14. Raphael #3
I curled my fingers inside her and pressed hard against that spot that made her scream.
She shattered, clamping down on my hand, her whole body convulsing as the orgasm ripped through her without warning.
I didn’t stop. Kept fucking her through it, kept my hand coming down on her ass, extending the sensation until she was sobbing and shaking and completely undone.
“That’s one,” I said, withdrawing my fingers. “We’re just getting started.”
She whimpered, boneless against the bed, her tears soaking the sheets beneath her face. But she didn’t use her word. Didn’t tell me to stop.
Each stroke of the belt left another mark, another stripe of crimson across her already-abused flesh.
She was gasping now, her hips rolling, her body caught between flinching away and pushing back for more.
The wolf watched through my eyes, satisfaction rumbling through my chest at the evidence of our claim on her.
I paused mid-stroke. Set the belt aside. Crossed to my nightstand and retrieved what I needed.
“What—” She turned her head, trying to see.
“Eyes forward.”
I retrieved the lubricant from my nightstand, coated my fingers until they glistened. Then I parted her cheeks with one hand and pressed a slick fingertip against her tight entrance.
She tensed. “I’ve never—”
“I know.” My voice dropped lower, rougher. “I’m going to be the first one here. The only one. Ever.” I kept myself controlled even as my wolf howled to claim her. “That’s why we go slow. Breathe for me.”
She exhaled, and I pressed inside. Just one finger, just the first knuckle, letting her body adjust to the intrusion. She whimpered, her muscles clenching around me, but she didn’t pull away. Didn’t use her word.
“Good,” I murmured. “Relax. Let me in.”
I worked deeper, slow and patient, feeling her resistance gradually melt into acceptance. When I added a second finger, she gasped, her hips shifting, uncertain whether to escape or push back.
“That’s it.” I scissored my fingers gently, stretching her, preparing her. “You’re doing so well.”
By the time I withdrew, she was panting, her thighs slick with arousal. I ran my fingers through the wetness coating her inner thighs and held them up where she could see.
“You’re dripping down your thighs.” My voice came out rough, barely human. “Your body knows what it needs even when your pride won’t let you ask.”
I reached for the plug, black silicone, almost as thick as my cock. Almost. I still wanted her to feel it when I fucked her ass for the first time. I coated it generously with lubricant.
“This will feel like more,” I warned her. “But you can take it. I know you can.”
I pressed the tip against her loosened entrance and pushed. The plug breached her slowly, wider than my fingers, and she whimpered at the stretch. Her muscles fought the intrusion, then yielded inch by inch as I worked it deeper. By the time it seated fully, her whole body was trembling.
“Good girl,” I murmured. Ran my palm over the welts on her ass, feeling the heat radiating from her punished skin. Then I squeezed, fingers digging into the tender, reddened flesh.
She hissed, her back arching, her body caught between flinching away and pressing into my grip.
“See how good it feels to give in?” I released her, soothed the sting with a gentler stroke. The contrast was calculated. Pain and comfort, punishment and praise. Each strike taught her body to trust me. Pain followed by pleasure, until she could not tell where one ended and the other began.
And she was. So fierce in the daylight, so unbreakable in front of her staff and her guests and the world that wanted to see her crumble.
But here, bent over my bed with my marks on her skin, she let herself be soft.
Let herself need. The surrender wasn’t weakness.
It was the bravest thing she had ever given me.
I picked up the belt again.
“You thought we were done?” A low laugh rumbled from my chest. “We haven’t even started.”
This time, when the leather cracked across her flesh, the vibrations traveled through the plug inside her.
She screamed, her back bowing, the sensation doubled by the intrusion filling her.
I struck again, lower, and she keened, her thighs quivering.
The scent of her arousal thickened in the air, sweet and musky, driving my wolf to the edge of his control.
I struck again. And again. Each blow sending shockwaves through the plug, through her core, through every nerve ending I had already rubbed raw. She was sobbing openly now, tears streaming, her voice breaking on sounds that weren’t words anymore. Just need. Just surrender.
“This is what you wanted,” I growled, the wolf bleeding into my voice. “To be taken apart. To be so overwhelmed you can’t remember your own name, let alone your troubles.” Another strike. Another sob. “Tell me your name.”
“I—I don’t—” She couldn’t answer. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but take what I gave her.
“Good girl.” The words came out as a snarl of satisfaction. “You’re exactly where I want you.”
Her skin was crimson now, welts layered over welts, and still she pushed back into each blow.
Chasing the edge. Begging for it with her body even as her mind had gone blank.
She trembled on the precipice, her second orgasm building from the pain alone, from being used and marked and owned so completely.
There. I could see it happening. The last of her defenses giving way.
The fierce, unbreakable woman dissolving into nothing but sensation and surrender.
She was gone, finally, lost in the space where nothing existed except my hands and my voice and the sweet agony of the leather.
Where she didn’t have to be strong. Didn’t have to hold anything together. She just had to feel.
“Fuck,” she gasped. “Raphael—”
“Say it.” I paused the belt mid-swing. “Tell me what you need.”
“Please.” The word tore out of her, desperate and broken. “More. Please, more.”
I unzipped my trousers. Freed my cock, already hard and aching, and positioned myself behind her. She was soaked, her cunt glistening, her body ready even as her mind struggled to process the competing sensations.
I thrust inside her in one brutal stroke.
She screamed. Not fear. Pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. The plug pressed through the thin wall separating her passages. I could feel how full she was, stuffed with my cock in her pussy and the plug stretching her ass.
I fucked her hard. Deep. Each thrust driving the plug deeper, making her cry out with every impact. The wolf was no longer watching. He was taking. Growls tore from my throat with every stroke, animal sounds that should have frightened her but only made her moan louder.
Her first orgasm hit without warning, violent and wrenching, her inner muscles clamping around me with a force that nearly broke my control.
I didn’t stop. Didn’t slow. Just kept driving into her through the aftershocks, chasing her toward the next peak while the wolf snarled beneath my skin.
Mine. Mine. Mine. The word pounded through me with every thrust. Her moans. Her pleasure. Her body clenching around me. All mine.
She was sobbing now, but not from pain. From release.
From the sheer overwhelming flood of sensation that left no room for grief or fear or the weight of a world trying to crush her.
I was giving her an escape, and I would give her as many as she needed.
As many as it took to quiet the demons that had sent her to my door.
When I felt her building again, I pulled out. Heard her whimper at the loss.
“On the bed. Properly.”
I untied her wrists and guided her toward the headboard. Settled myself against the pillows, my back against the carved wood, and positioned her to straddle me facing away. Her marked ass pressed against my thighs, the welts hot against my skin.
I reached between her cheeks and pulled the plug free. She gasped at the sudden emptiness.
Then I pressed my cock against her ass.
“Slowly,” I said, my hands on her hips. “You set the pace.”
She lowered herself onto me.
The first inch made her hiss through her teeth, her body resisting the intrusion. I held myself still, letting her control the descent, fighting every instinct that screamed to thrust up and claim her completely.
I sank deeper into her. Her body stretched around me, tight and hot and impossibly good.
“You,” she breathed, hissing through the stretch as she sank lower, “want me to fuck myself on your cock?”
The growl tore from my chest before I could stop it. “Yes. Every inch. Until the only name you remember is mine.”
She began to move. Rolling her hips, taking me deeper with each motion, her hands gripping my thighs for leverage. I could see the scratch marks she left, could feel her nails digging into my flesh as she rode me.
My wolf was at the surface now. Eyes threatening to glow in the dim light. The snarl building in my throat, barely human, as she gave me this. Her body, her surrender, every hole, every inch of her.
Mine, the wolf chanted. Ours. No one else will ever have her like this.
I reached around her hip. Found her clit with my fingers, slick and swollen, and began to stroke.
Her rhythm faltered. Her head fell back against my shoulder, her breath coming in ragged gasps as the pleasure built from two directions. My cock in her ass, my fingers on her clit, her body caught between sensations that had nowhere to go except through her.
“Raphael.” My name came out broken. “I’m going to—”
“Come.” The command cut through her gasps. “Come for me. Now.”
She shattered.
The orgasm ripped through her with a force that made her scream my name, and I felt my knot begin to swell. I should have pulled out. Should have spared her. But the wolf was in control now, and he would not be denied.
The knot expanded at the base of my cock, stretching her impossibly wider.
She cried out, her body going rigid, the fresh wave of pressure triggering another orgasm before the first had finished.
Her ass clenched around me in rhythmic waves, milking my knot, and the sensation snapped the last of my control.
I came with a roar that shook the headboard, filling her in hot, pulsing spurts while we were locked together.
Mine. She was sobbing now, overwhelmed, impaled on my swollen cock with nowhere to go.
I held her through it, my fingers still working her clit, dragging out every last tremor until she went limp against my chest.
My fangs had lengthened. I could feel them pressing against my lower lip, aching to sink into the curve of her neck. The claiming spot. One bite and the bond would be complete, and this agony of half-connection would finally end.
I pressed my mouth against her shoulder and did not bite. Held myself back through sheer force of will while my wolf howled in frustration.
We stayed locked together, trembling, breathing each other’s air. The wolf rumbled satisfaction in my chest, contentment reverberating through every cell of my body. But underneath the satisfaction was the ache. Always the ache. The claiming urge that would not let us rest.
After, I didn’t let her collapse into the sheets.
I gathered her against my chest, her skin slick with sweat, her body still trembling from the intensity. Carried her to the bathroom and set her on the edge of the counter while I ran the bath.
“Raphael—”
“Let me.”
The water steamed as it filled the tub. I adjusted the temperature, added jasmine-scented oil, kept it simple. When it was ready, I lifted her again and lowered her slowly into the warmth.
She hissed at the contact, the heat against her sensitized skin. Then she sighed, sinking deeper, letting the water soak into her abused muscles.
I climbed in behind her. Settled her back against my chest, her head resting in the hollow of my shoulder, and reached for the shampoo.
“You don’t have to do this,” she murmured. Her voice was soft, wrung out.
“Yes. I do.”
Because the wolf demanded it. Because she was mine to care for, not just mine to claim. Every mark I had left on her body was a responsibility. A promise that the pain came with care. That I would always bring her back from wherever I had taken her.
I washed her slowly. Her hair first, working the shampoo through the blonde strands, massaging her scalp until she made a small sound of pleasure.
Then I worked body wash into her shoulders, her arms, her fingers that had clawed at my thighs.
My hands that had wielded the belt now moved over her skin with reverence.
I washed her thighs, her calves, her feet. Every inch of her that I had marked or touched or claimed.
She let me. Didn’t protest, didn’t pull away. Her body was loose and pliant against mine, surrendered beyond the physical. The water lapped gently at the edges of the tub, steam rising around us, and I held her in the silence and let the heat soak into both of us.
The bathroom smelled of steam and soap and her. I breathed it in, memorizing the moment. The trust she had given me. The vulnerability she had shown.
After the bath, I wrapped her in a towel and sat her on the edge of the bed. Retrieved the jar from my nightstand, the healing salve I kept for these moments.
My fingers spread the cool balm over the welts on her backside, her thighs. The places the belt had marked her. She flinched at first, the salve cold against her heated skin, then relaxed into my touch as the cooling sensation sank in.
I traced each welt individually. Memorized the pattern of them, the evidence of what she had asked for and what I had given. The marks would fade by morning, mostly. By tomorrow night, they’d be a memory and a faint tenderness.
But I would remember. I would always remember the trust she had shown me tonight.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said again, quieter now.
“Yes.” I pressed a kiss to her shoulder, tasting clean skin and bath water. “I do.”
I pulled one of my shirts over her head. Guided her under the covers. Wrapped myself around her the same way I had last night, her back to my chest, my arm heavy across her waist, my nose buried in her damp hair.
My wolf purred, the sound vibrating through my chest against her spine. Our mate is here. Our mate let us care for her. Our mate stayed.
She was already breathing slower, her body giving in to exhaustion. Whatever demons had driven her to my door tonight, they’d been burned away in the intensity of what we’d shared.
I held her in the darkness and let myself feel the dangerous hope.
Since the Pakhan’s ultimatum, I had refused to believe we could survive this. But with her breathing soft and steady against my chest, her body warm and trusting in my arms, I let myself believe it anyway.