Chapter 22 #2
My nerves already frayed, I turned around sharply and dropped into the chair.
The force of my body weight made the legs creak, and I winced, wondering if he’d have something to say about me almost breaking his chair.
But instead he reached for a towel and swiped away the remaining fog on the mirror.
I looked away, focusing on the tinted glass bottle of cologne that Con kept behind his sink.
He stood behind me, and his hands settled on my naked shoulders. “How are you feeling? I heard you hit the heavy bag.”
I was pretty sure he was looking at me over my head in the mirror, but I refused to meet his gaze to confirm. “I’m fine,” I said gruffly. “My head doesn’t hurt anymore. My ribs barely ache at all.” I prodded at my face. “I’m not swollen at all either.”
His fingers shifted to the skin under my right eye. “You’re still bruised here.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said nothing.
“Tav?”
I clenched and unclenched my fists over the towel around my thighs. I didn’t like this. I felt vulnerable.
“Tav.” His voice had dropped to the one that meant he wanted me to obey. My chest felt tight. “Look at me.”
I twisted in my chair, but his hands gripped the sides of my head, not hard but insistent. With purpose. He didn’t let me turn around.
“Look at me in the mirror.”
I inhaled deeply. Exhaled. Tried to quell the rising panic in my chest. My heart flapped and fluttered like a caged bird.
I forced my gaze to shift, skittering over the mirror’s reflection, ignoring my face, to meet Con’s in the mirror.
I focused on the blue of his eyes. The perfect arch of his nose.
His full lips with prominent cupid’s bow.
He had the best lips. His fingers dropped to curl around the bottom of my chin. “Now look at yourself.”
My bird in my chest took flight, and I surged to my feet.
The chair went toppling to the right, but before I could turn around and get the hell out of this prison bathroom, Con was at my back, pressing me into the sink with a firm hand around back of my neck.
I went still even though my instincts screamed at me to rear back, to dislodge the threat, to send Con smashing through the wall behind me so I could flee.
But I didn’t. Because I wouldn’t hurt Con.
So I froze every muscle and stared at the faucet of the sink below me while Con’s heat blanketed my back.
The knot of the towel loosened and pooled at my feet.
The cool fabric of Con’s pants rubbed against the back of my thighs and my ass.
I deep breathed through my nose, not trusting my mouth to open.
“Thought so,” he said softly.
And I didn’t like it. He was so damn perceptive. I gripped the edge of the marbled sink and gritted my teeth.
“You don’t look at yourself in the mirror, do you, Tav?”
And there it was. He’d sniffed around inside and ferreted out my secrets like a thief.
I refused to answer him. And I also didn’t have a good explanation for why I was this way.
This past week with Con, I’d liked myself for the first time in a very long time.
But that didn’t mean I was ready to face my own eyes.
“Do you know why?”
I didn’t. Maybe he could tell me. I gave him a response this time and shook my head.
His hand squeezed the back of my neck. “I want you to see you how I see you.”
This was too much. I just wanted to lay on the couch and cover myself with a blanket. “This… No. I don’t want to.” My voice cracked.
He was only a few inches shorter than me, so our heads were nearly level as he stood behind me.
His forehead dropped to my shoulder, where he rubbed it back and forth.
He exhaled against my skin before his head lifted.
I could feel the burn of his gaze on me through the mirror, but I didn’t look.
His fingers flexed on the back of my neck. “I can make you.”
Those words sent a shudder down my spine.
His hand holding my neck drifted down to between my shoulder blades, and he pressed me forward until I was forced to brace myself with my hands fisted at the back of the counter, my hips hinged forward over the edge.
And then his fingers slid down my back, over my ribs, until they reached the top of my crack.
“And you’ll let me make you, because you need me to. ”
I shook my head, a pathetic lie, my last effort to stop this. I didn’t know if I wanted him to make me, but I did know that I couldn’t make my body do anything right now other than succumb to Con’s demands.
His fingers left me a moment to grab a bottle of lube off the counter. I heard the snap of the lid, the squirt onto his fingers. And then they were back, dropping lower until he pressed against the rim of my hole. He circled them there, just two. “Look at yourself in the mirror, Tav.”
I let my head drop, staring straight into the sink, as he pressed two fingers inside.
My body jolted at the intrusion. It’d been days, and I was tight, so two of Con’s fingers were a snug fit.
He ran his other hand down my spine to soothe me as he tunneled them inside further, further, his long fingers feeling like they were a foot long by the time his knuckles pressed against my rim.
My mouth dropped open as my long, low moan echoed off the walls.
“Fuck, you’re tight,” Con’s voice sounded rough. The fingers of his other hand curled around my shoulder, anchoring me in place. “I counted every day of these seven days. Every hour. Every minute.”
I pushed back against his fingers, because he was just holding them inside of me, and I wanted him to move. “Me too.”
“I’ll give you what you want, but you have look at yourself in the mirror.”
I growled in frustration and bucked against him, hard.
He stumbled but slammed against my back again as he shoved a third finger inside, like it was punishment for my resistance.
I shuddered at the stretch, and he didn’t give me a moment to recover when he twisted them wickedly, rubbing against my inner walls, but only just brushing my prostate.
This wasn’t enough. “Con.” I felt like sobbing. “Please.”
“Look at yourself.” His hand crept from my shoulder up and around to the front of my neck. I felt a nudge under my chin with his thumb. Just barely. “Look at yourself in the mirror.”
He pulled his fingers out, and shoved them back in. My head reared back, and I closed my eyes. I tried to fuck myself on his fingers, but his hips held me firmly in place. “Fuck.”
“I can keep going,” Con rasped in my ear, voice tight. I just barely heard a tremble. “I’ll add a fourth finger. I’ll wreck you with my whole fist. I won’t let you come. I don’t give a fuck. You will look at yourself in this mirror.”
My chest was on fire. My throat ached. My face flamed.
“Open your eyes,” Con’s fingers wrapped around my jaw and tugged down so I faced the mirror. His fingers curled inside of me, twisting and pumping. Stars burst behind my eyelids.
What would my face look like after all these years? My eyes? My nose had been broken a few times. I had a fractured eye socket a few years ago. I could feel scars on my face under my fingertips.
He fucked his fingers into me, each time with more force until the edge of the counter dug into my hips, until my hard dick slapped against the wood cabinets below, until my balls ached from the swaying motion.
Something leaked out of the corner of my eyes.
Drool pooled in my mouth. I felt the tip of his fourth finger at the rim of my hole, and as he began to press, his lips touched the shell of my ear. “Open your eyes.”
My eyes flew open, and Con went still.
I looked at him first. His head next to mine, and his long fingers wrapped around my jaw. His blue eyes pierced me, and I thought I’d see anger there, but instead all I saw was determination. And something else. Pride?
I blinked, and even though I felt like I was going to puke, I forced myself to meet my own eyes.
My breath shuddered out of my lungs. They were the same colors that I’d remembered, one a muddy brown and the other lighter mixed with green.
My hair was a mess, half-dried and dark, hanging in uneven strips on my forehead, fanning out over the top of my ears, and streaking down the back of my neck.
And my face… I sucked in a breath. The last time I looked at myself was after Devlin had held me for a week. I’d been gaunt, a shell in body and mind. A murderer. I hadn’t known that face, those eyes, that person. I broke my mirror and never looked in one again.
Now, my face was far from gaunt. I was pale, paler than I remembered, but then for the last five years, I did most of my sleeping while the sun was up, and my work while it was set.
A small scar marred my left eyebrow, cutting the tapered tip off short.
Bruises lingered on my skin, mostly a pale yellow.
My nose was a little crooked, far from the beauty of Con’s nose.
One nostril looked bigger than the other.
My brow remained prominent, and my cheekbones high.
My lips were a bit of a mess, littered with small scars from the many times they split.
A small mark remained on my lower lip from the last fight.
Con’s fingers shifted on my chin, revealing a small scar along my jaw. I didn’t even remember when I got that.
The panic was there, simmering below the surface.
This wasn’t the face of the teen I remembered, and this wasn’t the face of the man who’d survived a week as Devlin’s prisoner.
I… didn’t know this man at all, this face staring back at me.
My chest shuddered, as my lungs screamed for oxygen.
It was like I couldn’t get enough as I fought to inhale, to feed the terror clawing at my chest—
“Look how perfect you are.” Con spoke firmly, cutting through my spiraling thoughts.
His fingers twisted in my ass, focusing me back on the present.
“So perfect. Those eyes of yours, they look so bright right now. So fucking captivating.” He was right, they were fever bright.
The brown less muddy and more amber. “Your cheeks are all flushed, because you’re happy, Tav.
You’re so happy when you’re with me, when you’re letting me make you feel good. ”
His fingers were no longer torturing me with their savage thrusts, but instead, he stroked inside me deftly until he found my prostrate. I gasped, letting my head drop down as pleasure flames licked at the base of my spine.
But his hand was there on my jaw, guiding me to face myself again in the mirror. “There,” he practically crooned in my ear. “Watch how beautiful you are.”
His fingers twisted and pressed and fucked and played with my body.
I couldn’t do anything but take what he gave me, pressed against the sink, staring at my own reflection while his other hand abandoned my jaw to slide down my chest. He tunneled his fingers between my stomach and the counter until his long fingers wrapped around my shaft.
I let out a strangled noise, my mouth dropping open. His gazed pierced me. “You keep watching yourself. Don’t look away. You’re so perfect. So good.”
He kept talking, his praise falling all around us like hot rain, drenching me to my core.
My heart thundered and my lungs spasmed as he simultaneously fucked my hole and stroked my cock with swift, strong tugs.
I stared at myself, looked into my eyes, and I didn’t see the scars or the pain or the shame, but instead I saw my head tilted back in laughter while Con rolled his eyes at my messy eating.
I saw my grin as I teased Con about his disdain for peas.
I saw the elation in my eyes when I beat Nik at a video game.
My balls drew up tight as Con bit down on my shoulder, his teeth sinking into my skin as his hand worked my cock while his other punished my hole.
His eyes were like blue lasers, pinning me where I stood, not letting me look away, but cataloguing every feature, every muscle twitch as I came apart in his arms. And then I saw my face as I came, as Con saw me, as a man he desired, as a man he chose. As a man worth burning a city for.