Chapter 20
20
“Bethany,” he breathed.
Pain radiated from him in waves, hitting her full force. Had she not been holding on to the door knob, she would’ve reeled backwards.
“Tell me what you need, Zach,” she pleaded. “Tell me how to make it better for you.”
His harsh exhalation shook his whole body. Haunted eyes locked on hers from across the room, communicating a thousand demands that remained unspoken.
Earlier last night, she’d come up with the plan to use sex to coax Zach into giving her what she needed from him.
Then after the incident in the alley, she’d abandoned the idea of using sex as leverage because she’d believed it would jeopardize everything. Sex was the most precious thing in their relationship. For now.
But she realized she’d didn’t have to use sex that way. She could use it to communicate with the man she had fallen for. The man she’d begun to suspect she couldn’t live without.
Releasing the door, she nudged it shut.
It was time to give it her all. It was time to go for broke.
She crossed the room until she stood arm’s length from him. Slowly, she untied her robe and let it fall to the floor.
His pained exhalation was jagged with threads of deep arousal.
Heart pounding, she reached out and trailed her fingers along his jaw.
“Show me how to make it better, Zachary.”
He swallowed hard and shook his head. “I can’t. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t lose me. I promise.”
“No,” he snapped. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I’ve learned the hard way that nothing lasts forever. You think you’re falling in love with me?—”
“I don’t think. I know. I love you, Zach.”
He jerked backward as if he’d been shot. He was pale, and he shook his head, over and over, denying the words that twisted like a live gauntlet between them.
“No. What you feel isn’t love. It’s just your brain reacting to great sex.”
This time it was her turn to jerk. Ice engulfed her, and she dropped her hands from his face. “Don’t disparage my feelings.”
“I’m stating the facts as I’ve experienced them.”
“As you’ve experienced them? Don’t presume to tell me how I feel.”
“Bethany—”
“No. If you don’t want my love, that’s fine. No, actually, it’s not fine. You’ll need to come up with a fucking great reason why you don’t want it, when every time you look at me, I see how much you want me.”
“I do,” he rasped. “I want you more than…” He shook his head.
“And I’m here, right in front of you. You don’t want me to leave, and yet you try to belittle what I have to give you. What the hell do you want from me, Zach?”
He clenched his fist at his sides, repeating the action from when they’d first met. As if he was denying himself of her. His body burned hers, imprinting his heat on her. “Something I don’t have the right to ask.”
“Try it anyway.”
“I want time. A lot of it. And your belief that no matter what happens, I won’t hurt you. Not deliberately.”
“And what about my love? What do you want me to do with that?” she asked.
“Use it to stay. Use it to understand when I can’t reveal my past to you like an open book.”
She trembled at the dark anguish in his voice. More than anything she wanted to step closer, take him in her arms and let the one thing that had always been perfect between them take over.
But she needed more, just a little bit more.
“It’s morning, another day. Time for another question.”
He shut his eyes, and his head fell back wearily. Without opening them, he nodded.
“When you told me you had no family you wanted to talk about, what did you mean?”
His tension escalated, his biceps bunching under the strain of clenching his fists. “My mother lives in Louisiana. I haven’t spoken to her in over ten years.”
“Why?”
“Because that was when I accepted that as much as I wanted to deny it, she would never be who I want her to be,” he muttered hoarsely, pain vibrating off his body, hitting her in the gut with the sheer magnitude of it.
“I’m sorry, Zach.”
He opened his eyes and the hard, ruthless gleam she saw amid the pain made her breath catch. “Don’t be. I knew she was toxic long before I cut her out of my life.”
“God, what did she do to you?”
“To me? Nothing. It was what she did to herself. What she let others do to her that was the problem.”
“What does that?—?”
He stopped her words with one finger across her lips. “No, I’ve answered your question. Which means the inquisition is over for another twenty-four hours. It also means I have you for another day.” His finger slid slowly over her mouth, and she noticed it was trembling. “I need you, Bethany.” The naked plea in his voice, in his eyes, made tears clog her throat.
“You have me,” she answered simply, hoping that the love vibrating from inside her would heal him even a little.
His breath shuddered out. He lifted her chin with his finger and looked into her eyes. “If I take you tonight, it won’t be… I can’t promise I won’t be a little rough. Are you okay with that?”
Excitement bubbled through the volatile emotions ricocheting in the atmosphere. “I know you won’t hurt me.”
One arm slid around her, pulling her in to his hard body. “I’ll never hurt you, Peaches. Not intentionally.”
She nodded, and her gaze flicked to the structure behind him. “But right now you want to tie me to a cross. Am I right?” she asked, her voice husky with deep arousal.
His smile was lopsided, tinged with chagrin. “I’d never given much thought to control or how it would feel to lose mine, until I met you. Now you touch me and I feel as if I’m losing my mind.”
“I feel the same way.”
He leaned closer until their foreheads touched. “Today has been… challenging.”
“I know.”
He turned her around until her back touched the cross. “Give me this. Help ground me a little?”
She shivered at the sensation of the smooth iron studs against her naked skin. Heat flared anew in his face as his gaze dropped to her hardening nipples. His lips parted and his tongue snuck out to rest against his lower lip.
Knowing he was caught helplessly as she was in the same maelstrom of emotion and arousal lent her to the power to take the final step.
Gratitude, wonder, and anticipation blazed across Zachary’s face as she slowly held out her hands to him.
He caught and secured her hands above her head, the leather cuffs snug but not too tight. He trailed his fingers down her arm and along her exposed sides, making her squirm with need and a healthy amount of belly-twisting anxiety.
God, she’d strayed so far out her comfort zone, it was beyond ridiculous. But somehow she’d grown to trust Zach, to know nothing would happen here that she didn’t want.
“Step up for me, baby.” He gave the guttural instruction as he crouched before her, one hand waiting to secure her ankle holster.
Biting her lip, she positioned her feet on the protruding ledge. Quickly, he fastened the cuffs and rose to surge over her.
One forefinger caressed her cheek, his gaze intent on her face. “Tell me how you feel.”
“I feel helpless and powerful at the same time,” she gasped.
“Perfect. That means you won’t give in quickly.”
“Give in to what?”
“To this.” Lowering his head, he sucked one nipple into his mouth and then bit on the hard nub.
“Zach!” Her cry ripped from her throat as fire flashed through her pelvis. She was soaking wet before he turned to deliver the same attention to her other nipple.
Her hands jerked against her bonds, ramming home how helpless she was. But each tug brought a fresh wave of lust rather than fear.
He started to lift his head. She moaned her protest. “No. More.”
The slow, satisfied smile that spread across his face caught at her heartstrings. He repeated the action, closing his eyes to concentrate on his task as she cried out in pleasure.
When he lifted his head, his control was firmly in place.
Zachary Savage was in his element.
The man caught in the riptide of anguish had receded. In his place was the master of sex, whose bedroom skills were honed to perfection.
He suckled her hard, lapped her with lazy sweeps of his tongue until she was poised on the edge of orgasm.
Then he withdrew. Stepping behind her, he brushed her hair to one side and planted hot kisses on her nape.
Reaching around her, he cupped one breast and drifted his other hand down her midriff. He paused at the top of her mound. “Do you want me to touch you here, Peaches?” he whispered in her ear.
“Yes.”
“Tell me how wet you are for me first,” he instructed hoarsely.
“So wet. I’m dripping with it. I need you, Zach.” Her voice caught on a helpless sob.
He shuddered at her back and cupped her almost roughly. “That is your power right there, Bethany. You don’t know how much I want to take what you’re offering.”
“Take it. It’s yours.”
His head dropped between her shoulder blades, his breath rushing in and out with his harsh inhalations.
“God, Bethany, you don’t know what you do to me. Being with you heightens everything, makes me want to grab life by the balls and squeeze every last drop of happiness from it. It’s more than I’ve wanted to do in a very long time. I don’t want to hold back. Don’t ask me to hold back. I won’t. I can’t. Not with you.”
“I love you,” she repeated, because she couldn’t not tell him. She couldn’t not let him know that he had her. To help him battle his demons. Or at least banish them for a while. “I love you, Zach.”
Tears slid down her face. At her back, she heard his gruff sound of pain.
Abruptly, he let her go and strode round to face her.
He gazed at her, eyes filled with turbulent emotion, before he slanted his mouth over hers. His kiss bruised her to the point of pain, his tongue intent on dueling with hers and winning.
When the need for air drove them apart, he permitted her only a second. Then he was back. His hands gripped her in a possessive hold, which she had no doubt would leave marks.
But she didn’t care. All she wanted was his thick, veined cock between her legs and Zach so delirious with pleasure that he would forget his pain.
“I love you.”
He jerked again at her confession. “Bethany.”
“Yes. Please.”
He gripped his cock and caressed it from root to tip. Pre-cum dripped at his slit, making hunger claw at her insides. Stepping closer, he took hold of her hips and surged inside with one long thrust.
Their mingled groan echoed around the room. A trembling seized them both as the first wave of pleasure receded a tiny bit. But that was just the calm before the almighty storm, which had been brewing for hours.
His balls slammed against her ass with each hard ram. Despite the ledge giving her a slight height advantage, the power behind his penetration still lifted her off her feet.
Pleasure like she’d never known screamed through her. “Zach,” she sobbed, feeling bliss careen closer. He pounded relentlessly, his mouth devouring her wherever he could—her cheeks, her neck, the sensitive underside of her arm.
“Fuck, I… can’t get enough of you. Can’t…” he gritted out. “Never leave me, Bethany. Please.”
“I won’t… I won’t… Oh, God,” she cried out as her orgasm exploded from her core.
“Baby… Peaches.” She heard his guttural moan, then he was spewing his load into her, hot bursts of semen that flooded her insides with each body-shaking ripple.
He soothed her body with gentle caresses until their breathing slowed, then reaching up, he released her hands.
Hugging his hot body to her, a sense of peace stole over Bethany. She didn’t fool herself into thinking it was a lasting peace, but she grasped it all the same.
When he freed her totally and carried her to the gurney, she didn’t protest. He made love to her again on the gurney then strapped her into the swing. By the time he settled her into the gadget-free armchair, she could barely move.
At some point before morning slid into afternoon, then into another angst-filled evening, he picked her up and took her back into their suite and ordered a tray of food to be brought up.
They ate, showered, and got back into bed. There he curled her back into his front and with his arms tight around her, he drifted off to sleep.