Chapter 13 #2
“I don’t give a fuck about the assignment,” I interrupted, shifting my weight so my knees bracketed her, trapping her against the console. “I want to extend the arrangement. Behind closed doors. Just the two of us.”
“The world gets the performance,” I said softly. “But in private, we make it real. A transactional exchange. You give me exactly what I want, and I give you what you want.”
She swallowed hard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t want anything from you.”
“Don’t play coy, Annie. It doesn’t suit you. I’ve seen your browser history. I know what you read. I know what you search for when you’re alone.”
A flush of deep crimson stained her cheeks, creeping down her neck. “That is a violation of privacy.”
“It was research,” I corrected, unrepentant. “You don’t read about romance, Annie. You don’t look for stories about gentle lovers who ask permission. You look for the Villains. You look for me.”
I lifted my hand, letting my knuckles drag slowly down her cheek. She shivered, her thighs clenching together beneath the desk.
“You want the power exchange,” I murmured. “You want to be taken by someone who doesn’t give you a choice.”
“I—”
“And here’s the reality,” I continued. “I am tired of pretending. I spend every waking moment wearing a mask. Either the literal one or the mask of Thomas Smith. It’s exhausting.
But you know what I am. With you, I wouldn’t have to hide.
I wouldn’t have to hold back. You understand exactly what you’d be getting. ”
She pressed herself back against the edge of the desk. “I don’t date Supers. It’s a hard line I don’t cross.”
I smiled. “Good. Because I don’t date at all.”
She furrowed her brow. “You don’t date?”
“No. I don’t do relationships. Too many distractions and too many expectations I won’t fulfill.”
The scent of her arousal, sweet and wet, hit me. It took every ounce of my willpower not to drop to my knees and taste her sweet cunt again.
She pulled her bottom lip into her mouth. Fuck, I wanted to bite that lip myself. I wanted to hear her gasp against my mouth just like she had at the Opener. I wanted to drink her sounds down until they all belonged to me.
“What exactly are you proposing then?” she asked.
“I want to fuck you, Annie. I want to use your body to get out of my own head. Hard. Rough. Whatever I need. Whatever you need.”
I watched her pupils dilate until the blue of her irises almost vanished. I leaned in, deliberately weaponizing the exhaustion I saw lining her eyes.
“You spend your entire life managing the egos of monsters,” I whispered, gripping her chin to force her gaze to mine.
“You adhere to Alliance regulations, you babysit Havoc, you hold yourself to this impossible standard every single day. You carry the weight of the rules and pretend they don’t suffocate you.
Don’t you want to just let go and stop being perfect?
You could just be messy and human for a while and let someone else have control.
And when we’re done, we put our clothes back on.
We go back to our lives. No awkward conversations.
No feelings to hurt. Just pure, unadulterated release. ”
The rigid line of her shoulders relaxed just a little. I had found the pressure point. She carried the weight of the entire Alliance on her back, and I was offering to take it from her, to strip her down to nothing but raw nerves and instinct.
I knew she wanted this. She was absolutely desperate for the release. I had tasted that desperation at the Opener. I had drawn an orgasm out of her in a room full of monsters, and she hadn’t even questioned my hands on her body.
“I...” Annie trailed off, her chest rising and falling in shallow, jagged jerks. She stared at my mouth. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes, Annie. Give yourself to me.”
She coiled tighter, her muscles locking up in the futile instinct to protect herself from the inevitable. I closed the remaining distance, stopping only when my mouth hovered above hers. I let the friction of our shared breath do the work, utilizing the anticipation and refusing to touch her lips.
“Let go,” I commanded.
“No.”
The word was a breathless exhale that lacked any real conviction.
“No?” I murmured, brushing my nose against her cheek. I inhaled the scent of her skin, cataloging the spike in her pheromones.
She turned her head, breaking the proximity, though she couldn’t escape the cage of my arms. “I get the feeling you aren’t used to hearing the word no, Cipher.”
I let out a low, dark chuckle. “I get the feeling you aren’t used to saying it.”
Her eyes snapped back to mine. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I’ve seen your schedule. You double-book yourself constantly.
You run oversight for volatile Alliance matches in the morning, then rush back to the Tower to manage a schedule an entire administrative team should handle.
You bend over backward trying to please everyone.
You never decline a request. You never say no. ”
She shoved her hands against my chest but I didn’t yield.
“I just said no to you,” she snapped, her voice finally finding its bite.
I caught both of her wrists in one hand, pinning them to my chest. “Unfortunately, you were right. I’m not known for taking no for an answer, Bishop.”
She struggled against my grip. The fight was a useless expenditure of energy, and we both knew it. My strength made her resistance performative.
“You don’t know me,” she spat, her glare burning with beautiful fury. “You read a few files and stalked my browser history. That doesn’t mean you know what I want or what I need.”
I gave the barest brush of my lips against hers. “Liar.”
Before she could give me another empty denial, I moved.
I wrapped my free arm around her waist and used my grip on her wrists to yank her forward.
The chair spun away, clattering against the adjacent console as I hauled her directly into my lap.
She landed hard, her legs falling on either side of my hips, straddling my thighs.
She fought instantly. Her muscles locked, twisting and bucking against my hold, but the struggle only served my purpose. I forced her hips flush against mine. Through the layers of our clothing, the rigid length of my cock aligned with her cunt and I rolled my hips up, grinding into her.
She gasped, the sound fracturing in her throat.
I didn’t give her time to recover. I dragged her mouth down to mine, claiming her lips in a bruising kiss.
Her teeth clamped down on my lower lip and I moaned.
Fuck, I loved her viciousness. Every ounce of her resistance just fed the feral hunger clawing at my insides.
She wrenched her mouth away, her chest heaving against my armor. “You don’t even have the decency to bleed.” She glared at the unbroken skin of my lip.
“Is that what you want, Annie?” I crushed my mouth to hers again. This time, I bit down on my own lip, applying enough pressure to tear the tissue. The sharp, metallic tang of copper flooded my mouth. I forced my tongue past her teeth, making her taste the violence she craved.
She froze, startled, and I used the distraction to drop my hands to her ass, squeezing the soft flesh hard as I dragged her hips down in another relentless grind. I tore my mouth from hers, burying my face in the curve of her neck. I bit down hard, marking the skin with my teeth.
Annie cried out and rolled her hips down against my erection. She wanted the violence. She craved the exact thing she desperately tried to fight.
She wrenched one hand free from my grip and her palm cracked against my jaw in a sharp, stinging slap.
I surged upward, taking her with me before driving us both to the floor. I settled my weight directly between her spread thighs, pinning her beneath me. I rolled my hips flush into hers, pressing the ridge of my cock right against her.
Annie moaned, her head falling back against the tiles.
I pulled up just enough to look down at her. “Are you really going to look me in the eye and deny that you want me to rip these clothes off and fuck you right here?”
She stared up at me, her chest heaving, her breath mingling with mine. “Wanting something and doing something aren’t the same thing.”
Christ, she looked magnificent. Her hair fanned out in a chaotic halo around her head while my blood stained her lips. She looked wild and beautiful.
“Then you admit you want this,” I murmured, staring down into her flushed face.
Annie pressed her blood-stained lips together in a stubborn, mutinous line. She refused to give me a single word, banking on her silence to act as a shield.
I rolled my hips, driving my cock directly into the cradle of her thighs and her head fell back again.
“You aren’t fighting me, you’re fighting yourself,” I told her, my voice dropping to a gravelly rasp. “You’re terrified of saying yes.”
“You’re offering me nothing but destruction,” she gasped. Her fingers curled into my armor. I wasn’t sure what she wanted more, to push me away or pull me closer.
“I’m offering you exactly what you crave.”
I shifted my weight, freeing my right hand, and slid it down between our bodies. I dragged my knuckles over the denim of the jeans she’d pulled on, popped the metal button, and shoved my hand beneath her waistband.
Annie thrashed, her hips bucking in a surge of resistance. She shoved at my chest, twisting her torso, but I simply pinned her in place with my body weight and slipped my fingers beneath her panties.
The second my fingers brushed against her folds, the fight drained out of her.
She gave a needy little gasp as her hips arched off the floor, shoving her pussy directly into my palm.
I ran my fingers through the slick heat of her and found the hard little bead of her clit. I circled it once, before stroking back down to her entrance. I ground down on her clit with the heel of my palm as I finally pushed my finger into her cunt.
“Fuck,” I hissed, thrusting my finger into her. “You’re so goddamn tight.”