29. Mara
29
MARA
N uptials?
I glance at Ark, who looks gorgeous in a crisp midnight-blue business shirt, minus the stuffy tie he’s rarely without, and designer slacks that cost more than I make a month.
He’s glaring at the cashier.
If looks could kill, the cashier would be on his knees, clutching his chest.
The cause of their tension dawns on me when the butterflies in my stomach augment. They’re not fluttering with the fear that usually shakes my vocal cords. They’re too low for that. They love the protectiveness beaming out of Ark and how sharing some of my secrets with him didn’t change his obsession with my safety.
The knowledge frees my voice from encumbrances when I say, “Thanks. It’s new but amazing.”
My husband ’s mouth curves egotistically when I shift my eyes back to him, and I hit him with an animated wink. It reduces the scowl between his brows and hovers his hand so close to my back that goose bumps prickle on my nape.
I arch into his embrace, craving his touch, before I guide our walk back to my apartment building.
Something as simple as being guided down an isolated street shouldn’t instigate a fiery response, but I feel like I am on fire. My thighs ache from the number of times I press them together, and my panties feel damp.
The responses of my body grow more uncontrollable the longer we walk. Our attraction is intense. Burning. And his closeness is the drug my body desperately needs to fully wash away the haunted memories clinging to my skin.
Icy winds announce winter is only a hair’s breadth away, but I feel so toasty when we enter my apartment ten minutes later that I sag against the door, needing its coolness to subdue the inferno burning me from the inside out.
The fire is upgraded to catastrophic when Ark spins to face me. He radiates power and authority, but I pay the most attention to the hunger in his eyes.
He craves me as badly as I crave his touch, and it’s reached a point where I can no longer hide the truth. “Kiss me. Please. Wash it away.”
The lack of fear in my voice is shocking, but it has nothing to do with how fast Ark jumps to my command. I scarcely register the groceries being dumped onto the entryway table before his hands are in my hair, and his mouth narrows toward my parted lips.
As we breathe as one, our eyes locked and silently devouring, he tugs on sweat-damp strands, forcing my head back before his eyes seek permission to kiss me like I didn’t beg for him to do precisely that.
When I nod, he leans in deeper before spearing his tongue between my lips. My fingernails scratch at the varnish on my door when he strokes his tongue along mine, tasting every inch of my mouth.
I’m desperate to lose my fingers in his dark mane, to drag my nails over his scalp while returning his confident embrace, but the consciousness that not all the thudding of his heart is from our heated kiss stops me.
If I want him to shift my thoughts of sex from painful to pleasurable, I need him to exert the authority he did during our previous exchanges. To do that, he needs to feel comfortable and confident.
Touching him won’t allow that.
When I balance on my tippy-toes, stealing the last ounce of air between our bodies, Ark growls into my mouth before he deepens our kiss. I’m pinned between him and the door, hungrily aware of his desires as well as I am mine. He’s hard, his cock thick and strained against my damp panties that are seconds from being exposed by the unladylike thrusts of my hips.
With my palms flat on the door, I return his kiss with as much eagerness as he is displaying. I stroke my tongue along the roof of his mouth and nip at his lips while grinding myself against the impressive bulge in the crotch of his pants.
My clit throbs for attention, as thunderous as my heart. I want his mouth on me again, down there, but I’m too scared to ask.
Before our exchange on his desk, I’d never been pleased orally before.
Actually, I’d never been pleased. Period.
I was assaulted and discarded. That was as far as my sexual experiences went.
You wouldn’t know that, though, from the deep moan that emits from Ark’s mouth when the shimmers of an orgasm wrack through my body from grinding my clit against his crotch.
“Fuck, Mara…” Ark growls over my lips, doubling the searing ache coursing through me. “I want you so bad it hurts.” He kisses my mouth, nose, and neck before he pinches my chin with his thumb and forefinger to align our eyes. “But I will stop this now if that’s what you want. I will walk away without?—”
I roll my hips upward, ending his worry.
Then I re-lock our lips.
In minutes, our exchange moves from the foyer to the living room. The pillows Tillie picked from a thrift store flatten against my back when Ark lays me on the couch before he plants a knee between my legs.
I continue grinding, the image of him splayed between my legs too much not to respond. I squirm so much that my skirt becomes a belt, and my damp underwear take care of the final divot between Ark’s prominent brows.
Hunger beams from him, and it makes his words husky. “If you need me to stop?—”
“Don’t stop. Please. Never stop.”
A low rumble rolls up my chest when he smiles. It is both wicked and devilish.
“I need to fasten your hands.” I nod before all his question leaves his mouth. “Are you okay with that?”
I’m breathing so hard that my breasts thrust forward with every desperate gasp.
My face is too hot, flushed with lust, and the situation worsens when Ark unbuttons his business shirt. His body is divine, a powerhouse vessel of sex and seduction.
I pant into a smattering of his chest hairs when he leans over me to tie my hands above my head with the sleeves of his business shirt.
He binds my hands together firm enough to double the throbs of my clit but loose enough that panic is the last thought to enter my head.
“If it’s too much?—”
“I’ll tell you.” Our eyes collide, and sparks ignite when I say, “You can trust me, Ark.”
I had hoped he would have realized that by now.
After a brief nod, his gaze slides down my body. His breath hitches when he stops at the apex of my pussy. “You’re already wet for me.”
My shoulder blades meet when the back of his fingers flutter down the lines of my pussy. Pleasure sizzles in my veins as the desire to thrust my head back and moan overwhelms me when he asks, “I want to taste you here again. Can I?”
The fact he seeks consent already drives me wild with need, so I won’t mention how burning the urge becomes when he spots my nod.
The heaviness of my breasts is unmissable when the pad of his thumb slides over my clit. I almost vault off the couch, the intensity of the zap his touch instigates pushing me insanely close to the finish line.
“You’re so sensitive.” He massages my clit with slow, timed circles, his eyes unmoving from my face. “Could you get off like this? With only my hands on you?”
I nod, unashamed. I’m so desperate for him that my hips churn restlessly as my eyes coach him to lose control.
He makes true on my wordless beg with a soft yet still menacing grin. He massages my clit with his thumb until a rhythmic, terrifying pull draws energy from my body and makes me shake.
My core clenches as tiny shivers roll through me. My orgasm isn’t as intense as envisioned by the firmness of my shakes, nor emotionally cathartic, but it still feels fantastic.
I writhe against Ark’s hand as tears prick my eyes, regions of my body as sensitive as my heart.
As he slows the strokes bombarding my clit, he says, “That was to ease you into the plethora of pleasure I’m about to bombard you with.” The velvety rasp of his voice coerces me to flutter my eyes open. “Now the real fun can begin.”
My wrists strain against their bindings when he slips my panties to the side, and he nuzzles the cleft of my pussy with his mouth. Air leaves my lungs in a hurry when his impatience to taste me again sees his tongue circling the nervy bud aching for his attention two seconds later.
God, that feels good.
His five o’clock shadow chafes the sensitive skin between my pussy and my ass when he eats me with an expertise that has my thighs shuddering like I plunged into an ice bath.
I rock against his mouth and whisper his name while his tongue tirelessly focuses on my clit.
He strokes it, licks it, and sucks it into his mouth until I can’t ignore the flutters making me a sticky mess.
I scream his name as I climax, my entire body shaking.
This orgasm is all-encompassing. Blinding. It turns me into a blubbering, shaky mess, yet I can’t get enough. I roll my hips and grind against his mouth until the sizzle of back-to-back climaxes slick my skin with sweat.
Ark’s pursuit doesn’t relent, either. He continues licking, moaning, and eating. He fucks me with his mouth until another orgasm churns through me like a tornado.
My hands pull against the restraints as I thrash violently. Then I still, the prompts of my body no longer mine to command.
The knowledge should scare me.
It doesn’t.
It’s freeing to hand the burden of my body’s protection to someone else and entrust him to take care of its every whim.
“That’s it.” Ark glides a finger through my pussy lips as his thumb rolls over my oversensitive clit. “Let all that tension go.”
He parts me with his fingers and then slowly slips one inside me.
“You have such a pretty pussy, Mara.”
I can’t take my eyes off him as he stretches me with his fingers. He starts with one and quickly moves it to two before he eventually increases the burn by squashing three fingers inside me.
“I need to get you ready for me, but if it’s too much?—”
“It feels great.”
A low hum vibrates from his chest as his fingers go deep. I pulsate around them, lost to the sensation tightening my chest with the rope that was once knotted in my stomach.
My fingers curl around the shirt holding them hostage when Ark’s palm places a perfect amount of pressure on my clit. I’m almost too sensitive, too enamored. I am being hammered by emotions but incapable of allowing them to be heard. The wish to climax again is too strong, the drive too urgent.
When Ark’s mouth returns to my pussy, my toes curl as my hips lift from the couch. I collide my pussy with his mouth before moaning through the rumbles of his growl as he loses control.
His tongue drives me insane, poking and protruding, but his fingers take all the control. They slide in and out of me at a frantic pace, dotting my body with as much wetness as the perfect furl of his fingers.
I’m so lost to him that another climax crashes into me without warning.
My nails scour Ark’s shirt as I quiver through a blistering of stars and fireworks. Sweat mists my skin as my lungs hunt for air while I fight to breathe. To think. I can’t do anything but surrender to the madness of a powerful tsunami.
There’s the hysteria I thought I’d only ever imagine.
My orgasm is so vicious that it leaves me as violently as it overwhelmed me. I sink against the sofa and draw in desperate breaths, my body ravaged by a beautifully brutal climax.
When Ark’s fingers slide out of my pussy and he climbs up my quivering body, I smile at the achievement on his face. He deserves more rapacious applause, but I’m too exhausted to do anything but stare.
“You still with me?”
His smile augments the wave in my stomach when I reply, “Just.”
“One more.” He adjusts the tilt of my hips, giving himself room to settle between my thighs before he lowers his hand to his belt. “Then you can rest.”
“One more…?” My arched brow announces my confusion on my behalf.
Heat creeps across my neck when Ark angles his head and stares at me like a hunter would look down the scope of a rifle.
“Oh.”
An intense current surges through me when his cock settles between my legs. We’re still mostly clothed, but since my hands are bound above my head, I missed the strip tease that removed his impressive manhood from his trousers.
I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t disappointed.
My heart thumps when Ark reminds me of his mind-reading capabilities. “Next time.” I assume he means the show he unknowingly puts on anytime he breathes, but I am proven wrong when he locks his eyes with his homemade restraint and says, “Maybe next time I can remove the restraints.”
“Maybe,” I murmur, too focused on the wild need in his eyes to care about anything but our current exchange.
Dark hair curtains his face when he tears open a condom before he rolls it down his thick shaft. I don’t know where he got the condom, but I’m glad he came prepared. I may have strangled myself if we had to stop this now.
I squirm more from the intensity of Ark’s watch than the heaviness of his cock when he braces it at the opening of my pussy. He coats the tip with the slickness of my multiple arousals before he lifts his eyes to my face.
“I’ll go slow.” His words are a promise, not a suggestion. The thudding of the vein in his neck proves this, not to mention the glint of fear in his eyes that he’s about to hurt me. “Are you ready?”
When I nod, his soundless groan vibrates against my swollen flesh.
He massages my clit with his thumb as he slowly enters me. The burn is excruciating, as scourged as the expression that crosses his face when pain is the first emotion my body registers.
“No,” I murmur when he inches back, removing the first handful of inches he fed in. “It feels good. You f-feel good. You’re just so… big .”
Heated delight rolls through me when he places more pressure on my clit. He doesn’t move. He remains perfectly still, but within a handful of rotations, the tightness between my legs slackens, and his expression becomes less devastated.
“That’s it, baby.” I clench around him as he returns the handful of inches he stole. His muscles flex when he takes in how intimately our bodies are joined. “Accept me inside you. You’re taking me so well.”
As tremors of an orgasm surface again, I swivel my hips, riveted that something so painful can also be enjoyable. Our exchange isn’t rough and impatient. It’s slow and rhythmic, a perfectly timed embrace that shows you can lose control and still be gentle.
Ark’s control is mesmerizing. I love how he stares at me with fire in his eyes that reveals he wants to ravish me, but he will hold back his desires to ensure I am comfortable.
That proves what I’ve known since day one.
Ark is not a sexual predator.
Sex offenders are delusional with their thoughts. Their inability to self-regulate and control their impulses means they often believe they’re more important than the person they are abusing. They think their abuse isn’t harmful and that they’re entitled to whatever they want, so consent doesn’t need to be sought.
Ark isn’t doing any of those things. He’s in control; he sought consent, and instead of exploiting my vulnerabilities, he’s ensured I know I have all the power.
If I want this exchange to stop, it will happen immediately.
The unvoiced acknowledgment of that is addictive. I’ve never felt more powerful, and the confidence it rewards me with can’t be missed when I beg, “Fuck me.”
I’m almost blindsided by an orgasm when I hear the rawness of Ark’s throat in his reply. “No.”
It’s taking everything he has to hold back the urge to claim me like he’s desired since the night we met. He wants to possess me, fuck me. He wants to claim every inch of me, and I want the same. I want to give that part of me to him, and solely him.
“Please.”
My pussy ripples around him when his cock flexes before he shakes his head. Although he is denying me, his body is announcing he wants this as much as I do.
“I want to experience s-sex. True sex. I want to feel desired and wholly wanted. I want to be fucked like you dreamed about fucking me the night we met.” His pumps quicken as the air gets humid with lust. “Don’t let him take that away from me, Ark. Don’t let him win?—”
My eyes roll into the back of my head when he rams into me, sinking fully inside with one fierce thrust. He’s so deep I gasp, the burn both unbearable and delicious.
“Mara,” Ark moans, driving in deeper, pushing just past the threshold of pleasure to pain. “You feel so good. So tight. You take my dick so well.”
Every muscle in my body tenses as he pumps his fat cock in and out of me in a steady yet timed rhythm.
Over the next several minutes, I can’t look away, captivated by how he knows exactly which buttons to push to take full control of my body.
I’m mindless with need when he hooks one of my legs over his back so he can both take me deeper and rejoin our mouths. He spears his tongue inside me, its plunge as deep and exploring as his thick cock. I’m sore from how deep he is taking me but fascinated that it isn’t a painful ache.
Nothing this good could ever be classed as painful.
Pleasure spreads through me as I moan into his mouth. I’m covered in a slippery layer of sweat. Even Ark’s shirt is damp, and my vision is hazy.
I am on the cusp of another orgasm and unashamed to admit it. “I’m… I’m…”
While rolling his hips in a way that drives me crazy, Ark says, “I know.” I cry out when he grinds his hips against mine, loving the spasms it rewards my clit with. “You get tighter when you are about to come. You’re strangling my cock.” His lust-strained voice is capable of making me come. “Look…”
When I struggle to lift my dog-tired head, Ark slips a hand under my ass and raises my hips. I mewl at the visual of his big cock thrusting in and out of me. The condom is slick with lubricant, both inside and out, so there is no resistance to his pumps.
I writhe with pleasure, my core clenching when I’m too overcome by the visual not to respond. As my back arches, heat throbs through me, and my lungs saw in and out.
Every part of me is pulsating, but I can’t get enough.
Neither can Ark.
He draws out the length of my pleasure with timed thrusts and body-quaking moans.
We groan together when my orgasm refuses to relent. It lasts forever, its roll through my body so violent that the wall I erected to keep my emotions at bay shatters.
I try to force my sobs to sound like moans, not wanting our connection altered by a pocket of emotions I’d rather work through alone than with company.
My efforts are woeful.
The first tear only careens halfway down my cheek when Ark notices it.
“Fuck.”