Chapter 40 #3
He pounds into me with a fury that knocks the breath from my lungs and makes my legs give out. I go limp, impaled on his cock, drowning in the all-consuming ecstasy of the downright violent way he’s fucking me.
He’s never been this rough before.
This hard.
This brutal.
And I am eating it the fuck up.
It’s pain mixed with pleasure.
Entrapment and freedom.
Madness and catharsis.
And suddenly, I’m coming harder than I ever have before.
I scream, my entire body spasming and then going utterly limp against the car as the orgasm detonates through me.
My vision blurs and goes white. My throat closes.
Reality shuts off until all I’m conscious of is a rolling wave of orgasm after orgasm crashing over me as Achilles fucks the shit out of me.
With a groan, he buries every inch inside me. His fingers dig into my hip and tighten in my hair, and I feel the wet pulse of his release as he groans. His hot cum pours into me, pumping over and over, until it feels like he’s filling me with a gallon of his cum.
What. The. Fuck.
When he slides out, I’m barely conscious. I can scarcely think, or stand, or even breathe. All I can do is lie there limply against the car as I lift my eyes and shiver.
Travis looks dead.
“Achilles—”
“That motherfucker was a rapist. You’ll forgive my lack of fucks,” he growls.
I somehow stand, my legs shaky, my body tingling and throbbing all over.
His cum is dripping down my thighs as I try to adjust my soaked, sticky panties. I glance back at the car, blushing fiercely, and shiver at the vacant eyes of the man slumped over in the driver's seat.
Achilles did that.
He didn’t just yank me away from where I was dancing with someone.
He didn’t just stop a predator from drugging me and doing God knows what.
He fucking killed him.
Jesus.
“We’re leaving.”
I whimper, stumbling after Achilles as he wraps a hand around my arm and starts to pull me away, his cum still dripping down my legs.
That was, hands down, the hottest, most intense sex of my life.
…But nothing has changed.
What he did hasn’t changed, and my confusion over how I should think about that has only gotten worse.
Achilles pulls me toward the parking lot exit. I let him, because my legs are still wobbly and his hand on my arm is the only steady thing in my world right now.
We pass under the yellow glow of a flickering streetlight, and I see his face.
It’s livid and lined with not just the fury from inside the bar, not just the uncontrolled violence of what he just did. There’s something more that is even more unsettling.
It’s satisfaction.
It’s the calm expression of a man who handled a situation that needed handling and feels completely settled about it. Like, the math came out right.
I stop walking.
Achilles feels that I'm no longer in step with him and turns. His brow furrows, and he looks like he’s reading me.
But not studying me.
There’s a difference. And that's what I can't get past.
He doesn’t have to look for anything, or decipher anything, or piece anything together. He’s never had to with me, because he already knew everything.
He knew my kinks before I even walked into that Para Bellum party. He knew my limits and my darkest fantasies. He knew what I needed, wanted, and feared. He knew what would bring me to my knees. And he filed all that information away and used it to build something I'd walk into willingly.
And I did. And now I keep doing it. I just did it again, back there, bent over the hood of that car.
“We’re leaving, Yelena.”
I don’t know why, but that’s what finally breaks it open.
He says it like he’s not even the tiniest bit worried that I might have a differing opinion.
He's not worried. Even now, with everything that’s happened between us, he's not. Because he never is. I am, in his mind, already handled.
Already his.
The outcome was never in question, and my choices that led to it were never entirely mine.
I look at him for a long moment. At his dark eyes and his jaw and his absolute unshakeable certainty.
It’s not dramatic, like I’d thought it would be. It’s just a quiet rustle as the pieces of tape I’ve been holding my heart together with for the last week fall away like withered autumn leaves.
"Thunder.”
The whole world goes utterly still when the word falls from my lips. He goes totally still, his eyes glinting like twin black blades as the moment freezes over.
“I’m not saying that because I hate you,” I hear myself say, my voice surprisingly steady. "I'm saying it because I can't tell the difference anymore between you wanting me and you owning me.”
The frozen moment hangs there, slowly spreading, like ice forming on fallen leaves at the first winter frost.
Achilles doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me with that focused attention. But this time, I can't read what's underneath it.
"Thunder," I hear and watch myself whisper again.
I'm not going to be your experiment, Yelena. I'm not interested in being your tour guide. So yes, there’s an emergency exit. But it comes with a strict no re-admission policy. Once you leave, there’s no coming back.
The words he said that night he chased me through the woods to the plunging cliffs rattle like bones in the echoing stillness of my mind.
There’s no coming back.
Thunder doesn’t just pause the game.
It’s a full stop.
An end to all of it.
I wait for him to speak. To grab me. To kiss me or fuck me or claim me in ways I can’t even comprehend.
But he doesn't.
“Lena?”
When I turn, my face caves when I see Wren opening the door to a black Range Rover before it even rolls to a stop.
She quickly walks over. “You guys weren’t answering your phones, and then Galina called and told me...”
Concern spreads over her face when she sees the dull, broken look on mine. Her eyes drag to Achilles, and her jaw tightens before she takes my hand in hers.
“Let's go,” she murmurs.
She starts to pull me toward the Range Rover waiting at the curb. It’s only then that Achilles’s stoic intensity cracks a little. His lips curl into a quiet snarl as he steps closer to me.
“Nah, right there is good, Achilles,” Laz growls as he steps out of the driver's side of the car. He lifts his jacket, flashing the grip of a handgun tucked into a holster. “I think it’s best you let her leave with us.”
I turn, my eyes finding Achilles’ gaze, and I shiver when that black fire ripples through them.
“You always had a choice,” he says quietly.
“No. I didn’t,” I croak. “But I do now.”
I climb into the back seat. Wren starts to sit next to me, but I shake my head. She and Laz get into the front, and the engine rumbles to life. I turn, my pulse beating shallowly as I look through the window at the man still standing under the streetlight, his eyes never leaving mine.
The thing is, he made me feel picked.
Selected for being me..
Not for being “a De Luca”. Not for being “Nero and Milena’s daughter”. Not for being “the girl who didn’t report what happened this past summer”, or “the girl with the fucked-up fantasies.”
He made me feel specifically chosen in a way I’ve never felt before.
But it’s only now that I realize I’m not sure I ever chose him.
I never had a choice.
The game was rigged from the start.
So now, I’m walking away from that game.
Thunder.