Chapter 26 Angelina #2
He clenches the sheets, knuckles white under white gauze. When I drag my nails down his bare chest he hisses through his teeth, red tracks on skin already bruised from whatever Adrian managed to land before the end.
Good. He fought back. I hope he was afraid.
"So beg."
"Onegai—" It rips out of him. "Angelina, please—"
"Please what?"
"Anything." He's panting, undone, every muscle in his body taut. "Whatever you want. I can’t..." A broken sound. "Please."
My hands are steady on his belt. Unbutton. Unzip. Free him, and when I wrap my fingers around him the groan that tears out of his throat is animal. His hips jerk, his eyes squeeze shut, and he nearly comes from just my hand.
"Not yet." I tighten my grip. "You don't come until I say so."
Up on my knees, underwear shoved aside, and before he can prepare, before he can do anything but gasp, I sink down onto him in one brutal stroke.
The stretch burns. I'm so wet it doesn't matter, and the fullness of him bottoming out punches the air from my lungs.
My thighs clench around his hips and I can't breathe, can't think, can only feel him thick and deep inside me while my body clenches tight around him like it's afraid he'll disappear.
He whimpers.
I did that.
"Kuso—Angelina—"
His hands fly off the mattress, grab my hips, and I let him.
I need the pressure of those bandaged fingers digging into my skin.
The gauze is rough against my hip and I want it.
Want the texture, the reminder that I wrapped those knuckles with care and now they're gripping me hard enough to leave marks.
I start to move. Slow. Torturously slow.
Rising until I feel every inch of him dragging out of me, then sinking back down until he's so deep my breath shudders.
The friction is devastating. Every slow roll of my hips sends heat flooding through my belly, and I want to go faster, want to chase it, but I don't. I set the pace. I decide.
A sound grinds out of him, low and desperate. "Angelina—"
This is mine. The thought hits like a fist. He is mine. This is mine. I take what I want.
For three years, I lay still. Made myself small. Made myself quiet. Counted ceiling tiles and waited for it to be over, because fighting made it worse and crying made it longer and the only way to survive was to not be in my body at all.
Every nerve ending is lit now. Every inch of skin where his hands grip, where his hips press, where he fills me.
Not enduring. Not surviving. Taking. I'm taking them back.
All three years, all eight years after. Every night I lay in the dark and felt nothing.
Every time I convinced myself I was broken.
I ride him harder and he lets me, his hands flexing on my hips, trying to match my rhythm. I keep changing it. Shallow and fast until my breath comes in gasps, then deep and grinding until we both groan.
"Kuso—" The word hisses through his teeth when I grind hard.
His bandaged fingers dig into my skin and I look down at the white gauze on my hips, the split knuckles underneath, and heat floods low in my belly.
His grip tightens, fingers pressing bruises into my skin like he'll fly apart if he lets go, and the tremor running through his arms tells me he's close. I'm not done with him yet.
"You walked out that door tonight." I'm panting, but my eyes don't leave his. "Killed for me. Came back covered in his blood." I grind down hard and his mouth falls open. "Now I take what's mine."
"Yours." The word is barely a breath. "Yours."
I find my clit. Circle while I ride him, chasing what I need because I'm done waiting for anyone else to give it to me.
My rhythm stutters and my thighs start to tremble. The pressure builds fast, coiling tight low in my belly, and I'm clenching around him with every stroke. His eyes are locked on my face, I should look away, I always looked away, but I don't.
I watch him watch me fall apart. My fingers move faster, my hips lose their rhythm, and everything is narrowing to where he's inside me and where my hand is working and the orgasm building like a fist at the base of my spine.
"Let me see you." Barely a whisper. "Please. Let me see."
"Cole—"
I come with his name in my mouth. My whole body clenches around him and I'm loud, louder than I've ever let myself be, and I don't care who hears through the walls of this facility, I don't care about anything except the wave crashing through me and the fact that I chose this.
He holds still. Trembling, every tendon in his neck standing out with the effort, but holding still. Because I haven't said yet.
I haven't said yet, and he listened.
He listened. I said not yet and he listened. The simplest thing in the world and no man has ever...
I'm crying. I don't know when it started. The aftershocks and the sobs are tangled together, my chest heaving with both, and his face blurs below me. Every instinct says to turn away, hide it, bury my face in my hands before he sees. I don't. I let him see.
Before the aftershocks fade, I pull off him. The loss makes us both gasp.
"Angelina—" His hand reaches for my face. Concern breaking through the haze. "Are you—"
"I'm not done with you."
His brow is still tight, but his pupils are blown black. He searches my face for a long moment, reading whatever he finds there.
"Tell me what you need."
I took what I needed and he held still. Now I need to know what happens when I let go.
I turn. Hands and knees on the mattress, and I look at him over my shoulder.
"I need you to stop being careful."
His nostrils flare. His chin drops. Whatever he's been holding back all night surfaces, and it doesn't look like concern anymore.
He smirks. It's the most dangerous thing he's done all night. "Thank fuck."
He's behind me in a breath. He grabs my hips, gauze rough and fingers bruising, and he pushes into me in one long stroke.
The angle is completely different—deeper, hitting somewhere that makes my arms buckle.
I can't see his face like this. Can only feel him.
The stretch of him filling me, the gauze scraping my hip bones, his breath ragged against the back of my neck.
"Utsukushii." The word ghosts across my shoulder blade. Then, quieter: "So beautiful."
I push back against him, taking all of it, and the sound that comes out of me is something primal I don't recognize.
"Fuck me." The words come out demanding and nothing like a judge. "Hard."
He gives me what I want.
His hips snap forward and the force of it shoves me up the mattress. I brace my arms and push back into every thrust, but he's relentless, and my elbows buckle. My face hits the pillow, ass up, and the angle shifts to something that pulls a sound out of me I've never made before.
His grip on my hip tightens.
"Fuck—you—" The words come out broken between thrusts.
I let myself be loud.
His bandaged hand tangles in my hair and pulls. His chest is warm against my back, his weight settling over me—
He freezes. The sudden stillness, the hesitation.
Even now. Even half-gone and barely coherent, he's checking.
Adrian never checked. Adrian pulled and twisted and used my hair like a handle and if I cried out he pulled harder. He never once stopped. He never once asked.
"Yes—" The word punches out of me. "Harder. Pull harder."
His whole body shudders with relief. He pulls harder. My back arches, spine curving, and what comes out of my mouth is half-scream, half-sob.
"Fuck, yes, harder—"
Guttural and ruined and nothing I'd ever recognize as my own voice. His other hand grips my hip, gauze and split knuckles pressing into my skin, and I press back into it, wanting to feel every thread of those bandages I wrapped with such careful hands.
"Right there—" I'm gasping, fingers twisted in the sheets. "Don't stop, don't you dare stop—"
"I can’t..." His whole body trembles. "Angelina, please—"
"Not yet."
I reach between my legs. Find my clit. Two strokes and the orgasm slams through me — different from the first, sharper, tighter, ripped out of me instead of built — and I'm clenching around him, his name tearing out of my throat, and he holds. He holds because I said so.
"Now." I'm still shuddering. "Now, Cole."
A sound rips out of him. Broken, more sob than groan. He buries himself deep, and I feel him pulse inside me in hot waves. His forehead drops to my shoulder blade. His breath comes in ragged gasps against my skin.
His hand is still in my hair. He releases it gently, smoothing the strands he pulled.
For a long time, neither of us moves.
His heartbeat is slowing against my ear. I count the beats without meaning to, an old habit from when Chesca was a baby and I used to fall asleep with my hand on her chest.
We're lying on our sides now. I don't remember moving. His arm is heavy around my waist, his chest warm against my back, and the gauze on his knuckles is rough where his hand rests against my stomach.
We're alive, both of us. Adrian isn't.
I should feel something about that.
I feel his heartbeat. That's enough.
"I should check on Chesca." The words come out automatic.
"Sleeping." The word rumbles through his chest, into mine. "Mira's with her. I looked in before I came to you."
Even covered in blood. He checked on my daughter first.
"She was probably trying to teach Mira origami." Chesca's patient hands, her serious instructor face.
"Mira was still fighting with the paper when I checked on her." A low huff against my hair.
I press my lips to his chest, right over his heart. "Thank you. For putting her first."
"Always." His hand moves through my hair, slow and rhythmic. "She is yours. That makes her mine."
Our daughter. I press closer.
His phone buzzes against the nightstand, sharp in the silence.
"Kuso." He reaches for it, and I watch his face change. The softness draining away, his mouth thinning, his eyes going flat. He reads whatever's on the screen for a long moment.
"Kade?"
"Hai." He shows me the screen.
0600 briefing. We have a name.