Chapter 16 #2
Her face is flushed dark red. Her eyes are wet, lashes spiky with tears. Her lips are bitten red and swollen. Her hair is everywhere, dark auburn strands stuck to her forehead and cheeks, and she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.
I climb up her body.
Her hips roll up to meet me, as my cock slides inside her slick folds, the head catching at her entrance.
“I am going to make love to you now,” I say, my voice cracking on the last word.
She nods. Once. Hard. A tear spills over.
I push inside her.
Slowly. Slowly. Watching her face as I sink into her inch by inch. Her lips part. Her eyes widen. Her breath catches, and she makes a small, broken sound that I feel in my chest.
She is so tight. So wet.
So warm around my cock that my vision whites out at the edges for half a second.
I bury myself to the hilt in one smooth, careful stroke, and hold myself there.
My balls press against her ass, my cock buried completely inside her, and she is so full, so stretched around me, that her back arches off the bed.
I begin to move.
Long, deep strokes. Every withdrawal almost all the way out, every thrust all the way back in to the hilt. I watch her face. Her eyes flutter closed, then open, fixed on mine. Her lips part on a moan. Her hands find my shoulders, clutching.
I bury my face in the crook of her neck and just feel her.
Her pussy grips my cock, the inner walls clenching tighter around my dick with every thrust, milking me and pulling me deeper. She wraps her legs around my waist. Locks her ankles behind my back.
I groan against her throat, my control slipping by degrees.
I pick up my pace. The bed creaks loudly under us, the headboard knocking softly against the wall as she moans.
“Harder,” she begs. “Please, Ezra, harder.”
I fuck her harder, deeper, my hips driving into her with enough force to rock the bed frame, and I watch her tits bounce with every thrust, watch her face crumple with pleasure, watch her come apart on my cock piece by piece.
I can feel her tightening around me. Her pussy clenching rhythmically, her inner walls gripping my shaft, and I know she’s close. I can feel my knot beginning to swell at the base of my cock, thickening, stretching her entrance wider with each thrust.
“My knot is coming,” I warn her, my voice rough against her neck. “Do you want it?”
She sobs into my mouth. “Yes. Please. Yes.”
I thrust harder. Faster. The headboard knocks against the wall as I give her my cock. I can feel her tightening around me, her orgasm building, and I reach between us, my thumb finding her clit, and I rub.
She shatters.
Her back bows sharply off the bed. A long, broken cry tears out of her, echoing off the ceiling, and her pussy clamps down on my cock so hard I see stars. She comes around me in pulsing waves, milking me, dragging me over the edge with her.
“Fuck!” I roar, exploding inside of her.
I bury myself to the hilt one final time and stay there. My cock stretches her entrance, tying us together, and I come inside her in long, devastating pulses that feel endless.
Hot cum floods her, pumping deep, and I cannot pull out. Cannot move.
I am locked deep inside her, my knot pulsing, pumping more and more of me into her with every clench of her pussy, and she is sobbing softly underneath me, her hands clutching my shoulders, her face buried against my neck.
I hold myself above her on shaking forearms.
My muscles are trembling with the effort, sweat dripping from my temples, and I kiss her hair. Her temple. The corner of her eye where a tear has spilled out.
“Liana,” I whisper. Her name like a prayer. “I love you. You are my queen. You are the queen of my pack, and no one is ever going to touch you again the way you have been touched before.”
She starts crying. Silent, shaking sobs that I feel against my chest, and I pull back enough to look at her face. Her eyes are red, wet, her lower lip bitten raw.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. Gently. My heart in my throat. “Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head. Tries to say nothing. Tries to hide, the way she has hidden for years, and I wait. I don’t let her hide. I hold her gaze, my hands framing her face, and I wait.
After a long moment, she looks up at me. Her wet eyes find mine, and her voice, when it comes, is tiny and trembling.
“It feels like love. This type of sex,” she whispers. “I didn’t know it was supposed to feel like this.”
My chest tightens. Something cold and heavy settles behind my sternum. “It should always feel like love. Even when sex is rough and quick.”
“For three years,” she says, each word careful, like she’s picking her way through broken glass, “sex was a thing that happened to my body. Not a thing I participated in.” A tear tracks down her temple.
“Magnus and his pack didn’t make love. They bullied me.
They made me feel less than. Sex was about domination. About reminding me where I belonged.”
I cannot speak. My jaw is so hard it aches. My cock is locked inside her, and I cannot move, and I cannot breathe, and the thing she has just told me is the worst thing anyone has ever said to me.
“That’s horrible,” I say softly in her ear as I try to process what she said.
“I used to count the cracks in the ceiling. And wait for it to be over. I never made a sound. Making sounds meant they got harder. Longer. Meaner.” She swallows.
The cold thing in my chest cracks. Splinters. Becomes rage so white and pure it blinds me for a second, and I have to close my eyes and breathe through it because if I don’t, I will get out of this bed and find Silus Thornton and put my hands around his throat and not stop until his spine breaks.
When I can finally speak, my voice is rough. Low. Each word measured.
“What your ex-pack did to you,” I say. “It wasn’t love. It was assault.”
She flinches. “You’re right.”
I press my forehead to hers. “I am going to spend every day of the rest of my life making sure you never have to count a single ceiling crack again.”
She is sobbing quietly into my shoulder. I hold her. I stay inside her. My knot pulses gently, still locked, still tied, and I kiss the side of her face. Her hair. Her temple. Her wet eyelashes.
“You are safe,” I whisper. “Get some sleep, baby.”
The knot will not release for at least a half hour. I will not move when it does. I will stay inside her body until she wakes in the morning.
She nods against my shoulder. Her breathing slows. Her tears dry against my skin as she falls into a deep sleep. And I finally allow myself to crack as I weep silently in her hair, envisioning how horribly she was treated in the past.