Chapter 7
Diamond
I'm curled up in Cesar's bed when I hear the front door open.
Every muscle in my body locks. The stalker, the knife, the photos.
"It's me."
I exhale so hard my ribs ache.
He appears in the doorway and I forget how to breathe for an entirely different reason.
Tactical gear. Black pants, black shirt stretched across his chest, some kind of vest with pockets and straps.
There's a rifle slung across his back. An actual rifle.
He moves through the room doing a visual sweep before his eyes land on me, and something in his posture shifts from hunter to something else entirely.
"Perimeter's clear." He unslings the rifle, sets it against the wall like it's nothing. Like he does this every day. "Added sensors to the north ridge. Adjusted the camera angles on the east side. If he gets within a hundred yards, I'll know before he takes another step."
I watch him strip off the vest. Pull the shirt over his head. All that ink, all that muscle, moving in a way that says this body isn't for show. It's a weapon.
The guys I've slept with—they worked out for Instagram. Spent more time taking mirror selfies than actually lifting. Their muscles were decorative.
Cesar's muscles have killed someone.
I should not find that as hot as I do.
"You had a rifle."
"I have several."
I shake my head. "I don't know what that is, but my body seems to have opinions about it."
He crosses to the bed, sits on the edge. Close enough that I can smell the night air on him, feel the heat radiating off his skin.
"What kind of opinions?"
I sit up, letting the blanket fall. His hoodie swallows me, but underneath I'm still in those tiny shorts, still bare everywhere else.
"The kind that are going to get me in trouble."
"You're already in trouble." His hand comes up, cups the back of my neck. His grip is firm. Possessive. "You've been in trouble since the day you walked off that helicopter."
"Because of the stalker?"
"Because of me."
He kisses me before I can respond.
It's not gentle. It's not tentative. It's a man who's done waiting, taking what he wants. His tongue sweeps into my mouth and I moan against him, my hands finding his chest, feeling the ridges of muscle, the raised lines of scar tissue.
He pulls back just enough to yank the hoodie over my head. His eyes rake down my body and I don't try to cover myself. I want him to look. I want him to want.
"Every guy I've ever been with," I say, "made me feel like I was doing them a favor."
His jaw tightens. "What?"
"Like they couldn't believe their luck. Like I was this prize they'd won and they had to hurry up and claim it before someone took it away." I reach for the waistband of his pants. "They were always rushing. Always thinking about themselves. I faked it more than I didn't."
"Diamond."
"I don't want to fake it with you." I hold his gaze as I pop the button, drag down the zipper. "I don't think I could if I tried."
He stands. Strips off his pants, his boxer briefs. And there he is—all of him—and my mouth actually waters.
He's big. Thick and hard, curving up toward his stomach. Nothing like the mediocre dicks attached to mediocre men who thought they were God's gift.
Cesar kneels on the bed, crawls over me, cages me with his arms. He kisses down my throat. Bites the spot where my neck meets my shoulder—hard enough to make me gasp, gentle enough not to break skin.
"I'm going to ruin you," he says against my collarbone. "You understand that? After tonight, no one else is going to be enough. No one else is going to know how to touch you, how to make you come, how to give you what you need."
Before I can answer, he's moving down my body. Not slow, not teasing—purposeful. He hooks his fingers into my lacy bottoms, and then he's spreading my thighs and burying his face between them.
I cry out at the first stroke of his tongue.
He doesn't warm up. Doesn't ease me into it. He eats me like he's trying to prove a point, like he's got something to show me, and within thirty seconds I'm already shaking.
"Oh fuck!"
"That's it." He seals his lips around my clit and sucks, and I nearly come off the bed. "Let me hear you. None of that quiet, polite shit. I want the neighbors to hear you, and the nearest neighbor is three miles away."
He slides two fingers inside me and I moan so loud it echoes. He curls them, finds a spot that makes my vision blur, and works it while his tongue does something obscene to my clit.
"Cesar—I'm gonna!"
"Already?" He sounds smug. I want to smack him. I want to marry him. "Go ahead. This is just the warmup."
He doesn't stop. Keeps licking, keeps fucking me with his fingers, and before the first orgasm finishes rolling through me, he's pushing me toward a second. He adds a third finger and the stretch makes me gasp. "You've just never been with someone who knew what they were doing."
He's right. God help me, he's right. Every guy before him fumbled around like they were solving a puzzle in the dark. Cesar knows exactly where to touch, how hard, how fast. He reads every twitch and moan and adjusts accordingly.
When the second orgasm hits, I actually scream.
He works me through it, murmuring things I can barely hear over the blood rushing in my ears. When I finally go limp, he pulls his fingers out slowly, presses a kiss to my inner thigh.
"Now," he says, crawling up my body, "you're ready."
I feel him notch against my entrance. The head of his cock pressing where his fingers just were. And even after two orgasms, even soaking wet, the stretch, it’s all impossibly perfect.
"Oh."
"Too much?"
"No. Don't stop. Don't you dare stop."
He pushes in slowly. Inch by inch. And it's nothing like before. It’s nothing like the clumsy, rushed fumbling of every guy who came before him. This is deliberate. This is a man who knows exactly what he's doing and wants me to feel every single second of it.
I can barely breathe.
"You okay?" His voice is strained, his arms trembling with the effort of holding still.
"Yeah," I gasp. "I've never felt this full."
"You're so fucking tight." He drops his forehead to mine. "You feel like you were made for me."
It's a line. It should sound like a line. But the way he says it, so raw, almost pained, makes it sound like so much more.
He starts to move.
Slow at first. Long, deep strokes that hit something inside me I didn't know existed. I've had sex before. I've had plenty of sex. But this is different.
This is what it's supposed to feel like.
Every guy before him was performing. Going through the motions they'd seen in porn, saying things they thought they should say. They were fucking at me, not with me.
Cesar is present. His eyes on mine, watching every reaction. His hands everywhere—my hips, my breasts, tangled in my hair. He adjusts his angle when I gasp, speeds up when I moan, slows down when I'm getting too close.
He's playing me like an instrument he's spent years learning.
"There," I manage to cry out as we hit that perfect rythm. "Right there, don't stop!"
"I know." He grinds against me, hitting it again and again. "I've got you."
I'm climbing. Building toward something bigger than the first two, something I can feel gathering at the base of my spine.
Then he stops.
"Huh?"
He pulls out completely. Flips me over. And before I can protest, he's pulling me up and walking me toward the window.
"Cesar?"
"Hands on the glass."
The window. The floor-to-ceiling glass looking out over the cliffs, the ocean, the road where my stalker left his note.
"But he might be out there."
"I hope he is." Cesar's voice is a growl against my ear as he presses my tits against the cold glass. "I hope he's out there right now with his little camera, watching. Let him see who you belong to. Let him see what he's never going to have."
He kicks my legs apart and slides back into me from behind.
The angle is deeper. I cry out, my hands splaying on the glass, and he doesn't give me time to adjust. He just starts fucking me—hard, fast.
I can see our reflection in the glass. Me pressed against it, breasts flattened, mouth open. Him behind me, all that ink and muscle, his face twisted with something between pleasure and rage.
"This is what you needed, isn't it?" He's slamming into me, relentless. "Not some soft boy who asks permission for everything. A man who takes what he wants."
"Yes!"
"Say it louder."
"Yes! Fuck, yes!"
He reaches around, finds my clit, and I shatter.
This orgasm rips through me like a wave. I'm screaming and I can see it in the reflection, can see myself coming apart while he fucks me through it.
He doesn't slow down.
"One more. You're going to give me one more." He bites down on my shoulder, still driving into me. "And then I'm going to fill you up so deep you feel me for days."
The words alone nearly send me over again. He speeds up. Impossible, brutal, and I'm climbing again, and I don't understand how my body has anything left.
"Come," he commands. "Right now. Come."
I obey.
This one breaks me. Tears streaming down my face, body convulsing, and I feel him follow, burying himself deep and pulsing inside me. He groans as he fills me with bursts of hot, thick come.
We collapse against the glass.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. His weight is pinning me, his cock still twitching inside me, and I couldn't move if I wanted to.
I don't want to.
Eventually, he pulls out slowly and turns me in his arms. I'm a wreck of tears, sweat, probably mascara everywhere, and he looks at me like I'm the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
"That," I say when I can speak again, "is what I've been missing my whole life."
"Those boys didn't deserve you."
"No. They didn't." I lean into him, let him take my weight. "But you do?"
"No." He presses a kiss to my forehead. "But I'm going to keep you anyway."
He carries me to bed, then climbs in beside me and pulls me against his chest.
"I think I'm falling for you," I murmur into his skin. "Which is insane. It's been a week."
"It's been the longest week of my life." His arms tighten around me. "And I've been falling since day one."
Outside, the ocean crashes against the cliffs. Somewhere out there, my stalker is watching, waiting, planning.
But in here, wrapped in Cesar's arms, I'm not afraid.