40. June
June
The headlights cut a twin path of blinding light through the dark, reflecting off the wrought-iron gates of the cabin driveway. A worn, rusted padlock hung there.
“Stay in the car,” Julian ordered. His voice was a wreck, raw from the adrenaline and the way I’d been marking his skin for the last few hours.
I didn’t listen. I couldn’t. The heat in my body was too high, a pulsing throb that demanded I stay close to him and keep my body moving.
I pushed the door open, the metal creaking in the stillness, and stepped out into the damp night air.
The smell of pine needles and the black water of the lake hit me instantly.
I watched him go to the trunk. The moonlight caught the sharp line of his jaw and the broad, powerful spread of his shoulders as he leaned in to grab a tire iron.
He marched to the gate, his boots crunching on the gravel. I followed a few paces behind, the bracelet he’d given me clinking softly against my wrist.
“Julian,” I whispered.
He hooked the tire iron into the curve of the padlock and braced himself.
I watched the muscles in his back bunch and cord under his shirt, the fabric straining against his spine.
He groaned, a low sound of exertion, and for a second, he looked exactly like the man who had disposed of Billy in the woods.
Crack.
The sound of the lock breaking echoed across the water like a gunshot. He kicked the gates open, the rusted hinges screaming, and then he turned to look at me.
The moonlight turned his brown honey eyes into two pits of black ink. He was breathing hard, his chest heaving, the tire iron still gripped in the thick, heavy span of his hand.
“I told you to stay in the car,” he said, but there was no heat in the command—only a desperation.
“I’m not a glass doll, Julian,” I countered, stepping into his space. The damp grass caught at the hem of my dress, but I didn’t care. I reached out, my fingers trembling as I touched the raw, red marks on his neck where I’d bitten him in the car.
He dropped the tire iron. It hit the ground with a dull thud, forgotten. He grabbed me then, his hands sliding into my hair and tilting my head back with a possessive force that made my breath stop.
“You have no idea what you’re doing to me,” he growled against my lips.
He scooped me up, his arms hooking under my knees and back, and carried me to the dark porch of the cabin. I buried my face in his neck, breathing in the scent of leather, sweat and his cedar cologne.
He kicked the door open so hard the wood shuddered against the interior wall with a deafening bang.
The cabin was a freezing, forgotten tomb of history, heavy with the suffocating scent of undisturbed dust and weathered wood.
But as he hoisted me up and backed me onto the edge of a heavy, hand carved table, the freezing air ceased to exist.
The only light came from the moon spilling through the windows, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. Julian stood between my legs, his hands resting on the wood on either side of my hips, pinning me there. He looked at me with a reverence that felt like a weight on my chest.
“We’re here,” I whispered, my fingers fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. “We’re really here.”
“Finally,” he replied, his voice dripping with a dark edge. He leaned in, his lips grazing my ear, sending a fresh jolt of electricity down my spine.
“I want you,” I hissed, pulling his shirt open to find the carving of my name. I pressed my lips to the ink, my heart hammering a frantic beat against his.
Julian let out a sound—a broken, desperate moan and claimed my mouth again.
The kiss was different now. He moved with a dominant grace, his hands wandering hungrily over the silk of my dress.
He traced the curves he’d spent a lifetime fantasising about, laying claim to the body he’d only been allowed limited access to until now.
The cabin groaned around us, the sound of the lake lapping at the shore, a lonely pulse.
Julian’s hands were still on the table, pinning me, his knuckles strained against the dark wood.
In the moonlight, he looked less like the boy I’d grown up with and more like a force of nature—something primal and hungry.
“You’re sure?” he rasped, his eyes searching mine with a desperation that made my heart hammer.
“You understand that if we do this, the old version of us is dead, right?” He breathed the words directly against my skin, his voice vibrating with a terrifying undertone. “I will brand myself into you so thoroughly you won’t be able to breathe without feeling me. There will be no retreat, June.”
“I don’t want a retreat,” I gasped, burying my hands in his hair. “I just want to be yours. Forever.”
His rough hands seized the hem of my dress, shoving the silk up my thighs and sparking a feral, heavy ache right between my legs.
He bunched the fabric in a tight fist at my ribs, stripping away my only cover.
The biting cold of the cabin hit my bare lower half, making my breath catch and my skin shiver, leaving me exposed to the dark, starving look in his eyes.
A bed was too soft, too human for what he wanted to do to me.
His rough hands seized my hips, dragging my bare skin ruthlessly down the length of the wood until I was teetering over the edge.
He didn’t waste any time. He forced my thighs wide open, pinning my legs heavily over his shoulders in a shameless position.
The weight of his gaze swept over me, erupting into goosebumps across my skin.
“Beautiful doesn’t even begin to cover it,” he praised me.
“You have fucking no idea what it’s done to me…
watching you, starving for this exact moment.
Look at me, June. Look at what you’ve reduced me to.
Do you know how hard it’s been saying no to you all those times you practically begged for my cock? A punishment no man deserves,”
“I’ve spent years fantasising about ripping your clothes off and ruining you. I don’t just want to taste you. I want to consume you. This deep, filthy part of you is mine. It always has been. And I’m going to spend the rest of eternity burying myself inside you to prove it.”
He didn’t grant me the mercy of rushing.
Instead of burying himself inside me right away, he weaponised his hands.
His thick fingers slid ruthlessly between my thighs, dragging teasingly through the soaking, shameful evidence of just how desperate I was for him.
A broken, pathetic sob tore out of my throat as his thumb pinned my swollen clit.
He pressed down, circling with a slow, teasing pace that felt like torture.
I was practically dripping off the edge of the table already, my body displaying exactly how long I’d craved this moment.
But Julian refused to put me out of my misery.
He didn’t just want me wet. He wanted my mind and body shattered and begging before he even unzipped his pants.
He dropped to his knees on the floor, his hands locking onto my thighs with a bruising pressure that guaranteed I’d be wearing his fingerprints like a brand for weeks.
He didn’t waste any time. He leaned in and buried his face between my legs.
The first wet drag of his tongue was a possession.
I arched instinctively, my nails gouging into the heavy timber as an uncontrollable climax threatened to tear me apart almost immediately.
He was starving, his mouth scorching and merciless, devouring every inch of me until I was a sobbing, broken mess echoing off the cabin walls.
He didn’t stop until my vision blacked out, my body trembling and ruined under his tongue.
When he finally stood, his chest was heaving his mouth wet, and his shirt torn open to expose the ink of my name permanently scarred over his heart. He looked like a feral, uncompromising beast that had just tasted blood for the first time, and was instantly hooked.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice a thick, guttural threat.
I looked. I couldn’t have dragged my eyes away if the cabin was burning to ash around us.
“I am starving for this,” the words tearing out of him like a sick, breathless confession.
He tilted his head back, his dark eyes tracing the line of my body with a hunger so thick it made me ache.
The look on his face said it all—I was his favourite meal, a feast he intended to slowly devour.
There was a certainty in his gaze that promised he would never, ever get over the taste of me.
“I need to be inside you more than I need my next breath. Beg for it. Tell me to tear you apart.”
His hand dropped to his waist, the sound of his belt buckle echoing through the freezing cabin like the cocking of a gun.
When he finally freed himself from his jeans, a sickening rush of intimidation and heat pooled in my stomach.
He was terrifyingly thick—a brutal, unforgiving weapon that promised to split me open and ruin me for anyone else.
“I spent years pretending I was a good man around you. Years of keeping my hands off you, of not dragging you into the dark the way I wanted to. You don’t know what it does to a man to worship something he isn’t allowed to touch.
I’ve needed this—needed you—so badly it feels like my bones are breaking.
I’m going to bury myself so deep inside your pussy you’ll forget where you end and I begin. ”
He crowded into me, his solid chest pushing my spread knees even further apart. He aligned himself, the pre cum slicked head of him resting against my wet opening. My lungs momentarily seized. This was it. The moment I’d waited years for.
“I am not going to be gentle, June,” he confessed, his large hand wrapping firmly around my throat, forcing my gaze up to his. “And once I push inside, I am not going to stop until you are unmistakably mine. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I choked out, a terrified thrill spiking in my blood.