Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Athena
I t was a kiss that was decades in the making. One that had faced death and died and was now resurrected.
His mouth consumed mine. Devoured it like he finally had the right to take what had always been his. We’d both lost so much, but sometimes it was only loss that could reveal what we’d always had.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, letting out a whimper of protest as he pulled me to him.“Your shoulder.” The last thing I wanted was to hurt his wound.
“It’s fine,” he growled, biting along my jawline until he reached my neck, settling at the sensitive spot just under my ear, the strokes of his tongue planting a vine of fire in my veins.
“You were shot.”
His free hand slid to my ass, gripping it hard so I could feel him. The length of him pressed into my stomach. “It’s fine.”
My fingers curled into the ends of his hair. For a second, I let my eyes drift shut, losing myself to the magic of his mouth. Tongue and teeth and lips—my skin was a blank canvas for the artistry of his touch. A canvas of dark night tattooed by the start of his kiss.
“Athena,” he groaned against me, a thrill of need racing to my bones when I felt how his big body trembled with wanting me.
And then my feet started to leave the ground.
“No!” My eyes went wide, and I backed out of his one-armed hold. “You’re not carrying me like this. Injured.”
His eyes glittered with lust. “That bullet could still be lodged in there and it wouldn’t stop me from taking you back to my bed.”
Darius advanced on me like a predator coming for his prey, and I had to stop him. I didn’t want him to hurt himself or make his shoulder worse.
“Wait.” I pressed my palm to his chest and then slowly slid it up to his cheek, my thumb stroking along his scar.“Do you trust me?”
“With everything I have.” His solemn promise would’ve sent me into a puddle at his feet, melted from the heat of his loyalty, if I wasn’t so intent on what I was about to do…and the thrill it gave me.
I met his stare, soaking in the depths of its sweetness, before I murmured, “Close your eyes.”
One brow lifted. Surprised. Then intrigued. Then hungry. And slowly, his eyes drifted shut.
I bit into my bottom lip, never having done anything like this in my entire life, but the way I needed him—the way I wanted him to have me and trust me—was beyond anything I could deny.
Carefully, I reached for the edge of the wrap used to sling his arm to his chest. Pulling it free, I slowly unraveled the fabric, feeling the heavy thump of his breaths like a bull blindfolded before the charge.
“What happens if I peek?” he rumbled, and I swore he stole a quick glance once I had the bandage wrap in my hands.
“Nothing, because I’m going to make sure you can’t,” I murmured and stretched the fabric over his eyes.
“Athena…” His tone was hoarse and hesitant as I wound the fabric around his head, blinding him completely.
“I want you to know…to feel what it’s like to trust me the way I trusted you,” I said softly, securing the blindfold in place.
I caught the flare of his nostrils and the ripple of tension in his body. He wasn’t used to being vulnerable. Not with his past. Not with his secrets. And not with his body.
“Then do your worst, Angel.”
I hummed, warm pleasure oozing from his words.
My fingers traced a light path from his head, along his cheek and neck, and then down his torso. The ridges of his abdomen rose up against my hand, every muscle pulling taut as I got closer to his waist and the thick length that stretched against his jeans. The way he wanted me to touch him was practically electric in the air. I felt his need buzz in my nose and tingle on the tip of my tongue. But I wasn’t going to touch him. Not yet.
I took the edge of his shirt and pulled it up. Wordlessly, he followed my lead, letting me slide the fabric over and off his good side before carefully peeling it down his injured shoulder. Without the sling, his arm rested gingerly at his side.
It wasn’t cold, but he shivered.
“Tell me what you feel,” I instructed as I took his shirt and went behind him, laying it open on the grass.
“The air,” he said, his head following my sound. “Like a million brushstrokes over my skin. ”
I made a soft noise, removing my own shirt and adding it to the ground next to his.
“And how about what you smell?” Next went my leggings, left in a pile next to our other clothes.
“The sea,” he rasped as I moved back in front of him. “And sin.”
“Sin?” My head tipped.
“I smell you. Your desire.”
I smiled and shook my head. He wasn’t being serious now.
“You took off your pants.”
“How—” I broke off in disbelief. He was guessing…he had to be.
“I’d know the sweet scent of your pussy anywhere.” He shredded my thoughts and sent heat churning in my core. “I dream about it. On my nose. In my mouth. Around my cock.”
I couldn’t stop the whimper that escaped me, my body quaking with lust.
“I want the scent of you all over me?—”
“Darius,” I interrupted him, desperation bleeding into my tone. I was going to come just standing here listening to his words, and I wanted this to be for him. “Get on your knees.”
Air hissed through his lips. “Gonna need you to undo my jeans for that, Angel.”
My cheeks burned, and I felt my mouth go dry. I’d thought about this part, but suddenly, I realized I hadn’t thought it all the way through. I was going to see him for the first time. The long, thick part of him that drove me wild. The hard velvet anatomy I’d traced with my fingers. The steel studs of his piercings I’d mapped with my tongue.
Touch created an erotic image in my mind, but it wouldn’t be the same as seeing him. And now, I realized the power he’d had over me all those weeks—and the strength it would’ve taken to resist wanting me like he had .
He swore at the first brush of my hands as I worked open the waist of his pants and carefully dragged them, along with his boxer briefs, to the ground.
Oh my…
My jaw sagged at the sight. It was everything my touch had charted in my mind, but more. His huge cock hung heavy in front of him, dark hair curled at the root. To think I’d fit that in my mouth, all the way to my throat…I gulped, letting my eyes trace the web of veins that ran along the thick length all the way to the blunt tip.
His studded tip.
To see the metal balls, knowing they were the ends of the metal bars running like a cross through his cock…knowing I’d felt them deep inside me. Knowing that being inside me moved something inside of him.
My mouth went completely dry.
“I feel it,” he croaked, standing like a Roman god come to life. “I feel your eyes. The heat of your stare when you look at me.” It wasn’t a charge, it was awe and pleasure and humility. “Did you feel it, too?”
It took a moment for words to work again. “Yes.” I’d felt every second of his stare on me, even when I couldn’t see it. It was like the wind—invisible but palpable. And made of fire.
“Athena…”
“On your knees.”
I drank in the sight of his perfectly carved and scarred body lower to the ground, one knee and then the other, his cock bobbing heavily in front of him.
“My imagination is killing me,” he confessed hoarsely, his chin tipped up like a beggar pleading for sight.
I bent forward and sealed my lips to his, his reaction instantaneous. His mouth wanted to level the playing field—wanted to put me at his mercy. He licked and stroked, tangled his tongue with mine in a dance I couldn’t quit. I felt his hand find the side of my calf and start to slide higher.
“Darius…” I pulled back.
Hunger was etched across his features. The crease of his mouth. The thump of his pulse.
“I need you,” he rasped.
I shivered and straightened, needing him too. But there, my plan faltered. Seeing the strain on his face and those full lips so close to my chest…
“Open your mouth,” I instructed, the huskiness of my voice making it both unrecognizable and utterly honest.
His torturous lips peeled apart, aching for whatever morsel I was willing to feed him.
I cupped my own breast and inched forward, presenting his waiting mouth with the hard, aching peak of my nipple. Time tiptoed forward and then stopped for a split second at the moment he sensed there was something for him to taste. He couldn’t see, couldn’t feel, but there was a flicker—a twitch over the muscles of his brow.
His lips latched down with hard pressure, making me gasp as an instant bolt of heat shot between my thighs.
“Darius,” I moaned, my hand sliding to his cheek—his head—and clutching him to me as he devoured my nipple with boundless hunger.
I arched my back, my head tipping toward the star-studded sky and felt closer to heaven than I’d ever imagined. He made me feel safe. Wanted. Powerful and protected. And loved. In spite of everything we’d gone through—everything that had kept us apart—there was no one I’d ever felt as close to.
Dare groaned into my skin, the flick of his tongue and the pull of his lips sending my mind into a tangle of sensations, each stronger than the last until I swore my legs were going to give out. Until I couldn’t think—couldn’t breathe—couldn’t …
“ Darius. ” My loud gasp pierced the still night air as his fingers slid between my thighs, and his deep groan made the trees shiver.
“I need you,” he rumbled, biting gently on my nipple as his thumb worked over my clit.
I couldn’t recover from the wave of pleasure fast enough before he doused me with another. Two fingers sinking deep inside my sex and curling into that spot that would have me collapse.
I’d never felt vulnerable with a man before. Never trusted so implicitly. So unwaveringly. Never loved so wholly as I did this man.
“So, fucking warm and soft and wet.” His heavy breaths tortured my sensitive flesh in the space between the strokes of his tongue. “I want to live inside you.”
Oh god.
“Every day, I want to put some part of me inside you.” His fingers moved in painfully and pleasurably slow strokes, reeling me closer and closer to the peak of release. “Every day.”
“Darius…”This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. I was supposed to be guiding him, and instead, I was clutched to the blindfolded man on his knees, whose mouth and fingers were my undoing.
“Every day until one day…” He trailed off, biting down on my nipple as he curled his fingers into my front wall and then furiously stroked over my clit, the sensation like adding accelerant directly onto a fire. “Until one day when I put a baby inside you.”
“ Dare!” I cried out, the edge of my release clawing for me like a tornado through my core, and I didn’t want it. No, I did want it, but not like this.
I grabbed his wrist and pulled myself back, panting as I stood a just-unreachable distance from the god on his knees .
“Fuck, Athena.” His chest heaved. “ Fuck.”
My eyes lowered, and I wondered how it was possible that he was even bigger. Thicker and longer. The whole length pulsing drops of precum to his tip.
His ragged groan snapped my attention back to his mouth, which was currently filled with his fingers that had been stuffed inside me.
My core clenched, my climax clawing to be set free.
“I could come from the taste of you, Angel,” he said with a low voice, dragging his tongue along the edges of his fingers to make sure he got every last drop.
I moved back in front of him, cupping his face and bringing that mouth of his to mine. He gave his whole focus to the kiss as I lowered to my knees. His hands found my waist, holding my body flush to his until his mouth made my head feel light.
“I need you,” I said against his lips. “I’ve always needed you.”
Covering his hands with my own, I turned slowly in front of him until my back was to his front. He shuddered again, kissing along the edge of my shoulder as one of his palms skated up my quivering stomach to my breast. I bit my lip, savoring the feel for a moment, before I tipped forward and reached between my legs, taking hold of his thick length and relishing his deep groan.
“Fuck .” His rough voice swirled around me.
I couldn’t help but stroke him. I wanted to feel his hard heat just for a second—wanted to hear the rough strain of pleasure seep from his chest and paint an audible picture of his lust.
“You’re killing me, Angel,” he hissed, his hold on my hip tightening to the point where it planted a delicious hope I’d wake up with his fingerprints on me in the morning.
I smiled and smeared the bead of moisture all over the head of his cock, coating the ends of his piercings in the process .
His head dropped to the corner of my neck, his teeth latching to my skin before he groaned, “Save me. Please, fucking save me.”
I shuddered, the words more powerful than even an I love you would’ve been. My breath latched in my chest like it had claws, holding there as I arched back until I felt him notched at my core. A little more, and my exhale spilled out when his blunt tip pushed inside me. There, I held him.
“Save me, too,” I murmured and slid my hand free to lay on top of his, my message clear. Take me. All of me.
And he did.
His growl was the kind that belonged outside. In the forest. With the animals. Because that was how he claimed me. Like a blinded beast, he held me steady and buried himself to the hilt in one thrust.
Pleasure and fullness and pure bliss consumed me. Our cries wove together with the sounds of our bodies. The hard slap of his hips as he drove into me.
I felt everything like I’d lost every sensation except touch. I felt the press of his balls to my swollen clit when he sank deep. I felt the thickness of him stretch my body to make himself at home. I felt the hard, unyielding stroke of his piercings inside me, rubbing over my G-spot like it was made to do.
With every thrust, I bent farther forward, wanting him deeper and harder and faster. Soon, I was on my hands and knees, doing everything I could to brace against his savage thrusts. His massive palm splayed on my lower back, branding my skin as surely as he branded my sex.
For a moment, it felt like my consciousness floated above our bodies—around us—soaking in the sight of him driving into my prone body from behind, claiming me in a feral, animalistic way that belonged in the forest. That belonged underneath the stars .
He groaned over and over. My name. Praises. Curses. And everything in between.
Desire spiraled. Coiled. Twisted and arced. A lightning bolt brought to life in the depths of my body. My knees spread wider, and I went to my elbows, letting him stroke deeper until I swore I felt the thickness of him reach my stomach…and that spot deep inside me where his piercings felt like dynamite tossed into a bonfire.
“Darius!” I came with a cry that split my chest, my hips jerking uncontrollably as my release ravaged me.
I saw stars as though they were pinned to the ground rather than the sky. My body orgasmed so fast and so violently, my brain couldn’t keep up. Like my cells and senses moved without direction or restraint, exploding into tiny, brilliant bits like my climax had turned me into his very own constellation.
Behind me, Dare swore and thrust through my clenching muscles. He buried himself deep, my sex taking every inch, feeling every swell and every pulse. The way he thickened was like fire crawling down a fuse, all the way to the base before he exploded. And then, with a roar, he moved again, pumping through his release as warmth filled me. Soaked me. Leaked from me.
Time didn’t exist in the aftermath. When he pulled me back up against him, my arms and shoulders protested, giving some sense of how long I’d been propped forward.
His hand slid around my waist to my stomach, holding there for a moment like he could feel himself still inside me before sliding his hand up to my neck. I shivered when his fingers turned my head so he could find my lips.
“Let’s go inside,” he murmured, pressing soft kisses to my lips.
I hummed, not really wanting to move at all right now.
“I’m going to sleep inside you again, Angel. ”
I shivered, and my eyes fluttered open. I’d thought maybe the other night was different. It was the first time he’d had sex with someone in a long time. The buildup. The need. I wondered if it would only be a one-night thing…and how to ask for it every night.
How to tell him I wanted a part of him inside me at all times, too.
“Darius…”
“I’ll rest on my good shoulder, I promise,” he rumbled, his mouth stamping kisses along the side of my neck. “Just need to sleep with my cock inside you. Feels like the only way I’ll know this is real…that you’re really mine.”
A warm shiver consumed me, the heat of an unspoken confession charging through me with unexpected force.
I was really his. I always would be. Because I loved him.
Instead, the response that came out was, “Okay.”
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow I’d tell him how I loved him and hope it would erase the last fears of his past from ever hurting him again.