll let myself stay. I’ll lie here in the afterglow of the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt, and I’ll allow myself to believe, however foolishly, that nothing will ever come between us.