Chapter 15
Tuesday closed her eyes and nodded, relief flowing through her. She had no words to give him, plus it meant the scene wasn’t over.
His weight shifted, and he removed the wedge so she lay flat on her back. The change in position made every mark and bruise sing anew, but she was too far gone to do anything except breathe through it.
Knife knelt between her spread thighs, and she let out a long, shaking breath when he peeled the tiny TENS pads away from the sides of her clit, then reached for the e-stim plug and eased it free.
Her body clenched around the sudden emptiness, and a soft, needy sound escaped, floating into the room this time instead of being trapped by the hood.
Then his mouth was on her, and she could only close her eyes and moan in bliss.
He sealed his lips around her swollen, abused clit and sucked gently, tongue working the sensitive glans in slow, deliberate strokes.
The relief was so intense she nearly sobbed — after hours of pain and overstimulation, the wet heat of his mouth felt like mercy and torment at the same time.
He licked lower, soothing the raw, puffy tissues of her opening with long, gentle strokes, then returned to her clit, sucking harder, tongue flicking exactly where she needed it.
The knots on the crotch rope had ravaged both places for hours, and then between the TENS and the clamps, her clit felt wrecked.
While his mouth soothed and teased her clit, two thick fingers slid inside her, curling against her front wall.
The combination was devastating. She was so raw, so oversensitive, every careful touch felt huge.
Every nerve ending screamed with sensation.
Pain and pleasure had long since blurred together, and now the gentle pressure of his fingers and the perfect suction of his mouth pushed her right to the edge.
Just as she started to tip over, he rose over her.
He hooked her legs over his forearms, spreading her wide, and sank into her in a single, deep thrust. Face to face. Eye to eye.
But this wasn’t fucking. That would’ve been too easy.
No. He made love to her — slow, deep, relentless strokes that dragged over every raw, bruised inch inside her.
Every movement hurt. Every movement felt impossibly good.
Her entire body was a map of pain and marks, and the combination of him moving inside her, and shifting her on the soft mattress finally took her over the edge, and he sped up when he realized she was coming.
“That’s it. Squeeze around my cock like a good girl. Come for me, little painslut. I have you.”
The release came in long, rolling waves that left her shaking and sobbing, but he didn’t stop.
He sped, going faster and harder, his gaze on hers, and another orgasm built on the heels of the first. She came again, harder this time, her cunt clenching around him in rhythmic, desperate pulses. He kissed her temple. Her cheek.
And then he was over her again, pounding her now.
“You’re so beautiful like this. Taking everything I give you. So fucking perfect.”
The next orgasm tore through her like a storm. She arched beneath him, legs locked over his arms, a raw, broken cry escaping as pleasure and pain fused into an overwhelming wave. Her body shook uncontrollably, every bruise and welt singing, every nerve ending lit and screaming.
He stayed buried deep through all of it, rocking into her with that same steady, loving rhythm, his gaze never leaving her face. When her tremors finally started to ease, he kissed her forehead and said, “More. Again. You aren’t finished.”
The fourth orgasm rolled through her slow and deep, wringing her out completely. She sobbed with it, body limp and trembling, completely surrendered to him.
But he wasn’t finished with her. One hand went low and he pressed on her clit while he rode her.
She had nothing left to give, but he took it anyway.
The pressure of his hand on her punished clit was too much and not enough simultaneously, the pain and the pleasure so fused her mind spun with it. She was wrung out and sobbing, but it didn’t matter. Her body climbed yet again, heading toward the stratosphere this time.
She heard herself making sounds she didn’t recognize. Not screams, not sobs, something older than either, sounds that came before language.
He rode her through it with hard, punishing strokes, his palm pressing her clit, and this orgasm came from a different place. Not the desperate clawing need of everything he’d denied her — this one rose from her soul like magma.
She started to say something, remembered she couldn’t. His hand pressed harder, and she shattered.
Not an explosion this time. An implosion.
Everything collapsed inward at once, her spine arching hard off the bed, her hands finding him and gripping with everything she had left while the wave rolled through her in long, deep, unstoppable pulses that went on past the point where she thought she had anything left to give, and kept going.
He moved his hands to the handlebars and pounded her, and she left her body somewhere in the middle of it, as if she was dumped into the stillness at the center of the storm with fireworks raging around her, where there was no pain and no need and no twelve hours and no rules and no pack bond and no MC and no reason in the world why she couldn’t have exactly this for the rest of her life.
And then she slammed back into herself screaming in bliss, riding the waves of ecstasy, her eyes huge while she looked at him and the last of the release detonated and shattered.
And she collapsed below him.
He’d come with her while she’d been out of her body. She’d known it, recognized it, but it already felt like something that had happened long ago to someone else.
He was still over her. Still inside her.
She could hear his heartbeat, and she focused on that while the trembling worked its way out of her muscles in long, slow waves.
Her face was wet.
She hadn’t known she was crying again until she felt it, and these tears were different from the frustrated sobs inside the hood, different from every tear she’d cried throughout the day.
These came from somewhere she hadn’t known had cracked open. She pulled him down and buried her face into his neck, and he let her.
Because these tears were a realization that she was irretrievably head-over-heels in love with this man.
And she couldn’t have him.
- - - ? - - -
Knife felt her come apart beneath him and held on through all of it while making her orgasm again and again until she was completely wrung out.
He hadn’t planned for her to go into subdrop, but he knew what to do.
This was the crash after sustained intensity, the nervous system finally releasing everything it’d been holding, emotion flooding in to fill the space her adrenaline had vacated. It happened to the strongest and weakest of submissives — this had nothing to do with strength or will.
In fact, sometimes the very act of holding on so long, giving everything, brought it on.
And Tuesday had given him everything.
He eased out of her carefully, felt her flinch at the loss, and he wrapped himself around her, using the practiced efficiency of aftercare he’d refined over years.
When her tears subsided enough she could hear him, he told her he’d be right back, and he wet a soft washcloth with warm water and returned to her so he could soothe and clean every stripe. Every bruise.
Her breathing slowed, but she was still crying. Quietly now, not the wrenching sobs of before, just a steady seep of tears she probably wasn’t fully aware of.
This was normal, he just needed to let it run its course.
Never mind she’d heal as soon as she changed, he retrieved the arnica balm from the nightstand and worked it into the worst of the marks, his hands mapping the damage the way they’d mapped everything throughout the long day — with full attention, nothing skipped, nothing rushed.
The backs of her thighs. Her calves. He turned her gently and attended to the front.
He finally removed the chest harness, and he rubbed balm into the deep indentations the jute had left.
She let him do all of it without a word.
No words, he’d told her, and she was still honoring it, still holding the order even now, even here, and her submission and obedience landed in his chest with more weight than it should have.
He put the wedge beside her, lifted her torso onto it, pulled the sheet over her, and reached for the food he’d left on the nightstand — the orange sections, the chocolate, the rest of the electrolytes.
He sat beside her and held a piece of orange to her lips. She took it without opening her eyes, and he watched her throat move as she swallowed and scented the sorrow that wasn’t fading.
Subdrop, he reminded himself. This is subdrop. Completely normal.
He gave her another section of orange. A square of chocolate. He held the electrolyte cup and put the straw to her lips, and she drank without being asked, compliant and quiet, but still crying those slow, continuous tears that had no drama in them, just depth.
He knew what subdrop felt like from the outside. He’d managed it a dozen times, knew the protocol, knew what was needed and in what order and for how long.
He fed her more chocolate, the last of the oranges, a little more chocolate, and then lay down beside her, and pulled her into him, her back to his chest, his arm over her, and she made a strangled sound before she pressed back into him like she was trying to close whatever distance remained between them.
He stared at the ceiling in the dark.
The beam ran the length of it, the cables and pulleys quiet now, the room that had held twelve hours of everything reduced to this — her breathing, their heartbeats, the wind in the trees outside, the owl he could hear from a hundred yards away.
She’d driven the sensible car up his mountain and he hadn’t asked why.
Had filed it under things only a boyfriend could ask and let it go — then spent twelve hours with her body in his ropes, his hands reading everything she was, and somewhere between the first knot and this moment, he’d stopped being able to locate the file he’d put that original thought in.
He thought about the way she’d said I can be here Monday morning at ten over breakfast days earlier without either of them acknowledging what they were actually agreeing to.
He thought about her wolf pressing against his skin the first morning, claiming him, and his wolf surging forward not to dominate but to meet her.
He thought about their girl and what his wolf had meant by it, and what he’d told his inner animal, and whether that had been true when he said it or just necessary.
He thought about the way he’d caressed her lips during a part of the scene he kept harsh for a reason.
She’s bound to an alpha, he reminded himself. She’s part of the pack. Everything she knows is subject to Kenny finding out.
He knew what it meant. It meant he couldn’t have her the way he wanted.
He pulled her closer anyway, and she made that almost-nothing sound again before her hand found his arm and held it.
The owl called from somewhere further up the ridge, and she stirred against him, her breathing finally evening out toward sleep, and he lay in the dark and looked at the beam, and understood with the clarity of a man who has run out of useful lies that he was in serious trouble.
He pressed his mouth to the back of her head, her hair still in the ponytail, and it brought everything back all over again.
And then he held her while she slept, and didn’t move, and listened to the owl until sleep finally took him.
He dreamed of the two of them in their sixties with a wine cellar downstairs and a beer fridge in the kitchen. The two of them working side-by-side, making Beef Wellington together, and it was the most ordinary thing in the world.