32. NINEAH
NINEAH
IT PHYSICALLY HURT being so close to what I imagined was the purest, cleanest orgasm I’d ever had, but I’d never been well-versed in self-denial. “Tell me,” I demanded.
Abraham possessively dragged his tongue over my ear.
“My kink is a fetish. And that fetish is owning you. It’s sitting across from you in a conference room full of people, knowing I dressed you that morning.
Fed you from my spoon. Bathed you in my shower.
I get off on watching you fall in love with me because in a just world you’d have had devoted parents who raised you better than to see a savior in the first man willing to listen to you.
But this isn’t a just world and you’re either unwilling or unable to look for better, so for the short while that I get to have one of God’s angels, I’m not going to keep her in a glass case.
I’m going to brutalize and corrupt her so thoroughly, the only place she’ll be welcome after that is with me. ”
A bone-deep shame washed over me—not the sexy kind, either—and I bit my lip hard enough to break skin.
He couldn’t say this to me. Not while he was inside of me.
It was too honest and I was too raw. Too weak.
Lies, the voice of opposition said. He’s lying. Everyone lies.
Undeserving, it whispered.
Vain, it shouted.
Not smart enough.
Not normal enough.
Every man says nice words when you’re naked for them.
I tried to shake the voices away, but I was still immobile and I couldn’t pound them out myself.
Stuck in more ways than one, my panic began to swirl into something dangerous.
Abraham must’ve noticed because he immediately pulled out of me and I was folded into his furnace-hot body.
His hands still in my hair like he could speak to my brain directly through his fingers, he massaged my scalp. “Slow breaths,” he commanded.
“I’m fine.”
“Do it for me, then.”
A tear slipping out for no reason I could pinpoint, I obeyed, drawing in slow, deep breaths until my throat no longer felt like it was closing in.
“Thank you,” he said.
Feeling stupid as fuck all of the sudden for having interrupted what was probably the greatest fuck of all of my past lives combined, I nearly made a joke but I didn’t have it in me.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I’m sort of one of those fucked up people whose body reacts like the world is ending when people say… stuff like that.”
“When people tell you the things you’ve always wanted to hear,” he corrected. “I know.”
“That’s so fucking weird. Get out of my brain,” I whispered.
“I’m not. You’ve said that to me before. Verbatim.”
“Oh.”
Abraham sighed. Not frustratedly, but almost contented.
I was so surprised by it, I relaxed my shoulders.
“I don’t like that you know so much about me,” I admitted.
“I know that’s not fair, but it’s the truth.
As long as you have the high ground and I’m standing out in the open with a sight laser on my chest, it’s thrilling sure, but it’s fucked up, too.
I’m way too attracted to you for no logical reason, and I can’t enjoy it because it’s confusing and dizzying and I have motion sickness.
And then you call me an angel and tell me I’m everything you’ve ever wanted and all I can think is, you don’t know me because if you did, you’d never say those things. ”
“Not everything requires a rationale. I’m allowed to want you just because I want you.”
“But what if I’m a murderer?” I asked him.
“They probably deserved it.”
“Or a cheater?”
Abraham snorted. “Are you serious?”
I wasn’t. Even if I could somehow find a spare second where this man wasn’t paying attention to me, just the way he looked at me unnerved me. Like he could read my thoughts in real time. Besides, I had many talents, but compartmentalization wasn’t one of them.
“You give your fears power over you, they’ll abuse it,” he murmured. “Trust me.” His mouth returning to the column of my neck like he couldn’t go more than a few minutes without touching me, he laid kisses on my skin that forced my eyes closed.
“Before I started to change physically, no one expected anything of me.” I focused on the feel of his lips to keep my breathing steady.
“They never corrected me or told me how I spoke was off putting, how I behaved was annoying. It was as if everyone around me just accepted that I was different and left me alone to be who I was. Then I grew up, I went into the Air Force and I realized people need to get what they expect, even if what they expect is terrible. So if I wanted to be taken seriously, I had to be a stuck up bitch because I looked like one. Four years of that was so exhausting and lonely, I couldn’t do it anymore.
I promised myself when I got a new career, I didn’t care how uncomfortable it made people.
I was going to be myself. But professional acquaintances are easy.
They’re a transaction with clear boundaries and appropriate distance. This… I don’t know this.”
“Do you have to?”
“What the fuck kind of question is that?”
“I used to think you had to know something to trust it. Truth is, none of us know shit and trust doesn’t change shit.”
He said it so simply I almost laughed. “I’m getting this advice for free? Unbelievable.”
He tugged on my ponytail and this time I did laugh, but it was cut short by Abraham’s mouth.
My body coming back online, I shifted so I straddled his massive thighs and moaned.
His thick erection, sliding through my already swollen slit, once, twice, slipped in effortlessly.
Fucking me in agonizingly slow strokes, he pulled back to watch me.
I was too turned on to feel self-conscious, but too aware of said self-consciousness to come, so I let him fuck me like this for what felt like hours until eventually, Abraham licked his left fourth finger and pressed against my asshole.
My bottom lip fell out of my teeth and he took advantage of the opportunity, pushing the thumb of his free hand into my mouth.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Ange. I would never pressure you to stay and just because I love you doesn’t mean you have to be mine. That being said, it does mean you can’t be anyone else’s.”
Whimpering around his fingers was not an appropriate response to a declaration like that, but I couldn’t help it. He said things with so much conviction, it was impossible not to believe him.
“I’m sorry.” His apology was genuinely remorseful. “Giving you up is one thing, but handing you over…” he cleared his throat. “Even I have limitations.”
The hot, liquid feeling between my legs now an overwhelming rage that pounded between my ears and shook my body, I couldn’t stop my orgasm if I wanted.
It swept me, knocking everything I knew about myself onto the floor and replacing it with new information.
No longer the needy, uncertain submissive that avoided everyone because I was terrible at choosing people who wouldn’t break my heart, I realized with a crushing horror that I was worse.
Turned out, I was actually very willing to let one specific man destroy me if it meant I could feel like this for two minutes.
Even scarier still, I knew he was right.
I didn’t know anything.
And I trusted even less.