Chapter Nine #2
Maybe that’s enough. Because he’s attractive, because of my pregnancy hormones, because we just stood on a beach together, and my trauma saw his, in the most deep, profound way, I don’t know.
Because he’s the only other person I’ve ever met who could hear about my childhood, and not think that it’s completely crazy. Because he’s been through worse, or at the very least the same.
Because we’re both products of a twisted upbringing, and for some reason that makes me feel emboldened.
It makes me feel like I’m comfortable in my own skin for the first time.
Rather than just a shape shifter, wearing skin that didn’t quite feel like my own.
I don’t want to talk anymore, all of a sudden.
I don’t want to work anymore. I just want to be. I just want to feel.
The promise of what could be between us, the thing that happened when our lips met, I want more of that.
I move to him, and I take the glass of Scotch out of his hand. “You can’t have any of that,” he says.
“Oh, I don’t drink even when I’m not pregnant. That stuff will kill you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with an occasional drink,” he says.
“Let me rephrase. With my DNA? Eventually that stuff could kill me. I just don’t want you to have a drink because I want you to have both hands free.”
I set the glass on the side table, and move around so that I’m standing in front of him. He’s sitting there, powerful legs held wide, his arms resting there on the sides of the chair, his shirt partly unbuttoned.
Oh yes. I know what I want. Damn common sense.
Damn everything. I’m like a doomed rocket ship hurtling toward space.
Maybe I have been all my life. Just waiting for the right meteor to crash into.
I feel like he’s the one. After all, the stakes have never been higher; the game has never been more deadly.
I’m pregnant with his baby, and our enemies are out there.
I don’t especially want to die a virgin.
Or maybe that isn’t it at all. Maybe I just want to feel something. Something good. For once.
Maybe that’s all it is. A desire to live. To feel. One that I’m just feeling a little bit too late. But I’m actually at risk.
I wanted to succeed. But I’ve never wanted to feel.
Not like I do now.
I move toward him, and then I press my knee onto the chair, on one side of his thigh, maneuver myself up so that I’m straddling him. I wobble, and he growls, lifting his hand to press it to my lower back, to hold me steady. Keep me from falling.
“What game is this?”
“It’s not a game. There’s nothing. Let’s just…drop our weapons for a minute.” I lean in, my mouth a whisper from his. “Or maybe for more than a minute.”
He grabs the back of my head, pulls me in, and then he’s kissing me, deep and hot and hard, just like he did at the beach. His tongue slides against mine, the glorious, hot friction almost sending me over the edge.
I’ve never experienced anything like this before. I’ve never been kissed. Not until the beach. And now I’m ready to give him everything. To surrender it all.
I’m ready to risk myself. And I know that it’s a risk. Because I’m the kind of person who can’t just take one sip of something. I’m the type of person that can’t just try it once.
I’m at risk of being addicted forever, and as he kisses me, deeper and deeper, I’m falling, spiraling. I am tumbling headfirst into something I know could radically change me. Keep me captive like the basest heroin addict.
Too late. It’s too late. My decision is made. I can feel him, hard and heavy, pressing hard against where I’m growing wet and needy for him.
Hollow with the desire to be claimed by him.
I would’ve said that I was immune. The idea of being claimed always seemed overrated. Not to mention far too intense. I can bring myself to orgasm just fine; I don’t need a man.
But for the first time, I really want one.
And I’m going to make sure he’s well aware of exactly what I want.
I grip the sides of his shirt, pop the buttons off and run my hands down his muscular chest. It was killing me to look at it earlier.
Covered in all that elaborate ink, muscle and chest hair, just the sight making me feel hot and needy.
And now? Now that I have him under my hands?
I’m close to coming, just from touching him.
I bite my lip as I slide my hands down, brushing my thumb over his nipple, and my internal muscles clench tight.
He growls, hand tightening on my hair as he pulls my head back, grabbing my face with his free hand, his blunt fingertips digging into my cheeks as he holds me steady so that he can kiss me again.
So that he can force his tongue deep while he holds my face still, claiming.
I didn’t realize how much I would like the claiming.
I roll my hips against him, feeling that hard cock pulsing against me. I want him. I want him more than I can remember ever wanting anything. More than cashmere, silk and an escape from Alaska. More than independence and survival.
I want to drown in him.
In the need exploding between us.
There’s nothing carefully considered about this. Nothing planned or reasonable or beneficial.
This is just hedonism. Something I’m altogether unfamiliar with. But something that I now want to immerse myself in.
I’m wearing nothing other than that robe, and he pulls it away from the top of my body quickly, exposing my breasts, the rounded bump of my belly.
He growls, leaning in and sucking one of my nipples deep in his mouth.
I gasp. It’s an extreme step forward in intimacy, but I’m ready for it. I want it.
He teases me, torments me, pinching my nipples and then licking them, saying things I don’t understand in Italian, but that make me ache even more, make me wetter between my thighs.
When he closes one large hand over my breast, I’m held captive by the way that it looks.
All that ink. Rough and masculine, dangerous.
Those hands that have snuffed out life, holding on to me like this.
Giving me pleasure. Maybe that’s insanity, but I’ve accepted that that’s what I’ve been gripped with.
Or maybe it’s something even more sinister. Maybe it’s my own tainted blood.
Oh well. Here I am, bathing in the toxicity.
He undoes the belt on the robe, pushes the rest of it away, then moves his hands down to my thighs, spreading them even wider, giving himself a good view of all of me.
He takes the same tattooed hands, presses both thumbs on either side of my clit, squeezing tight before stroking me.
I cry out, my head falling back as he flicks his wrist and pushes two fingers inside of me, still rubbing where I’m most sensitive with the pad of his thumb.
I’m whimpering, incoherent, almost sobbing as he pumps his fingers inside of me, as he pushes me closer and closer to the edge.
I might know how to give myself an orgasm, but getting one from another person is an experience all on its own, and one that I never realized would be quite so different.
I don’t have control. He’s not following my orders.
Not listening to my urging. I’m begging for him to give it to me now, but he won’t.
He’s teasing me. Tormenting me. Drawing out the pleasure, and the desperate need for release.
I’m suspended between two very definitive desires. The first to come. I need it. Want it so badly that I’m shaking with it. But the second is to have this go on forever.
It’s like he can read my mind, and he effortlessly chooses to torment me rather than give me what I want.
Because that’s just who he is.
I look at his face, press my fingertips to his cheeks, then trace a line down his inked neck, along the sinewy body of a serpent that winds its way down his throat.
“Beautiful,” he growls, and I realize that he’s watching as he pumps his fingers in and out of my body. I grab hold of his shoulders, digging my fingernails into his skin.
Then I reach for his belt. I undo it, and reach my hands inside his pants, drawing his thick member out. My breath hisses through my teeth.
He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
He grips my hips, drawing me upward, and I realize that there is going to be no more foreplay.
I almost tell him. I almost tell him that I haven’t done this before, but then the blunt head of him is pressing against the slick entrance to my body, and what’s the point?
It’s happening. Whether he’s the first or the hundredth. And I want it.
He brings me down onto him, impaling me, and I cry out, the mix of pain and pleasure radiating through me.
I’ve never done this before, and the invasion is shocking. All-consuming. Everything I’ve ever wanted.
That’s the thing that actually frightens me. Not the pain. But the way that I feel immensely gratified by this. By him being so deep inside of me that I can feel him pulsing there.
His movements are rough and certain and he thrusts up into me as he brings me down onto him, stroke after stroke, driving the need between us higher and higher.
I’m utterly and completely done for.
I lay my head back, and cry out his name, and he goes over with me, spilling himself deep inside of me as he leans in and bites my neck.
I whimper, clinging to him, not wanting to let go.
He looks at me, those fathomless eyes black, hands framing my face. “What have you done to me?”
I bite my lip. “I don’t know.”
“You should go to bed.”
“I don’t want to.”
I wanted to crawl underneath his skin. That was what I wanted. I can’t say that, though, I realize. Because that’s unhinged.
Though I feel a bit unhinged.
“It doesn’t need to be a big deal,” he says.
“It does for me.” I despise the pleading note in my voice.
“Why? I understand that you’re trying to get something from me with sex—”