Chapter 43
KATE
For a moment, I think Cole won’t yield. He must be in charge. He must manage our eternal tightrope of give and take.
I took charge with Tarasov. I laid out his choices. I delivered his punishments, creating every twisted exchange.
I don’t want to be in charge anymore. I don’t want to weigh options, to calculate costs, to measure out all the tiny variations in right and wrong and maybe.
Cole knows that. He knows me. He understands.
So he kisses me. One hand tangles in my damp hair, tilting my head to the perfect angle and pulling me close. The other shifts against my folds, his fingers hooking me, snaring me, making it clear he’ll never let me go.
His lips are soft on mine. For just a moment, his kiss tastes like dread, as if he feared he’d lose me, as if all the blood downstairs and all the anger and terror of my past shattered something impossibly fragile between us.
But when I kiss him back with lips and tongue and teeth, the flavor ripens into something new. He tastes fierce and needy and…proud. He’s proud of who I am, of what I did, of what we did together.
Because Tarasov’s death is something we both accomplished, the two of us.
We took on the risk, capturing the bratva brigadier on the playground.
We killed his bodyguard. We accepted the risk that Cole’s criminal past will be disclosed.
We reduced an unrepentant child rapist to a hunk of rotting meat.
Cole’s teeth close over my lower lip, biting hard enough to make me moan. I can’t explain why I need this. After everything that’s happened to me, all that I’ve endured, I should want a gentle man, a soft man, an easy man.
But I want Cole. I need him.
So when he pulls away, and the faint salt of blood washes over my tongue, I whisper, “My, what sharp teeth you have.”
“The better to eat you with, my dear,” he growls. And then he collects a handful of neckties from the closet.
Cole will make things right. When he binds my wrists in silk, I’m certain he knows how tight to make the knots. When he ties my ankles to the bed, I trust that he’s already calculated the strain on my knees, the stretch of my thighs, the ache of longing he opens up inside me.
He positions himself between my legs, kneeling, studying my secrets like he’s analyzing a painting before he bids at auction. Even after everything we’ve done together, the intensity of his gaze embarrasses me. I try to draw my knees together, but he hasn’t left me room to escape.
Instead, he reaches out to tug at the soft curls of the landing strip I’ve shaved across my mound. He pulls hard, sharp enough to force tears to the corner of my eyes. “This is mine,” he says fiercely, staring at me as if I’d ever dare deny him.
“Yours,” I agree, holding his gaze.
His fingers dip lower, pinching my clit so hard I yelp. “This is mine,” he repeats.
“Yours,” I tell him.
He slides two fingers past my folds, driving hard. When I tilt my hips to give him a better angle, he adds a third finger, then a fourth. He’s filling me, stretching me, pulling me to the tearing edge of pain. “This is mine,” he says savagely.
“Yours,” I tell him, and then, matching the rhythm of his driving hand, “Yours, yours, yours.”
He adds his thumb.
I’m taking his whole fist.
His wrist is wider than any cock. His fingers scrape the needy knot inside me. My legs strain against my bonds, desperate to break free, frantic to pull him even deeper.
I’m riding his hand. We’re locked together. I’m closer, closer, closer... I catch one last breath, holding it, bearing down—
And he slips his fist free.
As he rocks back on his heels, I wail at the loss because I was teetering on the edge, I was almost there…
“One,” he announces, sounding almost idle.
“I didn’t—”
His thumb falls heavy on my lip. Without thinking, I purse my mouth and suck him in.
“You will, my dear,” he says with a low chuckle. “Oh, you will.”
When I open my mouth to protest, he slips his thumb free. He uses my arousal to finger-paint my belly. He traces around my nipples, pinching them to attention and then he sucks away the evidence, pulling long and hard.
I groan in frustration as his lips move down my belly. His hands frame my ribs as if he’s measuring me for a corset. He nuzzles my landing strip, rubbing his cheeks against the bare flesh on either side, stinging with the stubble of a full day’s growth of beard.
He licks my clit with the flat of his tongue. “Yes,” I murmur, my wrists straining against their bonds. I want to grab hold of him. I want to feel his hair between my fingers. I want to keep him there.
His arms curl beneath my thighs, tilting me to the position he desires. His shoulders hold me open. Lowering his head, he takes one long taste from the pucker of my arse all the way to my clit. I scream as he nips me.
“Oh, Kate,” he sighs, his cheek against my thigh.
I wriggle then, trying to make him lick me again, but he has another plan.
This time, he starts at my knee. He hardens his tongue, using the hot tip to trace each rung of the ladder I’ve carved into my flesh.
He tastes every one of my scars, pulling at them with his lips, scraping them with his teeth.
This attention is more intimate than anything we’ve done before.
It’s more invasive than when he filled me with his fist. He’s seeing more of me, reaching deeper inside me, even though his mouth never leaves my thigh.
When he finishes on one side, he shifts to the other, consuming every wound I’ve ever inflicted on myself.
“My Kate,” he says when he’s back to the needy space between my thighs. “Sweet, sweet Kate.”
And he devours me.
He sucks on my clit. He tongues my fluttering folds. He fucks me with his mouth, triggering every individual nerve inside me.
I strain against my bonds. I need to close my knees, need to hold his head there, need to keep him close because I’m so tight, so ready, so, so, so…
When he pulls away, I scream in frustration. “You miserable shitehawk bastard!”
He laughs, dragging the back of his hand across his soaked chin. “Two,” he says.
I writhe as he returns his attention to my scarred legs, measuring each individual rung with his index finger. I don’t want him touching me there. I want him finishing the job he started.
But his steady, quiet stroking calms my heartbeat. His touch brings my frantic breathing back to normal.
“I hate you,” I finally say.
“Of course you do.” He smiles as he says it.
I can’t help myself. I smile too. But I turn my head away so he can’t see.
He pulls himself up to lie beside me, propping himself on one arm and resting his head on his palm. With the other hand, he traces the length of my body.
He samples my ready pussy, dabbling against my clit. He traces my jutting hip bones, curving up my flanks. He draws my ribs, taking his time, making me arch off the damp mattress.
He uses the V between his finger and thumb to frame the underside of my breast. The weight of his hand at the top of my ribs is shockingly possessive. He owns me.
As if to prove the point, he lowers his mouth to the pulse point in my jaw. At first, he kisses me, just his lips, warm and hard. Then he sucks, staking a claim, demanding enough that I know he’s left a mark.
Then he savages me with his tongue.
There’s no way on earth that something so simple should feel so good.
This isn’t my clit, with its direct wiring to the detonation center in my brain.
He isn’t pulling on my hard, aching nipples.
He isn’t biting, isn’t sucking, he’s just driving me wild, as if his tongue can drill straight through to the beating chambers of my heart.
I laugh like I’m being tickled. The sensation is utterly overwhelming, as if I’m simultaneously cresting a mountaintop and drowning in the sea. I need him to stop, and I need him to keep doing this forever.
The hand that was cupping my breast moves lower. He spreads his fingers across my belly, wide and flat. This is a way of claiming me too. He pulls just a little, tightening the skin across my mound, and suddenly I’m one lash of his tongue away from coming.
I’m ready. I’m desperate. I’m waiting.
And he murmurs into my ear, “Three.”
I collapse onto the mattress, giving my full weight to the bonds on my wrist, to the ties on my ankle. I close my eyes in vain hope that my hot tears won’t trickle down my cheeks. A sob leaks past my lips.
“Hush, Kate,” he whispers, and his lips are impossibly gentle against my eyelids, across my cheeks.
He works the knots on the silk ties that bind my wrists. That makes me cry harder, because that means we’re finished. He’s punished me, the counting to three I earned in the basement, and now we’re done, and he won’t give me the single thing I need most in the world.
“Shhh,” he murmurs, releasing my left foot. “Hush,” he says again as he frees my right.
I want to curl onto my side. I want to bury my face in my pillow. I want to hide from him forever because he knows me, he’s seen the locked-up, darkest parts of me, and because of that he won’t let me come.
“Kate,” he sighs again, folding his arm over my ribs.
He pulls me close, matching his chest to my spine. His hand spreads across my belly again, startling me as he tightens his grip because I’m suddenly right back where I was, on the edge, so ready to come that the taste of sweet release mingles with tears at the back of my throat.
He presses his thigh against mine, shifting my legs, and I realize his cock is hot and heavy. He tugs me close, and I gasp, which gives him the leverage to glide past my folds from behind.
He fills me. This isn’t the pain-pressure of his fist. This is the slick heat of the cock I need, the easy rhythm as we move together, the perfect fit as I curve against him, giving him even more control.
He gathers my hair from the nape of my neck. He’s pumping harder now, moving faster. I groan at the pace, wanting more, needing him to free me now. My throat is on fire, and I realize I’m chanting: “Oh God, Cole. More, Cole. Now, Cole. Now!”
His teeth close over my earlobe. His thumb and forefinger pinch my clit. My body stiffens at the sudden pain, and he drives deeper than he ever has before, pulling me close, holding me tight, molding us into one seamless shape.
For one perfect moment, we’re suspended.
Then, something breaks inside me, a hard tug that impossibly pulls him deeper.
I’m clutching, shattering, becoming something I never imagined I could be, because he’s making me, he’s forming me, he’s emptying into me and filling me and transforming me into some sort of new, reborn creature.
When my brain comes back online, we’re still spooned together.
I lie there quietly, aware that he’s matched his breathing to mine, or maybe I matched his without even thinking about it.
There’s no other man on earth I’d let do what he just did to me—unravel me strand by strand, then put me back together into something stronger, something straighter, something true.
I raise Cole’s arm from my belly so I can kiss his knuckles.
He shifts his legs around mine, nestling his resting cock against my arse.
I relax against him, sharing his warmth, trusting his strength.
As I settle my head against his collar bone, I whisper the only thought my mind is capable of forming: “I love you.”
His response is to pull me even closer. “I love you too.” He kisses the nape of my neck. “Rest now. Go to sleep.”
But I can’t sleep yet. There’s one thing I still have to do, something I’ve dreamed of for decades, something I long ago accepted was impossible.
Ignoring Cole’s groaned protest, I stretch for the nightstand. I fumble for the switch on the lamp there, my fingers clumsy with fatigue. It takes two tries before I get the mechanism to catch. I blink as the light goes off, and I hold my eyes closed for an extra count of three.
When I open them, the bedroom is dark. Shadows fill the corners. The faintest moonlight sneaks past the curtains.
I hold my breath, as if I’m listening for monsters. I hear my heartbeat, loud and fast. I hear Cole’s breathing, slow and steady. But that’s it. Nothing else. The monsters are banished.
And for the first time since I was eight years old, I manage to sleep in the dark.