23. River
CHAPTER 23
RIVER
“ M orning, angel.”
I sighed as Bane’s lips kissed a path across my exposed shoulder, sending delicious waves of electricity across my skin that made all the little hairs on my skin stand on end. A shudder rolled through me, and he chuckled at the nape of my neck as his hands massaged the tension from the tight muscles of my back, making me groan.
“Does that feel good, baby?”
“Y-yes,” I breathed and buried my head under my pillow to hide the flush heating my cheeks.
Waking up to Bane’s undivided attention was one of the best feelings in the world, even if my mind still struggled to accept what was happening between us. I didn’t deserve to be this lucky. My body begged for more from him than he’d given me over the last two weeks, but every kiss we’d shared had been filled with tension, need, and love. I was drowning in an intensity I didn’t fully understand, having never felt anything like it before. It was more than just a physical thing; every touch of his hands or lips felt like it was rearranging me on a cellular level. It was like Bane knew things about my body and psyche I hadn’t even known existed. I wanted more with him, but every time I found the words, they died on my tongue and fear coiled around me. What if when we did more, he realized how used up and disgusting I was?
Would I survive him rejecting me now when he’d filled my head and heart with hope? Life felt too good to be true with everything I’d ever dreamed of right at my fingertips, but they were stained with blood as I tried to cling to this dream-like reality I’d found myself in. Reality was breathing down my neck and knocking on the door I’d bolted shut. But I could hear the countdown timer every time my eyes shut, and when it reached zero, my hopes and dreams would turn to ash.
“Bane?” I whispered. I felt more and more unmoored as he lavished every part of me he could reach with sweet, tender kisses. It felt like my throat was closing up, and even though I knew he was right here with me, he felt farther and farther away. The world was fracturing around me like a kaleidoscope, taunting me, reminding me I was unworthy. That happiness wasn’t a thing people like me deserved.
“What’s up, Riv?” he asked softly, maneuvering us until I was sitting in his lap and we were chest to chest. My legs were braced on either side of his hips, my hands resting numbly on his shoulders. “You know you can ask me anything, right?”
A shaky breath passed my lips, and I swallowed, my throat so dry it felt like it was stuffed with cotton. As I stared into his bright sky blue and dark bottomless eyes, I saw my hopes and fears reflected back at me.
“Angel, what’s on your mind?” He trailed his knuckles down my cheek and sunk his fingers into my wild strands, pulling me closer. “Talk to me,” he breathed against my lips, his taste invading my mouth. Soft kisses rained down on my forehead, eyes, down the bridge of my nose, and across my cheeks. My heart was doing somersaults in my chest that grew tighter with every beat as beads of perspiration grew on my hairline and top lip.
“I—” I licked my lips and shook like someone had walked over my grave. “Do you… w-want me?” My voice was small, the voice of a scared little boy who’d been given access to a candy shop but was too scared to step inside, fearful that with one wrong move, he would end up locked away in the dark. Abandoned and alone.
“You’re safe with me, River.” His lips brushed my lips with the lightest of touches. Not a kiss, but in comfort, seeking connection and trust.
“D-d you… want me?” I rasped and screwed my eyes shut, unwilling to see the look that crossed his face as fear of rejection churned in my gut.
“River? Look at me.” I shook my head and tucked my chin against my chest, heat building in the back of my eyes. “Angel.” Bane pinched my chin between his thumb and forefinger and lifted my head. “Look at me.”
His smokey sleep-filled voice took on a commanding tone I’d never heard from him before. It made my spine stiffen and my shoulders pull back as my walls solidified around me. Echoes of men from the past ordering me around like I wasn’t human filled my mind in a deluge of memories, and my heart started pounding for a whole other reason. My lungs burned, because no matter how many breaths I took, air didn’t fill my lungs.
“River.” A sense of urgency took over his voice, like I wasn’t the only one who had become untethered.
It was a mindfuck how quickly I could spiral out of control and revert back to who I was before Bane. Someone who needed to disassociate at any given second because another moment in the present would be what sent me over the edge. An edge I’d been balancing on for far too long, and one I’d made my peace with that would eventually claim me. But these last two weeks had made me think that maybe the impossible was possible.
“Angel, shh. I’ve got you, okay? Just listen to me and breathe.” I could feel his phantom touch surrounding me, but his voice sounded so far away. It was fading with every word he spoke. “Feel my heart, feel my breaths, and copy me.” My hand felt suspended, adrift.
What was happening? Everything was like a dream. A beautiful, perfect dream. One I didn’t want to wake up from. Oh, god, please, please don’t make this be a dream or an illusion my mind had created to keep me safe. Oh, god, please! Please make it be real. Tears burned my eyes, but I couldn’t open them. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see where I really was. I didn’t want to know for certain this wasn’t real. Please, please, please. Oh, god, please.
“Open your eyes for me.”
No. No, no, no, no . I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay here in my dream. It might not have been perfect, but it was perfect for me. Bane was here. He was here, and he wanted me. All of me. He’d said I was worth fighting for, and I refused to let that go. Fuck me. Kill me. Ruin me. I didn’t care as long as I was here with him. If my eyes never opened again, that would be okay. I would be okay here with him. Here where I wanted to be.
“Bane.” His name tore its way out from my heart, leaving a gaping wound behind. I wasn’t whole. I was fractured into pieces that were splintering into fragments that couldn’t be put back together. I thought death would hurt, but even as my tears carved their way down my cheeks, I didn’t feel a thing because finally, finally I’d be free from this torment.
“Angel. Don’t let it consume you. Fight it. Feel my heartbeat beneath your fingertips.”
The world was a cruel, fucked up place, but it had nothing on my mind.
“That’s it River. That’s it. Feel me. Keep breathing.”
His usual gravelly voice sounded unhinged and frantic in a way I’d never heard before. A hysterical cackle grew from my chest. My Bane didn’t sound like this; he was cool, calm, and collected. Always in control. He was strong and dependable. He was the light in my darkness, the goodness to my sullied body and soul.
“I’ve got you. I won’t ever let you go.”
I scoffed. No one wanted me enough to never let me go, so I’d had to create someone to love me in my head—the only place I could find acceptance. But it also had the power to twist and crush me.
“You’re doing so well, River. Open your eyes for me, please.” His voice cracked and broke on that heartfelt plea. Phantom fingers ghosted over my face, stroking my hair back, brushing away burning tears.
“Open those beautiful forest-green eyes for me?”
My heavy eyes fluttered open, and he was there, cradling my face in his hands. What was real? What was reality, and what was a delusion? How could I tell when everything seemed to meld into one?
“You haven’t lost it, baby. You’re struggling. You’ve been through so much, your mind is trying to process it all. I promise I’m real.”
Well, at least my mind was convincing. My lips twitched as I snickered, tasting the salt of my tears. “I-I don’t know what to…b-believe,” I whimpered, my throat aching like I’d screamed for hours. A quick check of my body reassured me I had no new injuries, just the ones that were healing.
“Thank god you’re back with me.” Bane sighed and cradled me lovingly in his arms, with my head tucked into the crook of his neck. He carded his fingers through my hair in a soothing motion as my tears slowly dried, leaving salty tracks on my skin.
“You had a panic attack.” His chest deflated as he exhaled, like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. “Something triggered you. Do you know what it was?”
“I…I don’t…” I thought back through the hazy quagmire of my mind, and even though I was exhausted, a thread appeared. I followed it, and it all became clear. The question I’d wanted to ask materialized, but I didn’t know if I was strong enough to ask it.
“Mmm. You know, don’t you?” Bane murmured.
I inhaled his scent, using it to help calm my racing heart. “I-I do.” Clearing my throat, I squirmed under the weight of his intense gaze. “I wanted to ask you s-something, but I…”
Large hands wrapped around my hips as he shifted beneath me like he was afraid I was going to disappear. It was like he could read my mind, because I needed distance between us before I could give credence to the question growing louder in my head. Pushing his arms back, I scrambled off his lap and across the bed, settling on my pillow. With my back resting against the headboard and legs pulled up to my chest, I glanced at Bane through my lashes. The concern marring his beautiful face was like a knife to my heart.
“I’m here when you’re ready.” The resignation in his tone and his hunched shoulders hurt to see. It reminded me I was a cancerous thing in his life, taking and taking until there was nothing in him to give me. I’d bleed him dry if he let me. He’d be better off without me around, but I had to know once and for all.
“Do you want me?” My voice was barely audible to my own ears, even as I hid my face in my arms as I waited.
Silence stretched between us, growing more palpable and suffocating the longer it continued. What I heard could have shattered adamantium. Soft sniffles reached my ears and my racing heart lurched into my throat. After a shaky inhale, I turned to find Bane, the immovable mountain, with tears streaming down his dark skin.
“W-why would you ask that?”
I was so lost in his wet lips moving that it took me a beat for my brain to register his question. “B-because…y-you don’t… t-touch me…” My reasoning sounded weak because he did, but not in the way I expected and had become accustomed to. I was used for pleasure, a hole to be filled, a cum dump. But with Bane it was so foreign, his touches alien.
Shaking his head, he wiped the tears off his face with the back of his hand and when he looked at me, the heat in his eyes melted the ice coating my skin. “Is this because we haven’t…” A deep blush stained his dark skin, heating his cheeks and making him seem younger while I felt decades older.
“Yes.”
“Oh, angel.” Bane launched himself at me and buried his head in my stomach, his arms wrapping around my waist as he wept. “I want you like I’ve never wanted anyone in my life. I…I don’t really know how to explain it.” He stuttered a breath. “With you, everything is different for me. The way I want you. The way I crave you.” He snorted. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I do you, River. You set my blood on fire and make my soul burn for you. I just…”
“You what?” I whispered into our bubble.
“I know what you’ve been through, what you have been subjected to, and I don’t want to be the same. I want you to want me too. I need you to feel pleasure as my every touch sinks beneath your skin. That it resonates with your soul. You are it for me, angel, and even if we never have sex, calling you mine would be enough.”
“Oh, Bane.”
“I don’t want you to feel forced to do anything with me. I don’t want to be like them .”
Tears welled in my eyes, making him shimmer before me in the light of the morning sun as it streamed through the blinds. “You could never be anything like them.”
“I wake up every day wanting to be worthy of your love. To be good enough to show you what you mean to me. I want to show you love and pleasure.”
That word hung in the air between us as I turned it over in my mind because it was one I didn’t understand, having never felt it. “C-could you teach me?” I asked timidly.
“Teach you?”
“I-I’ve…I d-don’t…” I cocked my head to the side as he drew back and knelt in front of me like he was at confession. “I… t-the only times I’ve come was because I was forced to as a p-punishment. It was used as a way to humiliate me. T-they used my body against me. I don’t know…” I cleared my throat. “I’ve n-never experienced pleasure.”
“Do you trust me to show you?” Heat filled his glassy eyes and licked across my skin. We were like magnets drawn together. His lips moved closer to mine until every exhale filled my lungs, and when I spoke, they brushed mine.
“I trust you with every part of m-me. I trust you to guard and cherish my heart. I trust you to keep my body safe, and I trust you to show me things I’ve never experienced.”
A blinding smile lit his face. The sun’s rays created a halo around his head, and I felt reborn. This man, this titan, wanted to show me the wonders of the world, and I found every one of them in his eyes—all the promises he made, all the sunrises that stretched before us, all the moments we’d share where we’d learn each other better than we knew ourselves. All I had to do was believe.
Bane kissed the lingering fear from my skin, one sweet touch at a time, until his lips finally melded with mine. The first swipe of his tongue against the seal of my mouth felt like a match thrown into kerosene, heating the blood in my veins and bringing my body to life in a way it never had before. When I opened for him, he kissed me with an intensity that altered my perception of reality. He broke me apart, took my pieces, and healed me with the golden goodness in his heart.
Every tantalizing brush of his tongue brought us closer, like we were trying to fuse our bodies together. He removed every layer that separated us until his hot skin touched mine, and goosebumps prickled across my body everywhere we touched.
We kissed until our lungs screamed, and fireworks danced behind my eyelids. Gasping for air, he wrenched his mouth from mine and laid me face down on the bed, gently removing the sleep pants that hung off my hips with a tenderness that had my heart skipping a beat as it started to freefall.
“Such a good boy,” he cooed.
Bane left a trail of wet opened-mouthed kisses from my ankle to my knee before nudging my legs apart. I gasped as the cool air met my entrance. A shock of fear ran up my spine that made my muscles tense. The automatic response had me gritting my teeth hard enough to crack them.
“Shh,” he murmured into my skin before he kissed and teased his way up my thigh with his lips and tongue.
Thick fingers dug into the flesh of my ass, kneading the lingering unease away as he followed every burning touch with a soothing kiss. I shuddered as he parted my cheeks, the heat of his exhale coasting over the sensitive skin. I waited with bated breath for his next move. The bed dipped, and unable to take not knowing what he was doing any longer, I pushed up into my elbows and looked over my shoulder to be met with a sight that didn’t seem real.
Bane was lying between my spread legs, staring at the most intimate part of me with a look of wonder on his face. I watched, mesmerized, as he parted my cheeks and buried his face in my cleft. His hot breath so close to my entrance had me clenching reflexivity as need and fear warred inside me. The unknown made my heart pound hard enough to tattoo itself on my ribs.
“So beautiful.” Bane’s voice was muffled by his position, but I felt it like he’d whispered it in my ear. “I bet you taste as good as you look.”
With that, he kissed my hole and ran his nose along the length of my crease and groaned. My neck heated at the intimate act. I’d been fucked by a million different men, but not one of them had ever put their faces there, let alone kissed me. I didn’t know if I wanted to pull him closer or push him away, but I knew if I asked him to stop, he would.
“Have you ever been rimmed, angel?”
“N-no?”
Bane chuckled. “Let me show you.” The smile in his voice was unmistakable. “I want you to only feel pleasure with me, but if it gets too much or you want to stop, let me know.”
“A-are you psychic?”
“No, baby, but I can feel the tension radiating off you. You’re safe with me.”
Before I could answer, the wet heat of his tongue seared against my skin from my taint up to the base of my spine. “Oh god,” I groaned. “T-that’s so good.”
Bane hummed into my skin as he kissed my hole with slick lips and tongue, like he wanted to devour me. He ate my ass with the same fever he kissed me. He moaned and groaned like he loved the musky taste of me and slowly, with each pass of his tongue, I melted into the mattress. Bane stiffened his tongue and teased it around my rim, taunting the tight ring of muscle until it softened enough for him to push inside me.
“Fuck,” I bit out and dug my hands into the sheets. My blood vibrated through my veins, my body so sensitive and receptive to his touch, unlike it had been with anyone else.
“That’s it, baby. Open up for me.”
My teeth sunk into my bottom lip. Uninhibited sounds wanted to spill from my lips as he lavished my body with an intensity I’d never experienced. I was lost to his fevered touch, my hips rocking, pushing back against his tongue as he surged inside me. The friction of the soft cotton sheet against my shaft felt like bolts of lightning in my groin.
It was too much and not enough. I wanted more, and I wanted to stop.
My orgasm grew deep inside me, organic and pure as lust fried my brain. I felt Bane everywhere. I was cocooned in his scent, the smell of our arousal saturated every inhale. His touch echoed through my body as he brought me closer and closer to the brink. Euphoria beckoned me, but something held me back.
Fear.
It tried to wipe out the pleasure Bane brought me. I whimpered as heat prickled the back of my eyes. My hips stilled as it started to sink its claws into me, pulling me into the darkness where he couldn’t reach me.
“Come back to me, angel.” His lust-drenched tone was the life raft I needed to pull me back. “I’ve got you.” I groaned as he worked a finger inside me. “I can feel your walls rippling around me.”
“I-I’m...c-close.”
“I know, baby.”
He pumped his finger inside me, the stretch and simmering burn as he entered me over and over, pushing me further toward the precipice of no return. My blood was liquid fire pooling in my balls as they drew up closer to the base of my thickening length. I couldn’t hold on to my control any longer when he hit that magic spot.
“Oh my god, Bane,” I cried. Tears spilled from my eyes as I reached back for him. I needed him to hold on to me, afraid I was about to be swept away. Linking his fingers with mine, he continued to stroke that place deep inside me.
“I’ve got you, angel. Come for me.”
“I-I… c-can’t.”
“Yes, you can. I’ve got you and won’t let go.”
I wailed as my orgasm ricocheted inside me, detonating, sparking every nerve ending and catapulting me out of my body. “Bane.” A kaleidoscope of colors danced behind my eyes, and I floated somewhere among the stars.
Soft kisses covered every inch of my face as I slowly came back to myself. Bane’s cedarwood and leather scent was everywhere, and I swear I could feel a warm cloth against my groin.
“W-what’s t-that?”
“Welcome back, baby.” My heavily lidded eyes fluttered open. The image of Bane’s smile will be forever etched into my mind. “You okay?”
“Mmmm.” His fingers stroked down my stomach as he continued to gently wipe my release from my skin. “S-sorry,” I muttered, shame heating my cheeks.
“What for?” Concern filled his eyes as they traced over my face.
“F-for making a mess.”
Bane snickered. “If you didn’t, I’d have been worried you didn’t enjoy yourself. Sex is messy, but this?” He dragged his finger across my stomach and held it in front of my face, showing me my release. “This is delicious. Mmm.” He sucked his finger clean, then leaned forward and kissed me, pushing my release into my mouth with his tongue.
Jesus, he was filthy when he got going and tasting myself when his tongue wrapped around mine was surreal. It bound me to him in the most unexpected way as I melted into him.