33. Riley
Logan staresat me so long that it feels like I really will drown in his blue eyes. He holds himself utterly still, but I know him now. It’s what he does when he’s the most intensely focused. When he’s restraining everything I want him to unleash. The darkness in him is hungry for this, just like I am, and the only thing keeping me from spiraling into a full-blown panic attack is the unbreakable restraint of his arms around me.
But I need more. I need him to be my tether right now, and I let him hear every bit of that desperation in my voice as I beg for it.
“Please,” I gasp, my breathing ragged as the dark place within me threatens to suck me under.
“Are you sure?” he asks, his voice strained.
“I am. I need you.”
He brings a hand up to wrap around my throat, holding my head in place as he keeps it turned to look at him. I can feel the tension in his muscles, his entire body pressed against mine. “Everything is real between us,” he says deliberately, not letting me look away. “You’re mine, wildcat. I won’t ever give you up, and I’ll never let you get away. You belong to me.”
His eyes are like pale windows to his soul. He means it… and that means fucking everything to me.
“Thank you,” I whisper, my voice breaking.
“You have a safe word.”
I nod, even though it’s not a question.
His lips tighten for a moment. “All you need to do is say it, and I’ll stop.”
I nod again. “I know. I trust you.”
He searches my face, and I can see the war inside him as the part of him that may always wonder if he’s more monster than man clawing at the walls of this thing we’ve built between us.
The trust.
The need.
The feelings that bind us together and turn our darkness into something we can both thrive on.
“I trust you, Logan,” I repeat in a broken whisper. “I need this. I need you.”
His cock starts to harden against me, but he still takes a moment, holding me tight. Then he gives in to what we both want, giving me one sharp nod before pushing me away from him.
“Run.”
The rasping command falls between us, full of dark promise, and my body reacts on pure instinct, turning away from a dangerous predator and bolting toward the door of the room.
I almost make it.
“Mine,” he growls as he catches me, taking me down to the rubber mats they’ve lined the basement gym with. “What did I fucking say?”
I gasp, fighting him hard. Squirming to get away.
He reaches a hand between my legs, grabbing my pussy as he flips me over and restrains me completely. “I’ll never let you get away. You belong to me.”
I whimper, squeezing my thighs around his hand and grinding against it, relief and arousal slamming through me so hard I start to shake with it. He’s got me face down, his body weight keeping me pinned down. It’s a position he’s taught me to break free from, but I don’t want to.
And I trust him not to let me.
“You’re mine to do whatever the fuck I want to,” he whispers in my ear, rubbing his fingers right where I need them. “And it’s making you wet, isn’t it?”
Sowet.
“Get off me,” I pant, bucking hard. Trying to roll. To jab back with my elbows. To throw him off.
None of that is my safe word, and Logan does everything I asked, letting me fight him as hard as I want without giving me an inch. It’s as if he’s inside my mind. He overwhelms me. Takes all the control, disabling each of my attacks with his greater strength, with his size and iron will and total domination.
It’s a kind of freedom I’ve never known before. I can let everything out, scream and thrash and release every bit of the choking anxiety that I was drowning in, and he’ll take it all… and still force me to submit.
He rolls his hips against my ass, grinding his rock-hard shaft against me as he teases me with his hand. “You don’t want to get away. You want to be owned. You want to be dominated. You want me to prove how far I’ll go to keep you where I want you. You want me to use you until you break.”
My voice cracks. “The whole fucking world wants to use me until I break.”
He drags me up to my knees, controlling my body with pressure holds that guarantee I can’t move in any way he doesn’t want me to.
“The whole fucking world doesn’t get to,” he growls into my ear, positioning me where he wants me and then grabbing a rubber exercise band off the wall and binding my hands behind my back with it. “Only I get to decide how to break you.”
“Do it,” I whisper, the sick, helpless feeling of worry that’s been swirling in the pit of my stomach ever since Dante left trying to inch up my throat and choke me. “Please.”
“That’s not up to you,” Logan says, dragging my pants down around my thighs and pushing me back down to the mats. He pins me in place and caresses my bare ass, pushing my restrained hands up to the middle of my back so I’m fully exposed to him. “This is mine.”
“Yes,” I breathe out, closing my eyes and turning my face to the side, so my cheek rests against the firm rubber of the flooring.
“How do you know? You’ve let all the marks fade.”
From when he belted me.
I shiver, arousal and a dark, twisted need for pain overtaking the worry that I haven’t been able to let go of. “I’m sorry.”
He pushes his hand between my legs again, rough and without any mercy. “How sorry?”
I whine, panting against the mats, already so wet for him that I can’t help but spread my legs wider in invitation.
He curls his fingers, dragging through my slick folds, and delivers a single, stinging spank to my left cheek. “I asked how sorry you are, wildcat. You can either tell me, accept your punishment, or use your safe word.”
But my safe word is the last thing I’m going to say right now. I pant for breath, rearing back just to force him to pin me down again and then struggling against his hold so that he’ll restrain me even more.
He doesn’t disappoint.
“Bad girl,” he growls into my ear, holding me down hard as he snatches another exercise band from the wall.
He doubles it up, then snaps the thick rubber against my ass.
“Oh fuck,” I gasp. The sting of it is far gentler than the belt, but still enough to get my attention.
Logan yanks my bound hands up to the middle of my back, then lays into me with the rubber band. Every strike gets me wetter, making me squirm and writhe as heat spreads out from my core.
“I want your ass red. I want it bruised and covered in lines. I want my marks on every… fucking… inch of you.”
His breath is ragged and my whole lower body feels like it’s on fire. It takes me over, spreading everywhere and obliterating everything in its path. Turning me on so much that I don’t even know what I start begging him for, just that I need more.
“Fuck, Logan, please, don’t stop, take me, show me, just… just… ”
I’m panting, barely able to get the words out, helpless to do anything but take what he gives me and desperate for everything he’s promising. I want to feel utterly and completely owned.
And he knows it.
Logan tosses the exercise band aside and shoves his pants down to his thighs, pulling my hips up and driving his cock into me in one rough thrust that bottoms him out. “Mine.”
I gasp, a soul-deep shudder going through me as his hips slam into the new welts he just laid into my ass. He grabs my bound hands and yanks me up, grinding his cock even deeper as he wraps his free hand around my throat and licks a hot stripe up the side of my neck, stopping just under my ear.
“Did you hear what I said?” he rasps. “Your pussy was made to take my cock. Your ass was made to bear my marks. Your body exists to hold my cum. You’re mine to fuck. Mine to dominate. Mine to use.”
“Yes,” I whisper, my inner walls rippling so hard it almost feels like I’ve come.
He groans, his cock swelling inside me, then shoves me back down and holds me there, giving me no time to think, react, or resist before he’s fucking into me from behind with a raw, primal intensity that shatters me completely.
And I’m not the only one.
The tight control he always keeps himself in check with is totally gone. The sex isn’t just sex. It’s total domination, and it’s messy and intense and completely overwhelms me, ripping an orgasm out of me almost before I know what hits me.
I scream, my pussy milking his cock hard as I break apart for him.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he grits out, adding finger-shaped bruises to my hips as he fucks me through it. Then he pulls out and flips me over, throwing my legs over his shoulders and wrapping a hand around my throat. “Again.”
It’s not a request, and he drives back into me like a man possessed, his eyes burning into me until I give him what he demands and come for him again, the intensity so high that it wrecks me completely.
Logan follows right after me, coming with a hoarse shout. Pumping me full of his cum, just like he promised, until I’m overflowing. Pistoning his hips into me, over and over, like he wants to fuck it right into my soul and brand me from the inside out.
“Please,” I whisper as he loosens his grip on my throat. I wrap my legs around his waist to hold him against me, my hands still bound behind my back.
He watches the word form on my lips, then drags his eyes up to meet mine. He doesn’t say a word, but when he pushes my shirt up to expose the scar he gave me between my breasts, then lowers his head and presses a possessive, claiming kiss on top of it, I’ve never felt closer to him.
I’ve never felt more seen.
My thighs are sloppy with his cum and his cock is still buried as deeply as it can go inside my well-fucked pussy, and there’s nowhere else I want to be right now. Despite the slight strain on my shoulders from my bound hands, I swear I can feel each and every one of my muscles melting in the aftermath of what he just gave me, all the tension I’ve been building up ever since all this started draining away.
That horrible, sick, helpless feeling of worry drains away too, leaving me completely at ease in a way I honestly didn’t think was possible.
And maybe it isn’t. Not without someone who understands the darkest parts of me to help me let go.
I let out a little huff of disappointment when he finally pulls out and tucks himself away. He gives me one of those small, barely there smiles that I know are just for me, lifting me up like I weigh nothing and carrying me into the small bathroom just off the room they converted into the gym.
He unbinds my hands and strips me completely, each movement careful and precise as he massages the tightness out of my hands, wrists, arms, and shoulders, then methodically cleans me up, thoroughly removing every trace of cum, sweat, and sex from my body.
“The rubber doesn’t leave welts,” he says, making a small, frustrated sound of disappointment as he runs the damp washcloth over the over-sensitized skin of my ass, still reddened and hot from the beating he gave me with the exercise band.
“But it still stings,” I reassure him, letting my head fall to the side, giving him better access. “And next time, you can use the belt again.”
He leans down, brushing the hair away from my shoulder and kissing me there as he continues to clean me. Once he’s finally satisfied, he turns me around to face him, looking down at me with serious eyes. “I like to mark you.”
My heart thumps, doing another one of those slow rolls in my chest. “I know.”
He circles my wrists with his hands, a wrinkle of concern forming between his eyebrows as he lifts them, displaying them between us. There are marks there, each wrist encircled in red.
“I bound you too tightly.”
I smile. “No, it’s because I was struggling.”
The wrinkle gets deeper. “You wanted to.”
The flat statement isn’t a question, but I can see he’s worried that he might have gone too far.
“You didn’t hurt me.” He hasn’t let go of my wrists, and I use that to my advantage. Tugging him closer. Close enough that I can go up on my toes and kiss him. “You never hurt me in any way I don’t want.”
I can feel him relax a little at that, but not all the way.
“It was all right?” he presses.
“It was perfect.” He finally releases my wrists, and I cup his jaw with both my hands, staring into his eyes and willing him to believe it, because it’s the truth. “It was exactly what I needed. Thank you. I—”
I hesitate, and the wrinkle comes back, his concern a palpable presence between us.
“You what?” he asks sharply.
I take a deep breath, not sure why it’s harder with him than with the others.
But I’m completely sure that it’s worth it.
“I love you,” I whisper, then smile despite the way he stiffens at the words. He doesn’t need to say it back. I’d never expect him to. But it feels so fucking good to finally say it out loud that I do it again. “I love you, Logan Adair.”
His entire body goes still. He even stops breathing. But when I go up on my toes to kiss him again, he finally moves, stopping me before I can.
He grabs my hair, gathering all of it into his hand in a quick move that traps me in place. He wraps it around his fist tightly enough that I can’t move while he reaches up with his other hand to trace my throat, my jaw, my lips with his fingers, all the while staring into my eyes.
“You love me,” he finally says.
I smile, turning my head a fraction of an inch, all that his tight hold allows, to kiss the tips of his fingers. “So much.”
“I…” His fingers tremble against my mouth. Then something shifts in his gaze, and a fierce intensity overtakes him. “I love you too.”
The hot sting of tears prickles behind my eyes, and I suck in a sharp breath, shocked despite myself.
I know he loves me. I do know it. But he’s so much more closed off to his emotions than his brothers are—and with good reason—that I never truly expected to hear it.
He watches my reaction with the intense focus he always has on me, then the secret smile I love so much slowly spreads across his mouth. He uses his hold on my hair to tug my head back, then leans down and kisses the corner of each of my eyes before the tears get a chance to fall.
Then he takes my mouth.
“I love you, Riley Sutton,” he whispers against my lips, delivering the words with the unique combination of tenderness and pain that only he can give me.
I smile as he kisses me, my heart swelling as I pull myself against him and let this one perfect moment of something good edge out all the fear and worry I’ve felt lately, all the fear and worry he just fucked out of me, and hold it at bay for a while.
I never meant to, but somehow, I managed to fall thoroughly and completely in love with three men, and despite what’s waiting for us outside these doors, I refuse, utterly refuse, to let any of them die.
They’re mine. And I’ll do whatever it takes to keep them.