Chapter Nine #3
He reached between us and I could feel his blunt, hard fingers playing with the softest part of me.
He wrapped his hand around his own length, and guided the thick head to my entrance, then he looked at me as he propped himself up on one elbow, his face so fierce it made my heart flip inside my chest. It made a new heat dance all over me.
“Mine,” he said, this man of vows.
And I knew this was one of them.
“Yours,” I agreed.
And we gazed at each other, consecrating ourselves in this flesh, this earth, this marvel that had found us at the least likely moment.
“I want it to hurt,” I told him, ferociously. Almost furiously. “At first. I think it should. I want it to matter.”
I felt the shudder that went through him. “You, Ruxandra Emilia Ardelean, are the dream I never had, come true. How is it possible that you could be like this? So perfect it’s as if I made you myself.”
“Because I’m yours.” And then I smiled at him. “Silly.”
His eyes gleamed. That would have been enough. But he wasn’t done. As I watched, the most dangerous man in the world, naked and on top of me, laughed.
I saw his teeth again. I saw his head tip back. He laughed as if it hurt him a little bit, but he kept going.
And when he looked down at me again, I felt the shock of recognition down into my bones.
He might think that I had been made for him.
But I knew better. He was made for me. The key to open all the locks that held me in my whole life.
The one weapon forged strong enough to save me, when I had long ago given up on saving myself.
When I had accepted that fate would have its way with me, and the best that I could do was wait until it turned its uncompromising eye on someone else.
Jovi was the only man alive who could have taken me out of there. The only one who would dare, and better yet, could make certain he did it right.
I’d been waiting for him my entire life.
There was still laughter all over his face, but he focused on me and he moved the head of his cock against all my heat, so I could feel him.
And as I opened my mouth to beg him to simply do it—
He slammed his way home.
I came all around him, arching up into him, as that searing, impossible pain soared through my body. I felt split in half. I felt like flying. I had never hurt more, and yet even as I thought that, even as the words formed in my head, the pleasure came in behind.
Hotter. Darker.
Fueled by the shock of pain, it went on and on and on, spinning me out, taking me hostage, killing me again and again and again.
And all the while, he waited.
As I slowly shuddered back into my own skin, I could feel him braced above me, murmuring words I couldn’t understand. He held himself still, every muscle of his body tense, while he was enormous and rock hard inside me.
I realized that he had only just begun.
“Welcome back, curò,” he said. And when he traced a shape over my left breast, I thought I knew what it meant. My heart.
I felt inside out. I lifted a hand and traced one dark brow, then the other.
“That’s a different word. You never told me what the old one meant.”
“Baggiana,” he said. “It means ‘foolish woman.’ Appropriate, I think you’ll agree, but now.” He moved inside me, just a little, and we both groaned. “Now I think the time for foolishness is done.”
Then he gathered me closer, pulled my legs high over his hips so that I locked my ankles behind his back, and he surged in deep.
He did that a few times, sinking himself inside my body a little more each time. Then pulling himself back. And each time he did it, I could remember the pain of that first thrust less and less.
My body accommodated itself to him. I melted around him as he rocked into me, deeper and deeper, and I was determined to take all of him. I was determined to melt myself completely beneath him.
I knew I had managed it when he began to grunt with each thrust. When his head dropped down as his arms moved beneath us to grab my ass so he was controlling not only his own thrusting but mine, too. Then his mouth was on my throat and I felt him bite, then suck.
I wrapped my arms around his wide shoulders, tipped my head back, and let go.
Because for the first time in all my life, I felt free.
He thrusted harder, deeper. Each time he slammed inside, he scraped against me as he retreated and brought me closer and closer to that edge once again.
Until, finally, I was meeting those magnificent thrusts with the same intensity and we were both slicked with sweat, determined and mad with the same need that was in us both.
“You are mine, Rux,” he intoned, dark and forbidding, there at my ear. “You will always be mine, as long as we live. This I promise you.”
“You are mine,” I told him in return, though I could barely speak and I could hear my breathlessness in my voice. “You are always and ever mine. Always, Jovi.”
And on the next thrust, he turned me into fireworks.
Then, with a shout, he followed me into all those pyrotechnics.
I could feel him deep inside me, as if he belonged there. As if the entire purpose of our bodies was this joining, this melting, and the spectacular explosions that went on and on and on.
Even as I could feel that scalding heat of his, flooding me from within.
At some point, many centuries removed, or perhaps a few moments, he disengaged from me and laughed again when I made a small sound of loss.
Jovi was astonishingly beautiful naked, with the sun playing all over his body.
He looked like a god, here on this island that I suspected had seen its share of them in its time.
He looked like he’d stepped out of a myth when he reached down and hauled me up into his arms again, then carried me back into that ruined old house, up the stairs, and inside.
He didn’t take me to the room I’d woken up in, but led me in a different direction entirely, sweeping into a room on the other side of the house that I knew at once was his.
There was what looked like a wardrobe in one corner, and the bed had a bed frame.
Both exquisitely wrought. But I only registered those tiny hints of actual furnishings before he took me into a bathroom suite and directly into a shower that had been built for an army.
As the water beat down all around us, he lathered me with soap, seeming to check every part of my body as he did it. Particularly the back of me and the bottoms of my feet, and it occurred to me after a moment that he was making certain that our run to the garden hadn’t hurt me.
I didn’t know how to tell him that I would have preferred it if I was as scarred as he was. If everything we did together left a mark so that I could display it to the world.
He squeezed shampoo into his cupped hand, then massaged it into my hair.
I leaned back against him as he worked. “You watched me while I was sleeping, too.”
“I did.”
“Since the beginning, you’ve taken care with me. Do you know why?”
I didn’t think he was going to answer. He rinsed out my hair, focusing on his task with a certain determination, and yet when he was done, he turned me back to face him. He slicked the water back from my face.
“You make me want to protect you,” he told me, as if it was a dark confession. “I don’t know why. That is not something I know how to do.”
“You do know how,” I argued, with too much emotion all over me. “And you’re good at it.”
“Such an irony,” he murmured.
It was my turn to advance on him, and I did. I pushed him back against the tile wall and tilted my head up as I leaned in.
“Listen to me,” I demanded, fiercely. “A weapon is nothing more than a tool. You can decide how to use it. You can decide whether you draw blood or build something better. You don’t owe your soul to anyone, Jovi.”
I reached over and put my hand on this tattoo.
I traced it with my fingers, then I leaned close and kissed it, too.
“I can feel your heart beating. As long as I can, that means you’re alive.
And you belong to you, no matter what your uncle told you.
No matter what he made you. You can choose to be anything you want. ”
He stared at me, then he made a noise I couldn’t interpret. He reached over and slapped off the water, then he led me from the shower. He seemed almost brusque and impatient as he toweled me off, but then he led me back into the bedroom and sat on his bed, taking me down with him.
He hooked his palm on the back of my neck and pulled me close to kiss him as I straddled him.
After a while, deep and wild, he pulled his mouth away. His hands on my hips, he repositioned me over his cock and let me find the right fit. I looked down at his impossible male beauty as I lifted myself up, then found my seat again. Finding myself impaled anew each time.
Just like before, he let me do as I would until something shifted inside him, his grip on my hips changed, and he took over.
The truth was, as much as I liked playing, I liked it when he took charge of me even more.
Jovi taught me how to ride him, and I did. I arched into him and I surrendered myself into his grip, once again, until we touched the sky and shattered into pieces.
Together.
But when I woke up, he was gone.