Chapter 8 #2
My breath catches, and he uses it to his advantage, deepening the kiss, his tongue invading and tasting.
Muscles that had been tense with anticipation or lingering apprehension loosen, liquefying underneath him.
I reach for him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, my hips hitching up to cradle his abdomen, allowing me to take him deeper.
He murmurs phrases that aren’t English into my mouth, and I wish I’d taken my mother up on learning Gaelige Uladh.
The thought pops like a bubble as his body presses full length against mine.
Hardness against softness. I meet his words with senseless whines, unable to control the responses he pulls out of me. Mindless.
Thoughtless.
The way I’ve been…never.
I’ve never felt like this before.
Never had every anxiety, every thought simply vanish from my brain.
I float on the feeling, letting it turn me languorous and blur the edges of the world around me until Aiden is the only thing left.
He’s saying something against my cheekbone, the words too low and guttural for me to comprehend.
My body tightens around him, clasping him with my cunt, my legs, my arms.
“Why did you have to be so feckin’ perfect?” he wonders aloud, more to himself than to me. “Taking me so good. Can you handle a little more?”
I murmur something unintelligible. My mask tilts precariously on my face, slightly obscuring my vision. It’s a miracle that it’s still there, literally hanging on by a thread.
“Of course you can. You’ll take it all, won’t you? Take everything and give it back as good as you get. Feckin’ perfect,” he repeats. “Stubborn. Beautiful. Even when you give me all those pretty tears. That’s it. Take all of it. Let me in, sweetheart. Show me you’re mine.”
I don’t let him in so much as he forces himself to fit. Stretches me until I want to cry with how full I am. Then he’s licking the tears from my cheeks, and I realize I’m crying.
“Please” is the only word I remember how to say.
The next orgasm—the third? Fourth? I’ve lost count—rips into me as his teeth latch onto my nipple.
That twinge of pain acts like gasoline to a flame, leading to an explosive orgasm that rolls into another almost immediately from the rhythmic clamp of my cunt around him inside me.
I black out for a moment, the world turning dark, my vision wavering, my ears buzzing until all I can hear are my ragged breaths.
La petite mort indeed. I’ve never truly understood the French phrase for an orgasm—a little death—more clearly than I do as my vision clears and my hearing returns.
Aiden could find his own release quickly after, but naturally, he doesn’t.
When I devolve into tears and beg that he has to stop, he only slows his thrusts.
Kisses fresh tears from my skin, then takes my mouth until I’m sighing against his lips.
He tells me how beautiful I am, how good I feel, and soothes me when I tell him I can’t take any more.
I die those little deaths a few more times, or maybe it’s one long, rolling orgasm. I stop caring and can only cling to his shoulders, clinging on to my last remaining link to the living.
When he finally comes, his arms are wrapped around me again, holding me tight to his tense body.
I have enough awareness to clasp him against me, one hand low on his back, one in the soft bristle of closely trimmed hair at the base of his skull.
I hold him like I never want to let him revel in the way he shudders against me, body slick with sweat and fused to mine.
I keep him there for a long time, long enough that the sweat cools and our heartbeats slow to their normal rates. Eventually, he pushes up to relieve me of his weight, and I have to bite back my protest.
“Alright?” Aiden asks, his eyes flicking over me to assess.
All I can do is nod, and he dips his head to plant a kiss on my jaw. I wince as he pulls out because there isn’t a part of me that doesn’t ache. I lie in the middle of the bed, unable to move and wondering if I can die there when he returns from disposing of the condom.
He scoops me up into his arms like I don’t weigh a thing and carries me to the shower, which is already running.
After he tests the water and deems it safe, he tugs me under the spray in front of him, and I groan at the delicious heat as it rains down over me.
There’s a tugging at the back of my head and before I know it, the mask protecting my identity falls to the floor with an anticlimactic splash.
“You don’t have to tell me who you are. But I want to see your face.”
I’m frozen as he turns me around, waiting for him to recognize me, but the only emotion in his face is satisfaction.
Relief takes the starch out of my knees and I barely manage to hold myself upright, and Aiden chuckles when he notices. “All the fight worn out of you?” he asks as he lathers soap scented with vanilla all over my quaking body.
Has he really not recognized me? If he had, wouldn’t he have said something.
“Momentarily,” I admit, my voice a croak. “If you were trying to ensure I couldn’t run away, you’ve succeeded. For now.”
Maybe he doesn’t watch the news. Or doesn’t care about American politics.
“There’s nowhere you could run where I wouldn’t find you.”
My wicked retort dies in my throat as his masterful hand moves between my legs.
He lets the water rinse me before he uses a wet washcloth to clean the sensitive flesh there.
I grip a handrail to stabilize as my weary thigh muscles threaten to go on strike.
As though to emphasize his point, his devilish fingers bring me to another brutal climax in short order, not stopping until my legs threaten to collapse beneath me.
“Try to run now,” he says with a smirk.
I glare back at him and snatch the washcloth away to give him the same treatment.
At his lifted brow, I shove him under the water and slowly drag the soapy cloth over his heavily muscled body.
It had been so dark in the bedroom that I hadn’t been able to study him as closely as I would have liked, and this may be the only chance I ever get, so I take my time.
He submits to me as I lose the washcloth and trail my hands over every part of him I can reach at least once.
It almost feels like goodbye, and I tuck my chin under when that makes an ache roil in my belly.
Once we’re clean and dry, he pulls me back to the bed. When I resist, glancing at the door, he shakes his head. “I said all night. Now come here.”
Me from a few hours ago would have fought him.
But in the dark where no one can see, where I’m safe knowing that I’ll never see him again, I tuck my body against his, loving the way I fit right under his chin.
He hitches my leg over his hip, and in no time, he slips into sleep with me wrapped safely in his arms.
* * *
It’s 3 a.m. I haven’t slept at all. Meanwhile, Aiden snores softly next to me, his lips slightly parted, his face soft and would be boyish if it weren’t for the angular lines of his underlying bone structure.
I should have left the moment I was certain he was dead to the world, but I can’t seem to make myself move.
The clock on the bedside table ticks down the seconds, growing louder and louder until it drones in my skull like a second heartbeat.
Sleeping was out of the question when I realized he’d passed out, and I know if I wait any longer, I’ll give in to the rest I so desperately need.
My muscles ache, heavy and limp with satisfaction, my head fuzzy with exhaustion, and my thoughts won’t quit racing.
Despite the weights practically hanging from my eyelids, I’ve kept myself conscious by sheer will alone.
Am I afraid of him? The question’s plagued me since he settled heavily behind me, his arm banding around my waist and holding me to his naked body.
Maybe I’ll always be a little afraid of him.
But right now, I’m more scared of what I might do if morning dawns and I’m still here.
Seeing him soft with sleep was problem enough.
Maybe I fear he’ll ask me to stay, and the words that come out of my mouth won’t be the ones I want them to be.
The ones I know I have to say to protect the tangled web of lies I’ve found myself in.
Instead, I’d agree to anything he wants.
Stay longer. That I won’t be able to keep my mouth shut.
That I’ll tell him who I am and why I basically broke into his house and stole from him.
I can’t risk it.
I can’t.
I can’t.
It shouldn’t be this hard to leave when only hours ago, leaving was the only thing I wanted.
I’ve known him for less than half a day.
It should be impossible for him to have burrowed so completely beneath my skin, but somehow he has.
Somehow, it feels like tearing a part of me away as I study his face for the last time.
Because it has to be the last time.
I can’t risk running into him again or staying a moment longer. I won’t even consider searching out his name after I leave for fear it’ll somehow lead back to me. The last thing I need is for news of this debacle to get back to my father.
No, what I need is a clean break.
Fingers clenched in desperate fists in front of me, I count down from five or else I’ll never get out of this bed.
Five. Angular cheekbones. Full, soft lips.
Four. A heavy brow over mist-colored eyes.
Three. Tattoos covering nearly every inch of his perfect skin, all the way down his throat and chest. I could study them for a lifetime and never memorize them all properly.
Two. If I could kiss him one more time, I would.
I’d go back and throw myself at his feet the first time he asked.
One.
Without allowing a moment to second-guess myself, I roll away from Aiden, determined to keep my eyes averted.
Like he’s a black hole, and merely acknowledging him is all I’ll need to do to be sucked in.
I find my dress thrown over the foot of the bed and climb into it as quietly as possible.
My shoes are a lost cause. I have no idea where the hell I left them, and I don’t want to risk wasting time trying to find them.
The most important thing is my purse with my mother’s phone inside.
The whole reason I found myself in this mess.
It’s on a side table near the door where Aiden left it after my mad dash through the garage. It feels like so long ago. Like the person I was then is so vastly different from the woman I am now that I don’t recognize her.
Focus.
Nabbing the purse, I move across the bedroom to the window where I know my drop to the ground will be the easiest. No shrubs or miscellaneous garden accents.
It would be easier to leave through the door, but it’s not a risk I’m willing to take.
His friend may be there or one of his other associates.
It’s there that I pause, looking back at where he’s still sleeping in the bed.
There’s so much I want to know about him. So many questions left unanswered.
But I’ll have to be content to end things here.
Because he’s dangerous, and I have no room in my life for more peril.
Even if they have a mouth made for sin, a body like a god, and the ability to read me like a book.
So as Halloween dawns, I make my getaway, determined to erase last night from my memory—despite knowing it’ll be impossible.