Chapter 4
CINDER
My body is wrecked. Every muscle is loose and humming.
The bed shifts as Samuel eases away from me.
Cold air fills the space his body leaves behind, and I shiver, pulling the sheet higher over my bare chest. He rises and my gaze follows him across the suite.
The fire’s glow paints the hard planes of his back, catching the torn-flesh tattoos that travel down his ribs and lats.
Every muscle rolls beneath inked skin as he walks, unhurried and completely at ease in his nakedness, to the bathroom.
The water turns on, then off. Before long, he returns with a cloth, the steam curling between his fingers.
Samuel drags the cloth slowly over my tender, swollen flesh, cleaning me with the same deliberate patience he used to take me apart.
He bends his head and presses his lips where the cloth just passed.
The kiss is soft. Intimate in a way that tightens my throat more than everything that came before it.
I close my eyes and let my head sink deeper into the pillows. The sheets smell like him and our lovemaking. Snow still falls past floor-to-ceiling glass, fat white flakes caught in the warm glow of the dying fire. Chicago's skyline blurs beneath the weather, distant and irrelevant.
It’s the perfect cozy evening if I can only force the grief and pain to stay on the fringes for a while longer.
Samuel tosses the cloth aside and stretches out beside me, pulling me into the hard wall of his body.
One arm hooks around my waist. My back settles against his chest and the heat of him is instant and utterly consuming.
His chin rests on top of my head, and for a handful of breaths I let myself pretend this is real.
Safe. Protected. Held by someone who wants me.
But it's an illusion. A beautiful one. The kind of dream I sink into knowing the alarm is about to go off.
This man is not my future. He is my escape hatch, and in a few minutes I need to peel myself from his arms and do the walk of shame back through the Gilded Key Society in my wrinkled funeral dress.
Wonderful.
I shift, placing my palm flat on the mattress to push myself up.
"Where are you going?"
His arm tightens around my middle and pulls me back into him before I make it five inches out of his hold. The motion presses his hips flush against my ass, and I suck in a sharp breath. He is hard again. Thick and hot against the small of my back.
Okay. So maybe there's time for one more round.
I'm sore in places I've never been sore, but my responsibilities can wait another hour.
The will reading, the stepsisters, the murder investigation I need to launch against my own family.
All of it can sit outside that elevator door for a little while longer.
He turns me onto my side, my back to his chest. His hand sweeps the hair from my neck, and his lips press against the spot just below my ear.
A condom wrapper crinkles behind me, the quiet snap of latex, and then his knee nudges between my thighs.
He spreads me open with two fingers and finds the wet heat of me.
Ever so slowly, my lover slides the head of his cock through my folds.
I gasp at the contact. Sore muscles clench and protest, but the ache blurs with a pleasure so sharp my teeth dig into my bottom lip.
He enters me from behind. Slow. Every inch deliberate, my body stretching to take him as he seats himself deep. Then he stills. His hand wraps around my breast, cupping the weight, his thumb passing over my nipple in a lazy stroke.
He holds me. Just holds me. Buried inside me, his arms wrapped around my body, his breath warm and steady against the back of my neck.
I don't know what to do with this kind of tenderness from a killer.
He pulls out. The sudden emptiness makes my body clench in protest. Behind me, the condom comes off. He shifts, positions himself against me again, and slides back in bare.
I gasp. The difference is immediate. No barrier between us. Just raw, slick heat and the full pulse of him stretching me open.
"I want to feel all of my princess." His voice is rough against my ear. "Own all of you." His hips draw back and he drives forward, seating himself so deep a strangled sound tears from my throat. "I want to breed you, Cinder. You need my seed and I need to see you round with my child."
The words send a white-hot shock straight to my core. My pussy clenches hard around him, and he groans, his grip tightening on my hip.
I'm on the pill. I know this man's reputation, too. Samuel "Bones" Payne does not date. He does not keep women around. Every tabloid and underground rumor mill paints the same portrait. He’s a recluse, a ghost in his own empire. There is no one else.
He pulls out and slams home. My mouth falls open.
The rawness of his cock inside me, the friction, the heat, the primal ownership in every thrust shifts this from sex into possession.
He fucks me like he's staking a claim, each stroke deep and punishing.
His hand flattens against my lower belly holding me in place.
My orgasm builds fast, pressure tightening at the base of my spine, coiling tighter with every snap of his hips.
I reach back and grip his thigh, nails digging into hard muscle.
He growls against my shoulder and drives harder, faster, until the coil snaps and I shatter around him with a cry I couldn't hold back if I tried.
He follows. Hot. Pulsing. Every throb of his release pulses deep inside me and the sensation pulls an aftershock from my wrecked body that leaves me trembling.
His arm stays locked around me. Neither of us moves.
Minutes pass. The fire pops. Snow swirls past the glass. His breathing evens out behind me, slow and warm against my shoulder.
I ease forward, sliding off his softening cock with a hiss. His arm loosens, and I crawl to the edge of the bed, my limbs liquid and heavy. The lounge chair sits across the room, lit by firelight on one side and the cool blue of the city glow through the windows on the other.
I glance back over my shoulder. He is watching me. Propped on one elbow, dark hair loose around his face, shadows carving his jaw and the ridged scars of his knuckles where they rest against the white sheets.
"Stay where you are."
His brow lifts. A dare behind those dark, haunting eyes.
I slide off the bed and cross the room on unsteady legs. The air is cooler away from the fire, raising goosebumps across my bare skin as I drape myself over the lounge chair. Velvet soft against my back, my hips, the tender insides of my thighs.
I don't know what drives me to reach for my phone on the side table.
I don't know why I open the camera and prop it against the cushion, angled at my body.
A reckless impulse. The kind I'll question in the cold light of morning when the footage exists on a device a very dangerous man can access.
But right now, in this amber glow, I want to own this moment.
Record the version of myself who chose pleasure over pain for one night in her pathetic life.
My fingers trail down my stomach, over the curve of my hip, between my thighs. I spread my legs wider, letting him watch as I stroke through my slick folds. His seed drips from me and I take those drops and coat my clit with him.
My body is sensitive, wrecked, and the first pass of my fingertips over my swollen clit makes me arch off the velvet with a hiss.
Firelight plays over my skin. I'm fully exposed, amber light painting every inch of me while Samuel sits on the edge of the bed, shadows pooling around him.
His hand drops between his own legs, and he grips his hardening cock.
The thick length hardens in his fist as he strokes, slow and measured, his dark eyes pinned to every movement of my fingers.
I work my clit in tight circles, my hips rolling into my own touch. A moan spills from my lips and his hand moves faster, matching my rhythm. The power of it, having this man's full, undivided hunger while I pleasure myself, sends a rush of heat through my core that pushes me close to the edge.
He rises. Crosses the room in three long strides. His hands grip my hips and he lifts me off the lounge like I weigh nothing, sliding into me in one smooth thrust. I hook my ankles around his back and dig my nails into his shoulders.
"Fuck me hard, daddy." My voice is raw, broken. "I need to feel you stretch me and fill me up. Pretend with me just one night that I belong to you and you belong to me."
He pulls out and drives back in. My head falls against his shoulder.
"You want to come for daddy?"
"I do."
He lays me flat on the lounge and drops between my thighs.
His mouth closes over my pussy and his tongue drags a slow, devastating pass through my folds.
I grip the armrest and cry out, my back bowing off the velvet.
He licks me with a patience that borders on cruelty, circling my clit, sucking the swollen flesh between his lips until my thighs lock around his head and my orgasm rips through me so hard my vision whites out.
He rises to his knees. His beard is wet with my release, glistening in the warm light. The sight of him, mouth slick, dark eyes burning, has my pussy clenching around nothing.
He slides back into me, stretching me open again, and I moan from how full he makes me feel. His hand reaches for my phone, still propped against the cushion.
"Record us." His voice drops low enough to vibrate through my chest. "I want us to keep the moment I put my baby in you."
Sweet man. I'll delete the video while he sleeps.
I hold the phone steady, angling the screen to capture where our bodies join.
He watches the display for a beat, then his eyes come back to mine as he drives forward.
Hard. Deep. His hand grips my hip and he fucks me with a raw, grinding rhythm that has me struggling to keep the phone still through the tremors rolling through my body.