Chapter 25 #3
I caught her and swept her up into my arms. She felt so fragile against me. Her skin was clammy with sweat and her pulse still rabbited in her neck.
“I’ve got you.” I turned toward the recovery corner.
“No,” she rasped.
I paused, looking down at her. Her hair was plastered to her face, her eyes blown wide and glassy. “No?”
“Not there,” she whispered, shaking her head against my chest. Her voice was wrecked, raw from screaming. “The bed.”
I frowned. “You’re done, Annie. You can’t even stand.”
She dug her fingers into my skin. “I don’t want to recover,” she choked out, looking up at me with a hunger that matched the dark, twisted thing living in my own skin. “Put me on the bed. Fuck me again. Please,” she begged, a tear slipping down her cheek. “I need to feel you. I need...”
She didn’t even know what she was asking for. She was running on adrenaline and endorphins, chasing the high of submission.
It was exactly what I wanted.
“No.” The word cost me. My cock gave a violent twitch of protest, demanding I finish what I’d started properly. I wanted to throw her onto the mattress and drive into her.
But looking at her now I knew the structural integrity wasn’t there. She’d snap. While I liked breaking things, I needed Annie functional for the long term.
“I’ll take you again,” I promised. “Soon. You’ll be begging me to stop next time, and I won’t. But right now, you’re done.”
I carried her to the recovery area in the corner of the room and laid her down. I draped the fur throw over her and she curled into it instantly.
She blinked up at me, her defenses slowly coming back online as the endorphin haze thinned.
I retrieved a warm cloth and a bottle of water. When I pulled the fur back and spread her legs, she flinched.
“Relax,” I ordered. I cleaned the slick of fluids from her inner thighs, the evidence of how hard I’d used her.
Usually, this was the part where I checked out.
With anyone else, the moment the orgasm was over, the clock started ticking on how fast I could get them out of my space.
I hated the clingy aftermath, the whispered confessions, the expectation of intimacy that hadn’t been earned.
I made it clear to every woman I fucked that I was there for the fucking, not the feelings.
I’d certainly never helped any of them clean up afterward.
But as I looked at the red mark my hand had left on Annie’s skin, I felt nothing but possessive.
I tossed the cloth aside and sat on the edge of the chaise, pulling her up so she was resting against my chest. I wrapped the fur around us both, trapping her heat.
“You took that well.” My fingers, usually so intent on bruising, stroked the damp hair away from her face. “Better than I expected.”
She leaned into the touch, her body pliant against mine. “It hurt.”
“I know. It was supposed to.” I kissed her forehead. “You did good, Sparks.” I murmured against her skin. “You gave me everything I asked for. You didn’t hide.”
The nickname had slipped out before I could filter it, but it was only another verbal collar I was snapping around her neck to make sure she remembered exactly who she belonged to.
I felt the tension drain out of her shoulders at the praise.
She needed this. After the cruelty, after the degradation of being bent over and used, she needed to know that the hand that held the crop was the same one that stroked her hair, or she’d eventually associate me only with the pain and not the relief. I needed her addicted to both.
It was a psychological hook, and I was sinking it deep.
I looked down at her, curled against my chest, her breathing finally leveling out. My hand rested on the swell of her hip, right over the angry red mark I’d left as my signature the night before.
I’d told her there would be no strings between us, but there were.
I was weaving them right now. I was wrapping them around her throat, her wrists, her ankles.
I wanted her so tangled in me that she’d never be able to cut herself free.
I didn’t want a fuck buddy. I wanted a possession.
I wanted to calibrate her body so thoroughly that anyone else who touched her would feel wrong.
I wanted to ruin her for every mediocre man who tried to claim her after me.
The thought of her with someone else, some boring man who asked for permission before he touched her, made a violence flare in my veins. No. I was going to wreck her so completely that she’d crave the bite of my hand and the weight of my control until the day she died.
Fuck, I was spiraling. I could feel the obsession clouding everything when I needed to remember this wasn’t forever. It couldn’t be.
I was a creature of intellect. I solved problems. I cracked codes. Annie Bishop was a vault of sealed files and repressed desires, a fascinating puzzle wrapped in a Keeper’s uniform. But every puzzle, no matter how complex, eventually got solved.
Eventually, I would know everything. I’d strip the secrets from her mind just like I stripped the clothes from her body and once the mystery was gone, the fascination would die. It always did. That was the natural decay of my interest.
I would get bored. I would discard her.
The thought felt hollow, ringing false against the thud of my heart, but I clung to it.
She was a temporary fixation. A bright, burning thing to enjoy before the inevitable burnout. I would use her to scratch this itch, to extract the data I needed, and then I would let her go back to her little life. Broken, maybe. Changed, definitely. But gone.
For now, though, she was mine to break.