Chapter 24
ELSIE
I toss and turn, unable to fall asleep with him beside me. The need in my apex grows more ravenous as the seconds fall into the distance.
I fight the ache, turning to the side as gently as I can, hoping he doesn’t notice my restlessness. I will my eyes to close, trying to forget about the gorgeous man sharing my bed, night after night.
Slowly, I gather a look at him from behind my shoulder, finding him with his back to me.
My hand slips under my shirt, fingers tentatively sweeping over the softness of my panties.
My heartbeats pick up speed as I reach inside them, fingertips sliding down my damp slit.
A loud breath escapes past my lungs and my eyes enlarge, hoping he didn’t hear that.
When I don’t hear him rustling, I continue to explore myself, slipping a finger deeper, rolling it over my throbbing clit.
That feeling inside my gut begins to sprout as I leisurely swipe, slowly dipping a finger inside me.
I can’t stop staring at him, this beautifully powerful man, those muscles beneath his skin rippling with his soundless breaths.
A tiny moan slips past my lips and, wide-eyed, I quickly turn away completely, holding down a breath while it burns within my lungs.
He’s going to catch me. I can’t do this in front of him. I can barely do this at all. Seconds drift by, and he still hasn’t made a sound.
Thank goodness.
I try again, pushing myself beyond my comfort zone.
I have to do this. I have to own my body again. They don’t get to have me. But then my head starts to fight it, the arousal clouded by the memories of those men, their filthy hands invading all the spaces I once considered sacred.
They took me over and over, until I hated my own skin. Until I begged to die. And even with miles between us, they’re still here taking everything. Embedded in my flesh like they’ve never left at all.
My breathing grows heavy, and even as my body begs for release, I can’t seem to do it. My fingers freeze against my core, and my inhales turn jumpy as I fight the onslaught of emotions crawling up the back of my throat.
Why did I think I could do this?
“Don’t stop.” His voice sounds off behind me.
I gasp, clamping my mouth shut, holding my breath, hoping I imagined it.
Fingertips skate down my arm. “I know you were touching yourself, little dove, and I want to hear you finish. I want to hear you make yourself come.”
I pant. “I…I can’t.”
“Why not?”
His hand falls over mine, finding it in the darkness. He holds it in his as he forces my panties to the side with his thumb. And when he pushes my own fingers into my clit, I groan.
“I haven’t…done that…not since…”
His lips drift to my neck, brushing slowly up to my ear, and he whispers, “Then let me help you, baby. Let’s do it together.”
He forces my fingers to move, making me stroke my clit. My heart hammers. My pulse races. The desperation of my orgasm clings to me.
“Just like that,” he groans. “It’s just us. No one can hurt you when I’m here. I’ll always keep you safe.”
He grinds his thick and heavy cock behind me.
This feels too good. The way he makes me touch myself. Feel myself the way I should be free to.
“Spread wider for me, baby,” he demands.
When I don’t make any attempt, he grabs on to my leg and drapes my calf over his thigh, hooking his foot over my ankle to stop me from closing my legs.
“Michael,” I say on a moan, feeling owned. Like I’m his.
I continue to rub myself with him and it’s the most erotic thing I’ve ever felt.
“Let’s put those fingers inside you.” He nips my earlobe as I moan in succession. He takes my finger and guides it inside me, dipping it in and out slowly. “That’s it, just like that. What a good girl.”
My nipples harden at the praise, needing more of it. I rock into my palm as he gently drives my finger further, pushing it deeper every time.
My breathing takes on a life of its own, my tiny moans setting him off with a growl.
“I think you can take one more.” The throaty rasp of his voice oozes with approval, having me ready to come undone.
His lips spread kisses down my neck, teeth raking my shoulder blade. Then he forces another one of my fingers into my soaked pussy.
“Look how well it fits.” He clutches my fingers, fucking me with them, ramming them deeper. Harder.
“Yes…” I cry. “More…please…”
“You’re so perfect. Such an obedient little wife, doing what I asked.”
His dirty talk is making the sounds coming out of me sound inhuman, my body swimming with an exhilarating sensation. He forces my fingers faster, slipping them out, rolling my wetness around my clit, over and over until my legs tremble.
“You’re so beautiful. Too beautiful for me. But here I am, taking what isn’t mine to take.”
“It’s yours.” I heave out a gasping breath.
He doesn’t realize I’d give him all of it.
Every broken and bruised fragment of my heart.
Because he’s managed to make me feel something I’ve yet to feel at the hands of a man.
He’s managed to make me feel cherished. And even if our marriage is fake, even if it’s not forever, I’ll take it anyway. It feels too good not to.
He buries my fingers back inside me.
“Oh, God, Michael. I’m close.” I attempt to catch my breath as he drives me closer to the edge.
He fully takes over, thrusting my fingers with a hurried tempo, and when his thumb skirts up to my clit, fingering it, I scream. I fall. I let him take me somewhere I never thought I’d go. This feeling…it’s foreign, it’s freeing.
It’s mine.
“That’s it, little dove. Let go and come for me.”
“Yes, yes, yes! Oh fu—” The words are trapped in my throat, because as soon as my body climbs down, it’s three of his fingers inside me.
And he doesn’t stop. He fucks me with a vengeance, slamming hard, his palm fisting my hair as he takes me while his lips kiss and bite my neck. The orgasm is euphoric and never-ending; the way he stretches me has my eyes rolling into the back of my head.
“You’re gonna come again.” The commanding timbre of those words enflames my senses. “You’re going to take it all. You’re gonna squirt for me like my good girl until it’s enough for me to lick off your thighs.”
“I…can’t…” I stammer, my body shuddering, my ass pressing up against the length of his hard and heavy cock.
“You can.” His gruff voice fills my ears, his hand tightening around my strands. “You’ll see what you’re capable of.”
“I…oh, God!” I scream as the surge of another orgasm builds and my body flares to life once again.
“Fuck my fingers,” he growls. “Take what you need. It’s yours, baby.”
His mouth swallows my earlobe as his hot breath hisses across my neck. I know I’m close. I can feel the warmth and the tingles rushing into my toes.
“You’re about to spill, baby,” he rasps. “And my only regret is that it’s not around my mouth. But I’ll have that again.”
He thrusts his hips into my ass.
“I’ll have all of you, my little dove, because you were made for me.”
I quiver from the feel of him, from his deep voice as he works me faster. The relentless power of his command of my body is earth shattering, until I shatter too.
“Michael!” His name drops from my lips like a pledge of devotion while my body convulses in complete euphoria.
“Right here, baby. Shit, look at you.”
I didn’t even notice that he was on his knees, staring at my pussy while he plunged his fingers in and out of me. I don’t even care because I can’t stop coming. I’ve never been this turned on in my life.
“Look at you squirting, and it’s all for me.”
His thumb gently rolls around my clit, and I jolt, finding his hungry eyes on mine, the head of his cock poking out from his sweats.
He slows his fingers until they slide out, and instead of wiping me off of him, he runs them across his lips before he sucks them.
I watch him taste me, unable to keep my eyes off of him, my heart beating out of my rib cage. When my gaze jumps back down to the big bulge between his thick thighs, all I want to do is taste him too.
Without thinking twice, I prop myself up on my elbows and reach for it, my hand squeezing the crown.
“Fuuuck…” His hand snaps to my wrist. “What are you doing?”
I stretch an arm toward the lamp and turn it on, gazing up at his heavy-lidded eyes. “I want to give you what you gave me. I want to try it with you.”
It’s always been forced on me, but this time I’m giving it freely. It’s my choice.
“I don’t have much strength to be the bigger person right now, Elsie,” he grits, pinning his gaze to mine, his voice snapping.
And it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard. To see him this way and to know I did that…I want to see what else I can do.
“Please, baby, if you don’t want my cock down your pretty throat, you’d better tell me right now.”
His eyes narrow, hungered and brutal lust seeping within them, a promise of the rough man I want.
I nod.
“Say it. I want to hear you tell me how bad you want to suck my cock.”
My top teeth scrape along my lower lip, the ache between my legs now back.
“I want you to fill my mouth with your cock,” I whisper. “I want to watch you come.”
My pulse thuds at what I’ve just said, unable to imagine saying it to a man.
But I did. I said that. And it’s true. Every word of it.
He hisses a breath, his gaze jumping to the ceiling for only a second before those eyes snap to mine. And the man staring at me is the same man I met the first time: a hunter. A savage.
“Take it out. Show me how a good girl sucks dick.” A finger tilts up my chin. “You wanna be my good girl, don’t you?”
I nod, completely and utterly breathless. Every ounce of me wants to please him like he did me. Reaching a hand inside his pants, I stroke his velvety length until he groans and swears, saying my name on repeat, like it’s a song he wrote just for me.
“Baby, you keep stroking me like that, and I’m gonna explode around your hand before I ever get to feel your mouth.”
A gasping cry falls out of my lips before I start to tug his sweats down his strong, powerful thighs, that thick cock springing out.
My eyes slide down the length of it, wanting to know what he tastes like, what he sounds like when he feels good. And the more I stare at it, the more I want him inside me. I take him in my palm, testing the feel of him against my hand.
“Fuck!”
He drops his head back, and I watch him as I start running my hand up and down from root to tip.
He groans, staring back at me, his fingers sinking into the back of my head. “Not a goddamn woman on this earth has made me feel this good.”
How can that be true? A man as powerful as him has had plenty of women throw themselves at him, doing whatever he wanted. And me? What do I offer that they haven’t?
My hand slows. He must be telling me what I want to hear.
And why should it even matter to me if it’s true or not? This is just us fooling around. It means nothing. My eyes fall to my movements, no longer wanting to look at him.
He curses under his breath once I increase my pace; I shove those thoughts away. But when I think about him sleeping with another woman, touching her like he’s touched me, my stomach twists and my hand jitters around him.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his palm lowering to cup my face, and a thumb under my jaw forces me to look at him.
My heart beats faster, and those eyes…they gaze at me like I mean a damn.
I shove his hand away, and his jaw clenches.
“What’s wrong? Tell me.”
There’s a slight edge to his tone, but I don’t answer. I can’t. I’ll sound childish. He’s not my husband. He’s not even my boyfriend.
He pulls his sweats back on.
“If you can’t do this...” His thumb strokes my lips, voice growing softer. “You don’t have to. There’s no pressure at all.”
A knot hits the back of my throat, and before I can stop myself, I say, “Just don’t lie to me, okay?” My heartbeats pound inside my chest. “I don’t need to be told I’m the only woman who’s made you feel good when it’s bullshit.”
“Bullshit?” he snickers, grabbing my hips and whisking me onto his lap as he settles on the mattress, my thighs straddling him, his cock rubbing up against me. “It’s not bullshit, little dove.”
He tightens an arm around the small of my back, his gaze boring into mine, stirring my heart with feelings, with wanting more.
With him. With this man who was never supposed to be anything but a mistake.
His knuckles slowly brush down my cheek, his gaze unnerving me, sending goose bumps scattering down my arms.
“I’ve fucked a lot of women, Elsie, but just to come.
I never needed anything else. None of them mattered.
None of them managed to get under my skin the way you have.
” His palm cruises up my spine, fingers threading in my hair as he pushes me lower, brushing his lips with mine.
“I don’t know what’s happening when I’m with you, and I’ve tried like hell to fight it, but I’m coming undone. ”
His voice drops, and I don’t even need to look at him to know he just told me the truth. Because all I have to do is close my eyes and listen.
I fight my emotions, afraid to want something. To have something that won’t be taken away.
“For the first time in my life…” he quietly says. “I want to bleed for someone other than my daughter.”
His chest expands as he yanks my head back.
“I want to bleed for you.”
Moisture builds in the veil of my eyes, my chest quickening with harsh breathing. What does this mean? I’m afraid to wonder, afraid to ask. Dreams are for little girls who don’t know the cruelty of life. How can I be that little girl now?
The width of his large hand covers my nape, affection gripping his features as our deepened gazes align.
I gasp almost breathlessly when he drags me down to meet his mouth, his warm breath a concoction of everything I crave.
“I swore to myself it’s not safe to fall. To feel.” His forehead meets mine, fingers tangled in my long strands. “But with you, like this, I can’t seem to care. Fuck, Elsie, I want to kiss you so badly.”
My stomach flips, my fingers slicing in between the long tendrils of his hair, tugging roughly as he groans. “Then kiss me, Michael.”
Two hands hold my face as he forces himself back, his brows tugging. “You don’t understand what that means to me.” His eyes flutter to a momentary close. “The last time I kissed a woman, I was twenty.”
My eyes snap wide.
“Why?” I whisper.
“Because…” He lowers my face to his. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
And the next thing I know, he captures my lips with his, kissing me once—just once—and it's as though my soul unravels.