Chapter 20
Leena
I might have said that I don’t know what love is, but I also know that my heart isn’t mine anymore. It’s been torn from my chest and sewn up into the much bigger, harder, streamlined muscle and bone of the man beside me.
A man whose arms wrap around me and haul me up against his chest, lashing us together so tight that it hurts, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You see me,” he says, his breath wafting against my lips. “You see all of me and you can’t look away.”
“I can,” I groan, nipping at his bottom lip frantically. “But I won’t. Not now. Not ever.”
I twine my arms around his neck, locking my fingers at the base of his skull.
My breasts are sore, tender, the nipples hard little points beading into his chest. It doesn’t matter that there are clothes between us.
We might as well be naked. I feel starved.
Starved for him. Starved for his kisses.
If my heart is torn out and stitched up inside of him, then he’s been cut up just as brutally, those aching pieces of him glued back together in my chest.
He bites down hard on my bottom lip then laps at the sting with his broad, firm tongue. He sweeps his tongue into my mouth and strokes mine hard before sucking at my lips until I’m forced to surrender to him.
His hands sweep to my waist and trail a scalding line down to my ass.
He cups me there, and the heat of him swells through me, even through my pajama shorts.
His other hand remains tangled in my hair possessively as his lips trail down over my chin, my jaw, my throat.
He sucks my skin into his mouth, bruising it between his teeth and lips before he licks my collarbones above my tank top.
He doesn’t stop there. His hand kneads the flesh of my ass while his mouth claims my breast, latching onto my nipple and suckling it into his mouth, shirt and all.
I moan and my hips jack forward, searching for him under the sheet.
He still has his jeans on, which makes it pretty obvious that he wasn’t planning on getting any real sleep tonight, and I rub myself shamelessly against his leg, dry humping him like we’re both half a decade younger, crazed with hormones and lust.
Wraith’s hand parts my legs as I shift into him and without warning, his hand cups my sex. I groan and thrust my chest forward, into his beautiful mouth. He nips me before tearing my shirt down lower and claiming my other breast, this time, blissfully, without the barrier of fabric between us.
His hand pulls down my shorts, and his talented fingers caress me, sending wicked heat coursing through my veins.
He breaks me with his gentle touches, stitches me back up when he sweeps a finger over my swollen folds and dips it inside my aching sex.
I whimper, low and long in my throat when he pops his finger into his mouth. His eyes darken as he sucks his finger.
Sweet lord.
Watching him do things like that, hearing the sounds of satisfaction rumble up from his chest- it makes me throb harder. Heat floods my body and wetness sluices down my thighs.
“What do you want, sweetheart?” Wraith groans as he slides his finger out from his lips. “My face buried between your legs, tasting you?”
I buck into him, unable to control myself. I can feel the throbbing hardness of his erection jammed into my stomach despite its tight denim confines and knowing that it’s me that does that to him is like getting drunk on strong wine.
I want that. I want the pleasure but I’m okay with the pain too. I want him inside of me, filling me up with every thick, veiny inch of his cock. I need him with every fiber of my being.
“You’re gonna be sore,” he growls against my lips. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Please. Please, Wraith. I need you. I need you inside of me. I need you with me. Here. I need you thrusting into me, joining us. Please make me yours.”
He tenses against me, but he lets out a ragged breath a second later. “Alright,” he growls against my lips.
I nearly cry out when he slides away from me, but then I realize that Abby is still at the foot of the bed.
Wraith scoops her up in his strong arms and cradles her gently against his chest. She’s fast asleep, and barely stirs as he carries her out of the room. I hear his footsteps echo down the hall, into the kitchen where her big, round, soft bed is.
My skin prickles with goosebumps when those steps get closer, soft, barefoot treads that might as well be loud cracks of thunder. He shuts the door firmly behind him and my whole body vibrates with a shiver that threads its way down my spine.
Wraith stops. It’s dark in the room, but his eyes aren’t just black with it.
They’re heavy lidded and glazed over with hunger.
He slowly strips away his t-shirt, a soft rasp that echoes like a breeze in the room.
I watch the ripple of muscle, the bunch and curl of his shoulders, his pecs, his ridged abs, as he bends and deftly undoes his jeans.
He pushes them and his boxers down his legs and steps from them, standing proudly, wondrously, all male, a statue brought to life.
“Beautiful,” I breathe, taking him in.
I drink in every bronzed bit of skin. The striated, elongated paths that his muscles take below that bronzed velvet surface.
The smattering of dark hairs over his chest, the hard, brown nipples, the curl of hair at his navel that trails lower to surround his massive cock, so thick and veiny standing straight up against his stomach, the tip an obvious angry red even in the dark.
I force myself to tear my eyes away, to let them linger over legs that are as brutally strong and wonderfully built as the rest of him.
A surge of protectiveness mixes with the heat in my chest.
We might have just met, but every love story—whether it be the stuff of legend or ballad, or the kind that endures an entire lifetime, has a beginning.
This is ours.
I am his, and he is mine.
“If you look at me like that,” Wraith rasps thickly, “I might not be responsible for what I’m about to do to you. How little control I have…”
I sit up straighter. My pulse throbs in my neck and between my legs.
“I want you to,” I tell him again, because I know he needs to hear it.
He needs to know that he could never hurt me, not in the way he thinks.
That he’s not that man, that man that cruelly abused him, that stole his youth.
“I need you, Wraith. Please. Please take me.”
“Fuck,” he curses under his breath. “You’re gonna kill me.”
“You might kill me too,” I admit. “But at least it will be the sweetest death.”
He’s on me in an instant, his breathing ragged and uncontrolled, his motions jerky and savage. He tears back the sheets, and I scramble the rest of the way to the edge of the bed. His hands tear my shorts away so roughly that my legs burn, even though they’re just thin cotton. My shirt goes next.
I turn slowly, getting onto my hands and knees. I feel exposed. Vulnerable. Very naked. It’s scary, but it’s also thrilling.
“Spread your legs,” Wraith commands. “I want to taste you. All of you. I’ll make you come with my mouth, then I’ll give you more. I’m gonna make you shatter over and fucking over.”
“Yes,” I nearly weep. “Oh my god, yes.”
It doesn’t matter that I was a virgin last night. It doesn’t matter that this wasn’t at all what I expected when I thought about being with a man. I never thought I’d actually like it. Never found someone I wanted to do this with.
I’ve always been a fast learner, and I want this. I want to learn. I want to take it all, every brutal thrust and slap of skin and hard, panting breath. I want him to teach me. I don’t need slow or gentle. I just need him.
When he doesn’t move, I crane my neck around to find him staring at me, chest and shoulders heaving. “Please,” I ask again. “Wraith, I want you. Just you. Always.”
I drink him in, the heavy rise and fall of his chest as he struggles to breathe.
The burn in his dark eyes as they sweep over me, scouring my naked body.
I breathe in the heady scent he radiates, dark and possessive.
I shift on the bed, wriggling my hips and widening my legs, letting him see the rush of wetness trailing between my spread thighs, letting him see how he affects me.
He springs on me, wild, his strong hands with those blunt nails and calloused fingers, digging into the tender flesh of my hips. My pulse hammers wildly at the first heady breath against my damp thigh and then he dips his face and his glorious tongue sweeps over overheated flesh.
I buck my hips and spread my legs and just try and hang on as his tongue lashes at my folds, over my clit, as he peppers my thighs with hot, stinging kisses, as his hands drive me back into his face.
He thrusts his tongue up inside of my tight entrance and just that small amount of pressure is painful against my sore flesh.
The pain is glorious though, and I don’t pull away.
Wraith groans. He worships me, teases me, drives me fucking wild before he spreads my folds apart and plunges his tongue so deep inside of me that I cry out wildly.
He fucks me with his tongue, and I forget all about being sore.
He fills me so full that I shatter without him having to touch my clit at all.
He does though, when the shockwaves of my climax are subsiding.
I shatter all over again, coming apart, drifting into black oblivion.
Just when I doubt it could get better, Wraith picks me up gently. I wrap my legs around his hips, and he steers us towards the wall. My back hits hard and I tear my eyes open and stare into his. I know then that I’m wrong. It can get better.