Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
GEMMA
Touch myself?
Disappointment flashed briefly through me before I smothered it with a pillow. I wanted him to touch me.
Well, I knew what he wanted—what everyone always wanted. I slid my hand slowly down the curve of my hip, over my lace panties. I started to moan, to arch—
Grim tightened his grip on my thighs to the point of pain. I gasped.
“Stop that shit,” he said, eyes lifting to mine. Cold. Bored. “If I wanted fake, I’d turn on some porn, Rich Girl.” His grip loosened, thumb soothing the spot. “Do what you do when you’re alone. When no one is watching you.”
Fear stole my breath.
Dripped cold and icy down my spine.
For a few seconds I was frozen. Stuck between obeying and pushing him off me. What he wanted was too intimate. I couldn’t control that—control his reaction to me.
I tried to push him off. “Fuck this—”
“Gemma.” His grip tightened, but it was the tone of his voice that had me looking back at him. It wasn’t cold, it was coaxing. Almost…warm. But there was a firmness in the tone that brooked no argument.
I swallowed. I was perfect Gemma Crowne, and perfect Gemma was perfect in all ways. Horace didn’t want me, he wanted the fantasy of me. The girl who moaned and told him he had a big cock, who always got off right when he did, and who never asked him to do anything differently.
So I said the truth.
The thing I was afraid of.
“You’ll get bored.”
A slight smirk twitched his lips.
“Bored?” He pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the crease of my thigh. “Never.” His words disappeared into a growl, vibrating against my skin, twisting into my gut and dripping hot between my thighs.
He stood up and, for a split second, my heart dropped into my gut.
He’s going to leave.
He doesn’t want this—
Grim was on top of me, taking up all the space and pressing me into the mattress. My head caged by his elbows, his face so close to mine, his stare inescapable.
“Touch yourself, Gemma,” he commanded again.
If I thought it was vulnerable before, it was agonizing now. He wasn’t looking between my thighs, he was watching me, stripping away all my layers.
My breathing was shaky as I slid my hand back down my body. I did as I was told, touching myself like no one was watching. Warmth melted inside my skin like butter, and goose bumps peppered my flesh. A knot started to form in my gut, begging to be undone.
It’s too quiet.
No man wants that.
Little voices poked at me, and I nearly opened my mouth to moan, but the look in Grim’s eyes stopped me—burning coals. As if I was the hottest thing, like he was getting off on this as much as me—more than me.
It made the knot grow tighter.
With Horace—with any guy, really—I could always hide because they didn’t want the reality of me. They preferred the lies I gave them. The fake moans and gasps.
With Grim I was a shadow trying to run from the sun.
And it boiled me alive.
A small, involuntary whimper slid from my lips. Grim responded with a savage smile splitting his lips.
“There it is.” One hand knotted painfully—deliciously—in my hair as his lips dove to my neck. “Give me more of that.”
When I started again, I let myself drown in his hunger and possession. His sweet-painful grip in my hair. His whispers hot against my skin.
Good girl.
Good fucking girl.
His praise slid like heroin into my bloodstream until I was dizzy with it. A moan fell from my lips—
Quicker than a flash, he tugged my head back by the hair, giving me a look both feral and censuring. Using the hand knotted in my hair, he twisted my head to the side to see what he was looking at. My double doors, where Wraith’s body made a silhouette.
Oh, right.
After a torturous minute, his grip loosened.
His lips found the crook beneath my ear. “Can you stay quiet?”
I tried to nod, but his grip was too firm in my hair. The up-and-down movements tugged my hair painfully.
“Good girl,” he said, and released me.
Grim stood back up between my thighs. The next part played out in slow motion, time passing with the throb of my heartbeat. His hand at his zipper. Metal teeth slowly parting. His thick, tatted cock.
“Don’t stop touching yourself.” He gripped his cock as he spoke, his command punctuated by the bruising grip.
I obeyed, hand moving back between my legs. I was locked on him, in a trance. I hadn’t seen him, really seen him, since that night on the beach. Wicked black tattoos slid down the gutters of his Adonis belt, encircling his cock.
It was so painfully difficult to keep quiet.
He tugged his cock with mesmerizing brutality, the flex of his long fingers barely wrapping around his width. I touched myself in rhythm with him.
It grew harder to stay quiet.
I’d never had trouble before; I could always be what anyone wanted. But now? The savage way he gripped his cock, the burn in his eyes, like he was holding himself from plunging into me, had me biting my lip near bloody to keep from crying out.
The muscles in Grim’s neck throbbed in stark relief as his head fell back on a silent groan. He coated my lower stomach and inner thighs in hot spurts. The veins in his hand flexed with each final tug. I felt a dizzying mix of emotions.
Marked. Claimed. Safe.
Grim’s head dropped, chin to collarbone. Black hair fell in a shield. The heavy breaths racking his body, his hand still gripping his semi-hard dick.
He lifted his head, catching my gaze. I nearly buckled under the intensity.
“Did you come, Gemma?” he asked, voice low and strained.
“Ye—” I broke off.
Normally I lied.
Yes. You were amazing. It felt so good. Best I’ve ever had.
I chewed my bottom lip, then shook my head.
Something clouded his eyes, some kind of emotion, or conflict I couldn’t understand, but before I could even try to understand it, he knelt between my knees and grabbed my hand.
He pushed inside me, spreading my pussy with his finger and mine. His come was slippery on my thigh, and Grim pressed it deeper inside me.
I tensed.
“Don’t stop,” he whispered. “Fuck yourself with my come.”
My lips parted. “I’m not on birth control.”
He maneuvered my fingers inside me, using his come as lubricant. “I know.”
I knew better than to question how he knew the most intimate parts of me. It shouldn’t be so hot. I should definitely make him stop, but more than that I didn’t want to. I couldn’t. I was compelled, under an illicit trance spelled by his vicious, ravenous stare.
He crawled back above me, body caging me into the mattress. Grim used me as a doll to fuck myself. Stretching me.
I arched on a cry that Grim smothered before it could leave my lips. On his elbow, he kept one hand pinned against my mouth, the other working inside me with cruel rhythm. I glanced at the shadow darkening my door.
What happens if they catch us?
My eyes found Grim’s again, gaze shadowed with inscrutable emotion. My breath was hot and wet against his palm. Pinned beneath his hand, I felt a strange sense of safety. He was watching me so intently, he was focused on me so deeply, I wanted to melt into him. Submit.
My body turned to liquid.
I melted under the pressure of his palm smothering my sighs.
“Yeah, just like that,” he whispered against my neck. “So fucking perfect. So beautiful when you surrender. Come on my fucking fingers, Gemma.”
I didn’t know if it was the command that did it, or the way his irises bruised my fucking soul. Or maybe it was the way his jaw clenched, muscle feathering with restraint as he fucked me with my own hand. Maybe it was just knowing I could come, like this, as me—and that was how Grim wanted it.
Oh my God.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t—
Grim inhaled sharply as my teeth enclosed the flesh of his palm. I bit him, hard, riding out the orgasm. He didn’t flinch or pull away; his eyes encouraged me.
My orgasm stole every part of me, from the tiniest of muscles to the air in my lungs. It shot through me. Rippled down my spine to the tips of my toes, so when I was finished, it was Grim who tethered me to earth.
I was spent. Weak. Strung out.
“Mi locura,” he groaned as I came, kissing my cheeks, my neck, my lips. “Good fucking girl.”
Grim slid back down my body, between my thighs.
Mi locura.
My cheeks were on fire.
My insides were on fire.
Mi locura.
He hadn’t called me that since the beach, and so I hadn’t felt this—this need—this overwhelming need to do anything just so I could hear him say it, in years.
Danger.
My nervous system lit up like a Christmas tree. The last time he called me that, my life changed. Wraith guarded my fucking door; I was a fucking prisoner. Yesterday Grim stole my orgasm only to use it against me.
Not again.
Never again.
I felt a cold certainty envelop my body. This wasn’t real. Pretending it was would break me. I had to remember that. I had to remember why I started the day. If I didn’t…
I pushed my feelings aside. Dissociated from his hot opened-mouth kisses cleaning up my come and his.
“Do you like the way I taste?” I asked.
“The fuck do you think,” Grim growled.
“It’s your Horsemen,” I whispered.
It was a second before it registered, but then he froze.
I tilted my head, blinking at him innocently as I slid my pointer finger along my bottom lip. “If you continue to keep me locked up here with them, just know that when you climb through my window, you’ll never know if you’re sleeping with your Horsemen too.”
Grim’s lips twitched with a barely perceptible smile, then he tangled his hands in my hair, ripping my eyes to his. His breath was in my lungs, his chest touching mine with each heavy inhale.
“You think I give a shit whose dick is in your cunt?” he hissed.
Before I could answer, he slammed his lips against mine. A distant thought rode an abandoned carousel in my mind—this is our second kiss.
This kiss was different. Rougher. Nothing like the beach. He thrust his tongue deep into my mouth. Obscenely deep. Claiming every corner of my mouth until I couldn’t breathe through it, let alone kiss him back. Swallowing. Ravaging. Like he was trying to suck out any taste of another man.
Replace it with him.
I could feel my mind going fuzzy, soft, so I shoved at him. Ripped my lips away. Fought.
“Was it worth it, Rich Girl?” He laughed as I continued to struggle in vain. “To try and beat death, you fucked his soldier.”
He’d stopped kissing me, but he wouldn’t get off me. I elbowed his chest, tried to shove his head away, but nothing stuck. A dangerous glint heated his eyes.
He liked this.
“Or maybe you like swallowing his come. Maybe you like having him in your mouth.” His hand slid between my thighs. “Yeah, you have a pretty sloppy cunt right now.” His palm was rough and mean and so right against my already sensitive nerves. Impossibly, I felt another orgasm rising—
He stood back up, flexing his arms above his head with lethal casualness.
“Invite me next time,” he said, stuffing himself back into his jeans. “I’d love to watch them skull-fuck you. Watch your pretty tears fall down your face.”
Without another word, he went to the balcony.
“What do I have to do to just make you forget I ever existed!”
He paused but didn’t look back. When he spoke, it was with finality reserved for eulogies. “That’s a debt you’ll never pay off, Rich Girl.”