Chapter 25
SOPHIA
Iwake to the feeling of being watched. The room is still dark, the first hint of dawn barely touching the glass ceiling, but I feel him before I even open my eyes.
Reth is standing at the foot of the bed. A towering mass of muscle and shadows. No hood. No buff. No mask.
Just him.
Blue eyes burn as they rake over me, so intense it seeps into my skin. The careful distance he always carries on his expression is gone. What’s left is only pure, undisguised desire carved into every harsh line of his face.
“Are you set on stalking mode, or was your plan to smother me in my sleep?”
Instead of responding, he reaches down and pulls the sheets off and to the side. Just looks at me.
The silence stretches, and I know what this is. I feel it click in the tightening pull of air around us, the invisible field of pent-up want.
I force a smirk. “You’ve got a hell of a staring problem.”
“Take off your clothes, Sophia.”
My heart hammers. I like cause and effect. How he so clearly wants something and then just asks for it—like please was the first thing they took from him.
Heat floods between my thighs as I reach for the hem of my shirt, pulling it over my head. I’m not wearing a bra, his gaze dropping to my breasts, and my nipples tighten under that look.
Hooking my fingers into the sides of my panties, I shimmy them down my legs, lifting my hips. They make it as far as my ankles before the strap catches on my big toe and just—stays there.
I give it a small shake. Nothing.
Another shake, slightly less dignified than the first, and that sends the panties launching off my foot and landing somewhere to the left, destination unknown.
I look up at him, feeling the warmth in my cheeks. “I’ve been told I have the grace of a baby deer on ice.”
“I’ve noticed.” He’s got this expression, the one that isn’t quite a smile but lives in the same neighborhood. The corner of his mouth doing the thing it does. But his eyes are warm in a way that makes my chest do something complicated.
That mesmerizing blue gaze of his drags over me like a slow, possessive touch. It lingers on my breasts, then slides down my stomach, over the curve of my hips, and finally settles between my spread thighs.
“You’re the first woman I’ve ever wanted like this.”
The warmth in my cheeks turns to a blazing flush.
“The more I watched you, the more I tried not to want you.” Reaching behind his neck, he pulls his shirt over his head in one smooth motion.
My breath catches.
He’s broad and powerful, every muscle carved from years of survival, but it’s not the strength that captivates me. It’s the map of it.
A tattoo covers his chest and sternum like a wound that never quite healed.
Takada Castle and the Eiffel Tower have been violently merged into one impossible image.
The castle’s towers are cracked and leaning, cherry blossom branches growing through the fractures like thorns trying to hold the ruins together.
On the right, the Eiffel Tower rises in sharp, skeletal black lines, iron lace twisted and broken in places.
Where the two landmarks collide, a jagged crack runs straight down the center of his sternum, raw and uneven, as if the skin itself split open when the two worlds slammed together.
It’s beautiful ruin. Just like him.
I don’t even care that I’m naked, getting on my knees, shuffling over the sheets until I’m right in front of him. I meet his eyes, fingers hovering.
He doesn’t stop me. Just watches me, letting me touch the ink he put there. Two places. My words. His skin.
My fingertips drift lower, following the inked crack down his sternum and onto the hard planes of his abdomen.
Raised, uneven ridges are scattered across his lower stomach and obliques, some scars thin and silvery, others thicker and puckered like they were never properly stitched.
They’re violence remembered in flesh. Like they never wanted him to forget where every piece of him was earned or taken or lost.
My throat tightens, and he gently takes my hand in his, keeping it there against his chest. “Please don’t ask me.”
I swallow.
“I’ll never be able to give you all the answers you need, and I hate that.”
My hand is still splayed over his heart, the throb against my palm surprisingly fragile for a man who looks carved out of war. His skin is hot, alive, full of everything he’s determined to carry alone. And I hate that.
I don’t speak. Just slide my hand slowly down his chest, over the scarred and inked plane, until my fingers reach the waistband of his jeans.
His breath catches as I hook two fingers behind the button and pop it open with a quiet snap, the zipper next. I drag it down slowly, his cock straining against the fabric, and when I tug the denim down his hips, it springs free. Heavy, flushed dark, the swollen head already glistening at the tip.
There’s a soft groan that catches in his throat when I wrap my fingers around him, feeling the velvet heat and the way he throbs in my grip. I stroke him once, slowly, from base to tip, spreading the slick bead of precum down his length.
“Today, I don’t need answers,” I whisper, thumb circling the sensitive head. “I just need you.”
I let go and scoot back onto the mattress, laying my head on the pillow, and I spread my legs for him. Knees soft, feet planted apart, I let him look at me, like he needs to memorize the way my body wants him.
I watch as he steps out of his jeans, my greedy eyes dragging down his body, landing on his cock. Veins stand out along the shaft, thick and heavy with a promise to drive me mindless, and I bite my bottom lip, pussy clenching around nothing.
The mattress dips and he stalks toward me, gaze etched on my pussy. “You’re soaked. I like it.” A thick finger glides through my folds, spreading my slickness, circling my clit with slow, maddening pressure.
“You can tell me to stop at any time. Say the word, and I stop. Understand?”
I nod, already breathless, already knowing there’s not a bone in my body that’ll let me say no to anything.
On his knees, towering over me, he takes both my wrists in one big hand and slowly lifts them above my head, pinning them to the pillow.
“Keep them here,” he says. “Don’t move them. Promise me.”
The scar lines on his arms move with the flex of muscle, and my breath snags because they’re not just on his inner arms. They’re on the outside too. Identical. Equal spacing. Four new ones, red and neat and ugly, marring the stretch of skin.
He notices me staring. “Promise me, Sophia.”
I lick my lips. “I promise.”
He kisses me like he’s starving, deep and filthy, tongue stroking while his free hand pushes my thighs apart.
I’m already writhing, and when he breaks the kiss, I lift my shoulders to follow him, only to crane my neck back when he sucks one nipple into his mouth, teeth grazing just enough to make me arch and moan.
Sliding a hand between my legs, a finger slips into me while his thumb circles my clit.
“Reth—” I gasp, hips rolling into his hand, and he keeps working me open, fingers curling, thumb stroking, mouth moving to my other breast, sucking and biting, driving me crazy.
“Keep your hands where I put them,” he warns, and I nod, gripping the pillow above my head.
Warm breath caresses my skin as he continues down, his hands sliding under my thighs. His thumbs press into the soft creases where thigh meets hip, firmly pushing my legs wider, spreading me completely open for him.
Heat detonates the second his tongue drags through my folds in one long, slow lick, and my core drops into a tight knot. The next lash of his tongue is as precise as it is fucking devastating, circling my clit before flattening to press and flick.
My back arches off the bed, and he groans against me, licking, sucking, fucking me with his tongue like he can’t get enough. Like he can feel how much my body needs it, lust seeping out of my pores straight into him.
“Fuck, you taste so good,” he growls between licks. “So fucking sweet. I could die here, Cherry-red.”
“You and me both,” I whimper, hips thrusting.
Two fingers curl perfectly inside me while his tongue flicks relentlessly. Lick, slide, flick.
My thighs start to shake, muscles tensing and releasing with each wave of pleasure.
Each breath tears from my lungs, my ribs rising and falling violently as sounds I barely recognize spill past my lips.
My fingernails dig into the pillow above my head, fighting the primal urge to grab fistfuls of his dark hair and grind myself against his hungry mouth.
“Your cunt’s squeezing my fingers,” he says, voice dark. “You’re about to come, aren’t you?”
“God, yes!”
He sucks my clit hard, and I shatter, crying out his name as white-hot pleasure crashes through me like lightning splitting me open.
Sparks erupt behind my eyes, every muscle locked in the peak of it.
He doesn’t stop, keeps licking me through it, drawing every last tremor out until I’m shaking and whimpering.
“Jesus. Fuck, Sophia.” The words tear out of him, broken and desperate, right against my soaked pussy.
His hips jerk and his whole body locks up violently, the rhythm of his tongue faltering, then buries his face deeper with a groan…
and comes. Untouched, uncontrolled, spilling thick ropes of cum against my inner legs, thrusting into nothing while his mouth stays glued to me.
And, by God, it launches me into a second, savage orgasm, that reduces me to a quivering mess of bones and cries and sensitive flesh.
He keeps licking me, through his own climax, through my second one, tongue sloppy and desperate, like he can’t stop tasting me even while he’s falling apart.
When it finally slows, he’s stays there between my legs. “Fuck,” he rasps, voice wrecked. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t stop it. You taste too fucking good.”