Chapter 18 #3
He tore at my clothes between kisses, discarding pieces of his own suit until clothing littered the floor around us. Neither of us spoke, we didn’t need to. Every touch, every kiss communicated what words couldn’t.
I want you. I need you.
When we were finally naked, skin against skin, he pressed me against the wall, his body hard and unyielding against mine. His erection pressed against my stomach, hot and insistent.
“Tell me what you want,” he growled against my throat, teeth grazing my skin.
“You,” I gasped as his hand slid between my legs, finding me already wet for him. “I want you to take me however you’d like. All of it. Everything.”
“Everything?”
I nodded, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Everything.”
His eyes darkened, pupils dilating until only a thin ring of silver remained. “I want to watch you break under my hands. I want to see you shatter and know I’m the one who did it.”
“Then break me,” I whispered.
He tightened his fingers in my hair, yanking my head back until my throat was exposed. The sudden pain made me gasp, but my pussy ached for him.
“Are you sure about that? Because once I start, I won’t stop until you’re in pieces.”
I answered by capturing his bottom lip between my teeth, biting down just hard enough to draw a hiss from him. When I released it, his eyes were molten.
“Such a violent thing,” he murmured, his free hand sliding to grip my ass. “You know what that does to me.”
I did know. I could feel exactly what it did to him, hard against my stomach.
“Break me,” I repeated, challenging him. “I’m not afraid of you.”
I’m only afraid of how much I want this. How much I want you.
He hooked an arm behind my knees and scooped me up, bypassing the St. Andrew’s cross and the cuffs bolted into the wall, and dropped me onto the center of the massive bed, following me down.
His mouth was everywhere, his teeth scraping and biting my skin. His hands bruised my hips, gripping me like he was afraid I’d dissolve into the shadows of the room. Every kiss, every rough scrape of his teeth felt like he was trying to cram a lifetime of longing into a single night.
He was trying to consume me whole, desperate to take the love I’d been hoarding and carve it right out of me.
I arched into him with my own desperation, my nails digging into the hard muscle of his back. I had loved him for so long, burying the truth under layers of stubborn anger and pride and I was done lying to myself.
I wanted him. I wanted his brilliance, his arrogance, the monster underneath the mask. I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling his hips down hard against me.
Cipher groaned, his mouth moving higher, trailing hot, wet kisses up the slope of my shoulder. Then his lips brushed over the jagged scar Dread had left on me.
Cipher’s body went rigid for a heartbeat, then he pinned me to the mattress as his teeth sank directly into the scarred flesh and he bit down hard.
I screamed and struggled against him as agony ripped through my shoulder. My hands flew up to shove at his chest, pushing futilely against him. I sobbed as my shoulder throbbed from the vicious strike.
Cipher tore his mouth away, his chest heaving as he dragged in oxygen. A smear of bright red stained his lips. My blood.
“I am the only monster allowed in your life,” he snarled. “You are mine. He doesn’t get to have a single fucking piece of you.”
The pain was a white-hot flare. Tears spilled over my cheeks, blurring the sight of the monster hovering over me.
A drop of moisture hit my collarbone. Then another.
I blinked through the haze of my own tears. Cipher’s cheeks were wet. The untouchable Cipher was silently weeping. He had been bleeding out this entire time, he’d just been infinitely better at hiding the pieces than I was.
I sobbed and threaded my fingers in his dark hair, dragging his mouth back down to mine.
I kissed him with all the violence he had just given me.
I tasted the metallic tang of my own blood on his tongue and swallowed his desperate groan.
I scraped my teeth along his jaw, biting hard into his neck.
My teeth couldn’t break his skin, couldn’t leave the permanent marks I desperately wanted to carve into him, but I bit him anyway, grinding my jaw until my muscles ached.
He let out a guttural sound, a noise that belonged to a starving animal, and crushed his body against mine.
We were tearing at each other, clinging and scratching like two drowning people fighting over a single breath of air.
I wanted to crawl directly into his chest, to pry his ribs apart and nestle right inside his soul.
“Mine,” he said against my mouth as his hands gripped my hips and dragged me closer. “Only mine.”
“Yes,” I gasped, my nails digging into his shoulders. “Take it.”
He gripped my thighs, hauled my hips off the mattress and buried himself inside me with a single, brutal thrust.
I screamed as he filled every hollow, empty space I had starved for months with an all-consuming ache.
Cipher fucked me, driving into me with a violence that rattled my fucking soul.
He rolled his hips on the drag back, making the head of his cock drag deliciously against the walls of my pussy.
The sharp sting of my bitten shoulder bled into the blinding heat between my legs. It was pure, agonizing ruin.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice rough.
I forced my eyelids open and silver locked onto blue. Tears tracked down my temples, mixing with sweat. I clung to his shoulders, my nails biting half-moons into his skin, needing him so desperately my chest felt like it was caving in under the pressure.
I love you.
The words looped relentlessly in my head.
They formed a frantic chant keeping perfect time with the wet smack of his hips against mine.
I love you. I love you. I wanted to scream it into the space between us.
Every thrust drove the truth deeper into my marrow.
He was destroying me and I was holding on for dear life, begging him for more of the ruin.
The tension coiled tight within me, winding up until it snapped. I sobbed his name, my inner muscles clenching violently, milking his cock as I came.
Cipher fucked me through the climax. His breathing turned to harsh, ragged pants. He drove into me one final time and his hips locked tight against mine, grinding into me as he came.
He caught my face in his hands, his thumbs smearing the tears across my cheeks, and brought his mouth down on mine.
We kissed through the aftershocks, teeth clashing, tongues tangling, desperate to consume every breath, every sound.
I dragged my hands down his sweat-slicked back, pressing him closer, eliminating the microscopic space between our bodies.
“Don’t stop,” I begged against his lips. I pulled him closer, needing his body fused permanently to my skin.
Cipher swallowed the rest of my words, until there was nothing left of the room, the world, or the past.