13. RYAN #4
His body stiffens. He takes a long inhale.
Slowly, he nods. What happened to him? I wonder when I should tell him that he can’t actually tie me down, ever.
It’s probably fucking odd that I like it when he threatens to chain me up.
It’s kinda like saying I wanna keep you forever. So long as he never does it.
Or I don’t know. Maybe I could work up to it. Now that would be some level of trust I’ve never known.
Tate cinches his fingers tighter, threatening to separate my hair from my scalp.
I hold out my hand, and he circles my wrist with his free one, placing it on his wet skin.
My eyes flutter closed. I soak him in. The heat, the soft skin, the pounding of his heartbeat.
Okay, maybe there’s something to that heartbeat thing.
I love touching him, and when I can feel him like this, we’re connected on a level that transcends everything.
“Do you remember what I said I would do to you the next time I saw you?”
“S-Suck my cock.”
“Mm-hmm. Lie back.”
As I do, I glide my fingers up his abdomen and over his chest, refusing to relinquish contact until the last possible second.
He removes my shoes and socks and then rips my sweats and boxers off, tossing them somewhere.
The cool air hits my naked skin. He places my bare feet wide on the chilly black marble, so I’m fully exposed.
He removes the blood-stained shirt carefully, handling it by the collar, I guess so he doesn’t get his hands dirty. Then his fingers tickle the sensitive skin between my crease and around my balls. A shiver like lightning rockets up my spine.
“This is how you should be displayed next to Pearl.”
“Tate! Oh, god.” I don’t get the chance to appropriately blast him for that shit. He engulfs my cock with his mouth. There’s hot and wet and mind-melting arousal. A lone finger enters me, slick with the saliva dripping from his mouth.
“My hands are cleaned and sanitized,” he says.
I slap my palm on the marble, reduced to a writhing mess on his mouth and one damn finger. A strangled noise breaks the silence. Me. How does he do this to me every time? Blood races in my veins, carrying violent adrenaline. Lighting me up, making me high.
He might be the one giving head, but I know he’s turned on. I’m not in this little room of toys by coincidence. He wanted me here, his toy of all toys, in its place with the other toys. Him giving it—me—pleasure.
“Does it make you hard, sucking my cock with Pearl over there?” I’m breathing hard, my words come out all hitched and pitchy.
A low, animalistic growl hums from his chest. That’s a yes. His teeth scrape up my shaft, tongue swirling the head, and he reaches for my hand. I lace our fingers together and fall victim to my own words. I’m here on a marble pedestal of my own, fully owned, falling apart.
I come so hard, I feel my cock throb as it releases into his mouth. I squeeze his hand with mine, clenching around his finger that’s still fucking into me, heightening every sensation, sending added jolts of overwhelming pleasure through me.
He’s way too fucking good at this.
Tate sucks me dry, until I don’t have any insides left, and I can’t move.
Not on my own, anyway. I’m a limp spaghetti noodle that he hauls to his bare chest, where I Velcro my torso to his.
I indulge, laying my head on his neck, breathing in sync with him.
His solid, sweat-slicked body rising and falling with mine.
It happens again. The feeling.
Home.
Like a damn beacon.
I think Tate sucked my brains away.
Tate made me move. And get dressed. I tried to stay shirtless like he is, but he said, and I quote, “No one gets to see what’s mine. Put your fucking shirt on.”
I thought about pointing out the fact that I’m a hockey player, and I’m fully naked in the dressing room all the time.
Something he’ll know, but we’ll leave that for another day.
I also thought about making him wear a shirt—I don’t want anyone looking at him either—but he’s letting me touch him today.
I don’t know if this is a barrier I’ve passed or a one-time-only deal, so I want his bare skin out and available to me for as long as possible.
We’re holding hands. We hold hands all the way down the hallway and into another room.
It’s beige stone. Chains hang from the ceiling.
Blood’s spilled across the floor. In the center, in nothing but a pair of black boxers, Kline hangs, breaths shallow.
His dark blond hair’s matted, his left eye swollen, with bruises splotched up his torso and down his legs.
He’s strung up, arms overhead in a way I know from experience isn’t comfortable.
He’ll feel like he’s suffocating, unable to take a full breath.
Somehow, he’s still conscious, and when he sees me, he smiles. “There’s my beautiful bride,” he slurs out, voice raspy—probably from screaming.
Well, that was a fucking stupid thing to say. Tate’s knuckles crack across his face, a tooth sails through the air and skitters across the stone.
“I will rip your lips off. You only need them long enough to tell Ryan what you told me about the deal between Klines and Savages. Go on.”
“It can be a marriage with any Savage,” he says.
“You’re not taking Griff or Rosaline,” I snap, but my brain does the math. “Including Father?”
“Yes.”
He was acting weird that day. Staring out the window. Is there a chance he actually felt some sliver of guilt? Nah. He was probably worried I’d find out.
“As soon as your father became available, I wanted him,” he admits.
“But he doesn’t want you.”
“Not so much.”
“And apparently he gets a choice, and I don’t.”
He tries to shrug, somehow forgetting he’s trussed up, wincing. “Let me down from here, VanCourt.”
“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”
“I have no further plans of pursuing your boyfriend, so long as you follow through on your promise to give me Henry,” Kline says to Tate.
“You what?” I say.
“Come with me, dollface. I’ll explain everything.”
“Don’t you dare leave me like this, VanCourt. Get back here!”
Tate shuts the light off, leaving a screaming Kline behind. We make a stop in the armory to grab Pearl. He makes a point of showing me she’s not loaded. “Remember that for later,” he says.
“What the fuck are you up to now?”
He doesn’t answer, leading me back to the arena level, then ground level, then up to his office.
He’s still not wearing a shirt. I get the feeling that’s kind of a big deal.
I can see everything, including how big that scar is across his chest. It runs from just above his armpit across the midline of his chest. It’s nasty.
The pinkened skin jagged, sunken, bunching like one of Rosaline’s scrunchies when he moves.
Slowly, I bring my hand to his pectoral. He watches it, fascinated as if he can’t believe I can touch him either. “What’s this from?”
I chance running my fingers over it. He actually fucking lets me. It might be kinda weird, but that makes me feel special. No one can touch him, but I can.
“My uncle had me do this as punishment. When I’d fuck up, he’d make me reopen it—slice myself open since he wasn’t really supposed to beat me.”
“Uncle Jasper?” I whisper, fighting the burning rage.
“The one and only.”
“What do you mean by ‘he wasn’t really’ supposed to beat you?”
“He had a deal with my brother not to touch me, but sometimes I made him so angry he forgot about that deal.”
“You seem proud of that.”
“I liked pissing him off,” he admits. Of course he did. “I almost miss it.” His thumb finds that divot between my lower lip and chin, settling there.
“You saved me from getting my skin burned off.” It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it would have felt that way.
“I’ll do a lot more than that. Kline is never touching you again. Their contracts don’t hold in the real world.”
“I know, but the Klines are going to want a union to satisfy their weird-ass rules of society. That society considers itself above the law.”
“They are above the law, but they’re not above me.” He leans in for a kiss. Cool metal presses against my cheek.
“If that’s fucking Pearl …”
“I want to fuck you with her,” he admits.
“Put her down.”
“Later?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Later.” He nods as though it’s a forgone conclusion, setting her on the desk. “I should probably focus anyway. We need to talk about the marriage.”
“I told you—”
“That you won’t marry me unless I tell you why I need to get married. Yes, I heard you loud and clear. Do you want to know or not?”
I sit up taller. “You’re going to tell me?” I might fall off this desk.
“The reason isn’t all that exciting; it’s what’s attached to it that I’d … well, it doesn’t matter.”
“Tate, wait. I wouldn’t want someone to force my deepest secrets from me. I shouldn’t have tried to force yours out of you. I was frustrated.”
He shakes his head. “I want to tell you.” He combs his thick fingers through my hair as if he needs to touch me. I run mine over his scar, kinda enthralled by it. “I have to marry someone by my fortieth birthday, or my brother stands to lose the inheritance owed to him by our uncle.”
“Just your brother?”
“Yes. Luke plans to share, but I doubt I’ll ever see it. Fucking Clarence is the executor. Hence why I’m not counting on it.”
“I’d think something like that would fall to Luke. Why does it hinge on your life choices?”
“Jasper did it to fuck with me.”
“Wow, from the grave? He’s committed,” I say. “You have some time, though.”
He shakes his head. “I promised my brother I’d find someone to marry this season, and if I don’t, I might lose his good favor. He thinks I’m not going to do it.”
“His good favor means a lot to you?”
“Yes. So, no pressure or anything,” he adds.
Did he just make a joke?
Tate pats the desk. “Sit.” Then he steps between my legs, removing my shirt again. He tweaks my nipple. “I want you to ride my cock before you go.”