Chapter 23 #3
The slap sends a fresh wave of arousal through me. I whimper into the wood beneath my face.
His pace shifts, and the leash on his control snaps.
Gentleness gives way to brutal force. His hips slam into me, the force jolting me forward on the table, wood scraping against my nipples, the friction painful and exquisite.
My body rocks with each impact, need and relief colliding in every thrust. Each ragged breath I manage to pull in burns through my lungs, and with it comes the same undeniable truth.
I love this man and everything he does to me.
“Harder.” I need him to stop treating me like I might shatter. I need him savage. “Please, harder.”
A growl rips from his throat, and then he’s gone.
And I’m empty. I open my mouth to protest, but he’s already spinning me again, flipping me onto my back.
My bound arms twist beneath me, my wrists grinding into the hard surface, but the discomfort barely registers.
I just need him back. Need him to fill the hollow ache he left behind.
His hands hook under my knees, and he hauls me to the table’s edge. In one motion, he shoves my thighs up and wide, folding me open. Cool air caresses my overheated flesh, and his gaze drops between my legs, hungry and possessive.
“Look at you.” The words come out thick, reverence bleeding into possession. “So beautiful. So mine.”
“Yes, yours.” The word barely makes it out before he slams back inside, stealing my breath. “Only yours.”
The angle changes everything. He hits deeper, striking places that make stars explode across my vision.
His fingers dig crescents into my inner thighs, keeping me spread wide and vulnerable as he pistons into me.
Each thrust comes harder, faster, and more savage than the one before.
The wet slap of flesh meeting flesh ricochets off the kitchen walls, obscene and perfect.
His jaw locks, muscles jumping as his hips drive faster.
“It’s not enough.” My spine curves, lifting me toward him. “I’m not going to break. You don’t have to treat me like glass.”
Anger collides with challenge in his eyes, both swallowed by naked desire.
He drops forward, his mouth finding my breast. His teeth scrape across my nipple, a teasing promise, then clamp down.
The bite sends lightning through my nerves, pain that transforms mid-scream into something that makes my toes curl.
His hips never falter. He keeps pounding into me while his teeth and tongue work my nipple, and the combination fractures my thoughts. Pleasure and pain from both points of contact converge somewhere in my core, building into something that feels too big for my body to contain.
He releases my nipple and pushes himself upright.
His hands abandon my thighs and lock onto my hips instead, fingers digging in as he tilts my pelvis up.
The angle shifts, and he’s stroking a place inside me that makes my eyes cross.
Each thrust drags across that spot, over and over, and pressure coils tight in my lower belly.
My muscles clench, pulling tighter and tighter as the orgasm gathers force.
“Are you close?” The strain in his voice makes the words come out rough and broken.
“Yes.” I yank against the zip ties, wrists burning, desperate to touch him even as the restraint sends heat spiraling through me. “So close. Please don’t stop.”
“Look at me.” I force my eyes up to meet his gaze through the wolf mask, the dark eyes behind it burning into mine. “I want to see your face when you come for me.”
“Come inside me.” The plea tears from my throat.
Some distant part of my brain, the part that sounds like Maren, screams, “What the fuck!”
This is reckless. We need protection. I just finished antibiotics, and my body’s still healing. But rationality burned to ash the moment he touched me. I need to feel him come, need him to fill me and mark me and make me his all over again. The Plan B in my cabinet can handle tomorrow’s worries.
His thumb finds my clit, circling, teasing, with the exact pressure to make my vision blur. His eyes never leave my face, and the intensity of that stare drags me closer to the precipice, my skin flushing hot then cold.
“Now. Come for me now, Luna.”
My body doesn’t hesitate. The orgasm rips through me in brutal, violent waves as the scream tears from my chest. He keeps thrusting, prolonging each pulse of pleasure until my muscles turn liquid and my lungs can’t pull in enough air.
He’s still buried deep inside me, hard, and holding himself back from the edge. I squeeze my inner muscles around him, tight and intentional, and the growl that rumbles out of him rattles through my bones.
He pulls out, and his hands are on me, spinning me back onto my stomach like I weigh nothing, slapping my ass again.
The table’s surface hits my cheek, cold and unforgiving.
His palm plants itself between my shoulder blades, pinning me flat while his other hand grips my hip, angling me how he wants me.
“Again.” He slams back in, the pace turning wild and desperate. “I need to feel you come around me again.”
“I can’t.” The words barely make it out, my voice shaking.
“You can.” His hand leaves my hip and slides underneath, finding my oversensitive clit. “And you will.”
His fingers start circling, each touch almost too much on nerves still firing.
His other hand tangles in my hair, fisting the strands and pulling until my head lifts back, stretching my throat taut.
Then his grip releases, and his fingers wrap around my throat.
Pressure builds against my windpipe, stealing my oxygen bit by bit.
This is what I’ve been starving for. The knife-edge between safety and danger. The act of giving myself, my complete surrender, over to him until there’s nothing left to hold back.
My pulse pounds against his fingertips as the familiar lightheadedness blooms. The oxygen deprivation heightens everything. His cock driving into me, his fingers circling my clit, the weight of his body dominant above mine.
“Remember this?” His breath scorches the side of my neck, and goosebumps erupt down my spine. “Remember how it feels when I control even your breath?”
Words won’t form. My throat works uselessly under his grip. I manage the barest hint of a nod, jerky and desperate, as he pushes me further into that space where pleasure and panic become indistinguishable.
And in this moment, with my oxygen thinning, my body thrumming, and his hand around my throat, I know with absolute certainty that we’ve clawed our way back. This is who we are. This dangerous dance on the edge of too much. This perfect trust that he’ll never hurt me.
Every muscle goes soft beneath him, even as tension coils tighter in my core, building toward another climax.
His thrusts lose their rhythm, becoming wild and disjointed.
His fingers move faster against my clit.
Dark spots start appearing at the corners of my vision, multiplying and spreading.
His hand opens, and he releases my throat.
Air floods my lungs in a ragged, desperate gasp that sounds like drowning in reverse.
The sudden influx of oxygen, combined with the building pleasure, hurls me over the edge.
My body convulses, my muscles seizing and releasing in waves I can’t control.
He buries himself to the hilt, the force driving him so deep a sharp ache blooms in my lower abdomen—pain and pleasure twisted together until they’re inseparable.
Heat floods my core as he empties himself inside me, and my name tears from his lips in a sound that’s broken and worshipful.
He stays there, suspended above me. His body radiates heat like a furnace, wrapping me in his presence. The moment stretches and holds, both of us dragging in ragged breaths, our hearts pounding out of sync, suspended in the aftermath of what just consumed us.
You’re mine.“ His voice comes out destroyed, the words pressed against my ear. “Your body is mine. Your pleasure is mine. Your very life is mine.”
“Yes.” Tears burn behind my eyes and spill over, tracking hot paths down my cheeks at the fierce possession in his voice. “Yours. All of me. Always.”
“I will never live without you, Luna.”
He straightens, rising to his full height.
His fingers release my wrists from the restraints.
Circulation slams back into my hands, a thousand tiny needles stabbing through numb flesh.
I curl and uncurl my fingers, working feeling back into them, while he slides his hands under my shoulders and helps me roll onto my back.
His grip shifts to my waist, steadying me as I push myself upright. Then his palm lifts to my face, cupping my cheek with a gentleness that stands in stark contrast to what just happened. The tenderness splits me open, and fresh tears well up and spill over.
“Are you alright?” Even through the mask, even with his face hidden, concern bleeds through every word.
“I’m perfect.” I lean into his touch, the warmth of his palm centering me in my body again. My pulse begins to slow. “That was… We’re going to be okay, aren’t we?”
He doesn’t respond right away. His thumb traces the curve of my cheekbone. “Yes. We’re going to be okay.”
Relief crashes through me with enough force to make the room tilt.
My wolf has returned.
There’s a new layer of tenderness beneath the savagery now, a protective care even in his roughest touches. But he’s still mine.
Peace washes over me, a peace I haven’t known since the miscarriage. We’re different now, both of us changed by what we’ve lost, but the core of what connects us remains.
His hands drift across my body, reverent and slow, like he’s memorizing terrain he was afraid he’d never touch again.
I stare at his masked face, willing him to tear it away and show me the truth.
Let me see the man beneath. But this—having him back, finding our way through the wreckage to each other—it’s enough for now.
“Mine.” The growl carries equal parts possession and oath.
“Yours.” My eyes lock onto his and don’t waver.
It’s the truth. When I told Damien about my wolf, it hurt to know I had to let him go. But the decision was right. It had to be made.
For months, I’ve indulged in impossible fantasies that I could somehow have both men. That my paranoid suspicions about them being the same person would prove true. That reality would bend and let me keep everything I wanted.
Part of me still craves that fictional merger. The man who claims me in the dark, combined with the one who could offer me something resembling a future. Two incomplete halves forming one whole person.
But if I have to choose, there’s only one choice to make. The man who makes me feel more alive is the only choice there is.