Chapter 58
Harper
That’s the only warning I get. The next second, he punches into me with enough force that my entire body jolts.
He’s holding me down by my throat, so I don’t slide up. But I feel his thrust down to the tips of my toes and the roots of my hair. And oh my God, it feels like I’m being subsumed by him. Controlled by him. My body at his mercy. My breath is his to command.
I am so turned on. Moisture pools between my thighs. I tighten my inner muscles, and a shudder rolls up his massive body.
He grits his teeth as if he’s in pain. But the cerulean gleam in his eyes shows how turned on he is. He propels his hips forward again, sinking all the way inside me. His balls slap against my inner thighs.
I try to cry out, but he has his fingers around my throat. All I can manage is a soundless moan.
“Take it, baby. Take everything I give you. Take it like a good girl.”
He pulls out and slams right back in.
The bed creaks. The headboard slams against the wall. I dig my heels into his back and feel his muscles coil under his skin. The heat pouring off his body thrums off my chest. Sweat breaks out on my forehead, mirroring the beads of moisture that dot his beautiful shoulders.
His biceps bunch. His shoulders curl in on themselves. His stomach hollows out as he thrusts into me over and over again.
And the whole time, his eyes don’t leave mine.
I’m transfixed. Being worked over by him.
Wanting to participate more, but unable to do more than hold on as he tears into my pussy.
Moisture trails from the corners of my eyes.
The feeling of being pinned down by him in every way so intense, I’m sure my soul has fractured inside.
He tightens his hold around my neck, cutting off the oxygen supply further. My lungs begin to burn. A sheen of sweat gathers along my body. He watches me closely, his blue eyes burning into mine. I should be scared, but all it does is deepen this feeling of being owned by him.
The blood thunders in my ears. The sight of him drowns out the room. The world outside.
Everything recedes, but for the throbbing of his cock inside me, of his hip bones digging into my thighs, and this feel of him over me, above me, all around me. Oh. God.
He pulls out, rises up on his knees slightly and stays poised at my entrance. When he pistons his hips forward and impales me, my pussy stretches around his cock. A burning sensation of accommodating him, of being filled up by him, shimmers up my spine.
He slips his hand between us and rubs my clit.
The orgasm surges up like a wildfire racing across dry brush.
That’s when he releases his hold on my throat. Air slams into my lungs, sharp and desperate, feeding the inferno already consuming me. It spreads fast, bright and merciless, unstoppable in its force.
I shatter beneath it, coming so hard, the world fractures into sparks behind my eyes.
He follows me, filling me up with his cum when he orgasms with a guttural cry. He holds himself up, staring into my eyes for a few seconds more, before lowering his forehead to mine.
His heart thunders against mine; the pulse at his throat married in rhythm with mine. His sweat drips onto my temples, merging with mine. It feels like we’re well and truly married.
"Fuck," he groans against my mouth. "You take my breath away."
His pupils are blown wide, nothing left but a thin ring of blue around the edges. He reaches down to where we are joined, scoops up what is ours, and traces my lip with it. I lick it clean. The salt, the musk, the raw intimacy of it makes my head spin like I'm drunk on him.
I shiver.
He pinches my chin, holds me still, then closes his mouth over mine.
The kiss is a mark. A claim. Something feral and unambiguous from this dominant man who is somehow, inexplicably, my husband. It does not ask. It does not question. It simply declares.
My belly trembles. My nipples tighten. I feel well and truly ruined in the best possible way.
Then the kiss shifts.
His mouth stays firm but grows soft at the edges. It becomes something else entirely. A kiss between lovers. One that carries the weight of intimate knowledge, of shared heat, of a history we're still writing, and a future neither of us has dared name yet.
He pulls out of me slowly.
When I feel his cum begin to slip free of me, he pushes it back inside.
The gesture is primitive. Possessive beyond reason. And it sends a bolt of raw awareness crashing through every nerve ending I have.
"Mine," he says against my mouth, and kisses me like he means to make sure I never forget it.
His possessiveness is a living thing. It curls around my throat, slides down my chest, settles hot between my legs, and grips me from the inside out, until I’m held together by nothing but the weight of his claim.
Then he rolls off and falls on his back next to me.
The cool air snakes over me. Before I can get cold, he pulls me onto his chest.
I cuddle against the sculpted planes and draw my fingers over the coordinates tattooed into his chest.
“Are those—”
“It’s where I lost my team on that last mission. I wanted something to remember them by.”
His voice is heavy with regret.
My heart clenches in my chest. “I’m sorry.”
He nods and falls silent for a few seconds. “I got the compass and North Star because I was directionless after leaving the Marines. I needed to mark my search for my true north. The anchor and chain, seemed to signify my search for somewhere to land.”
I rub my cheek against his chest, feeling the need to comfort him.
“And this?” I touch the numbers next to the coordinates which have been tattooed over his heart. “This seems like a date.”
I read the numbers in my mind. That’s five years ago. That’s…wait a minute. I jerk my gaze to his. “Is that…the day—“
“When we met. Yes.”
Oh my God. He inked the day we met into his skin?
“James,” I whisper.
His face softens. “I had to. You made such an impression on me.”
Emotions crowd my throat. “You… You never forgot me?”
“I couldn’t.” He half laughs. “This was my attempt at exorcising you.”
I give him a what-the-hell? look. “You tried to exorcise my memory by inking the date we met into your flesh.”
“Reverse psychology. Seems to work for me sometimes. Not in this case, apparently.”
I reel from what he’s revealed. He has feelings for me. But he hasn’t acknowledged it yet, because he hasn’t been able to say it aloud to me.
I lower my gaze, trying not to show him how much this affects me.
When I trace my finger over the outline of the wolf, he answers my unspoken question.
"They’re complex creatures, legendary for their independence, yet nothing without their pack."
"It’s you, isn’t it?" I look up at him.
"It’s a reminder of what I had and lost." He folds his arm behind his neck. His gaze is distant, but there’s no mistaking the thick waves of regret which roll off him.
A tight, sharp ache blooms behind my sternum. I swallow away the ball of emotion in my throat. "You miss your team."
"They signed up, knowing the odds. I knew what the odds of my surviving unhurt from my missions were. I didn’t realize there’s more than just physical hurt which can gut you."
"Is that why you shut away your emotions?"
His eyes sharpen. He seems startled by my words.
Then he slowly nods. "I did it to protect myself. It was the only way to make it through the hurt of losing my platoon. Some days it felt like there was a giant fist around my heart, squeezing it until I’d die." His tone is bleak.
His eyes have sharpened into jagged chips of ice, freezing me in place.
I was a fool to think him emotionless. The truth is more nuanced.
He feels with such violent depth that he has no choice but to cage it all behind a wall of frost. His stillness isn’t an absence of feeling; it’s the only thing keeping him from splintering apart.
"But you survived," I point out.
"Thanks to you." He rubs his thumb over my cheek. "I turned to the culinary arts because of how passionately you spoke about it. That’s what saved me."
"You’re giving me too much credit. You’re very good at what you do." Likely, because he pours everything unexpressed into his creations.
He looks at me. Really looks at me. "You get me, don’t you?" he asks, surprised.
"Only because I’ve worked closely with you all these months. Not that it was easy, mind you, given how prickly you always were. But yes, I do realize there’s more to you than the persona of the ogre you liked to assume."
He chuckles. "Ogre?"
"Or like a big bad wolf." I nod toward his tattoo.
He flips me over in a quick move.
I squeak. "Hey, what are you doing?’
"Being the big bad wolf." He takes a bite out of the curve of where my throat meets my shoulder.
I scream. "Ouch that, hurts."
"Good." He licks the skin where he buried his teeth.
"Did you mark me?" I stare at him in amazement.
"And if I did?" He looks at me with what seems like surprise at his own actions.
"I love carrying your mark on me." I smile up at him.
His nostrils flare. His eyes gleam. He looks as predatory as the wolf tattoo he wears.
"I can’t wait to mark you all over." He begins to trail small bites down my throat, then up the slope of my breast to my nipple. He sucks on it and my pussy clenches. It’s like there’s a direct line from what his mouth is doing to my body to my core.
"James." I dig my fingers into his hair, enjoying the thick softness of it. I tug, and he makes that growling sound at the back of his throat.
"I want to eat you up. I—"
My phone’s alarm goes off.
We both ignore it. He nibbles his way to my other breast. He licks around the nipple and a whole-body shiver grips me.
That’s when his phone’s alarm goes off. The combination of both phones beeping is agonizing.
"Fuck." He reaches over me, grabs his phone, and shuts it off.
I do the same to mine.
He looks at me with regret. "I don’t want us to leave this bed."
"But you can’t not go into the restaurant again today." For a head chef to not oversee his kitchen, and especially a Michelin-star restaurant, is unheard of. Most don’t take holidays…ever. And barely see their families.
For the first time since embarking on this profession, I wonder if the sacrifice is worth it. I’d give anything to grab a few more hours with James. To not leave this sex-scented nest of our bed, and to have him ravish me until I can barely think straight.
Once again, he reads the train of my thoughts, and his features soften. "I am going to find a way for the both of us to get some time off."
"Nice thought. But you know how impossible that’s going to be."
"Impossible is my middle name." He smirks. Then he rolls off me and holds out his arm. When I take his hand, he hauls me to a sitting position.
"Maybe we have time for a shower?" He waggles his eyebrows.
This…almost playful side of him is such a surprise.
I love it. It makes me wonder what other hidden sides of him are there.
And I do want to stay here with him. But being late to the restaurant this morning is a risk.
Especially when James hasn’t given instructions to the staff on how to cover for our absence.
No. If something went wrong, I’d never forgive myself.
I push up to standing and take a step away from him. "I’m going to take a shower. Alone. If not, we’ll never get out of here."
He scowls. "You’re no fun."
"I learned from the best." I toss him a kiss, walking past him. He moves as if to grab me, and I giggle and dance away.
His phone buzzes again.
He looks at it on the bedside table.
"It’s Alfie Whittington.”
His brow furrows.
“What would the Chairman of my Board of Directors want at”—he glances closer at the screen—“five a.m. in the morning?”