33. Sage #2
Eli’s eyes flare, dark and wild. “You’re not the one in control, little savage. Unless you want to use your safe word.”
I glare at him. When I don’t answer, he climbs up my body, knees bracketing my ribs, weight pinning me flat to the mattress.
He makes a show of opening his jeans, shoving them past his hips and pulling his cock out.
It’s thick and flushed, and he wraps one broad hand around it, stroking in hard, deliberate pulls right over my face.
I can smell him, see the head swell and glisten with every pass of his fist.
“Open,” he orders, low and rough, the command scraping down my spine.
I press my lips together, defiant even as my pulse hammers between my thighs. He doesn’t ask twice. His free hand grips my jaw, thumb pressing in until my mouth parts, and he keeps working himself above me, breath ragged, hips rocking into the circle of his fingers.
“Look at me,” he rasps.
I do. I watch the tension coil through his stomach, the way his jaw locks, the ink on his ribs shifting with every breath.
His strokes turn frantic, breathing ragged.
Then he’s coming in thick, hot pulses across my tongue, my lips, one stripe catching my cheek.
He holds my mouth open through it, making sure every drop lands where he wants, and the taste of him floods in, bitter and heady and exactly what I demanded by pushing this far.
He stays there a moment, breathing hard, thumb stroking once over my lower lip like he’s deciding whether to let me close. I swallow what I can, defiant heat still crackling in my chest, and the corners of his mouth twitch like he’s fighting a smile he doesn’t want to give.
“Swallow,” he says quietly, gentling his fingers at my jaw.
I do. Slow. Deliberate. Then I bare my teeth in something that isn’t quite a smile.
His laugh is short, broken. “You missed some.” He wipes the mess from my cheek with his thumb and feeds it back between my lips, watching me suck it clean.
“Happy now?”
Eli leans down until his mouth brushes mine, tasting himself on my tongue. “Not even close.”
His hand tangles in my hair, pulling my head back until I feel the stretch in my neck, the choker pressing against my throat. His mouth is at my ear.
“You want more?”
“Fuck you.”
“Ask nicely.”
“Fuck. You.”
“Wrong answer, little savage.”
Eli’s laugh curls low and dangerous against my ear, sending a fresh rush of heat straight between my legs even as my wrists pull uselessly at the silk.
I twist under him, bare and bound and still tasting him on my tongue, but he just shifts back down my body, knees pinning my thighs, and slides one callused palm down my stomach like he owns every inch.
“I asked if you wanted more,” he says, voice a rough scrape, “and you chose to be a brat about it.”
My pulse hammers everywhere at once. “Maybe I did.”
He doesn’t smile. His fingers find me slick and aching, and he circles my clit with deliberate, punishing slowness until my back arches off the mattress and a broken sound slips out of me. The ropes creak. The headboard groans.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, pressing two fingers inside, curling them just enough to make my thighs shake. “Still running your mouth while you’re dripping down my hand. You want me to stop?”
I bite my lip, defiant heat flooding my chest.
“Yes?” He stills his movement and an involuntary whimper leaves me. “Use your words, Sage.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“I don’t want you to stop.”
“Good.” He fucks me with his fingers, slow and filthy, until I’m gasping his name and straining against the bonds, every nerve lit up and raw. Then he leans down, mouth brushing the shell of my ear. “Because I’m not nearly finished with you, little savage.”
His free hand wraps around my throat again, thumb stroking the scar like a promise, and I feel the hard line of him already stiffening against my thigh. He shifts, lines up, and thrusts into me in one deep, claiming stroke that knocks the breath from my lungs.
I cry out, hips lifting to meet him, and he starts to move—hard, controlled, every snap of his hips designed to remind me exactly who caught me. The rope bites. My skin burns. The denim shoved down to his hips bites at my thighs.
Pleasure twists tight and sharp inside me.
He fucks me like he’s reclaiming me, hammering away at every moment of bullshit that kept us apart. And I let him because I need this. I need him to claim me. To keep me. To understand that whatever we are is inevitable.
“More,” I gasp. “Please. I want—”
“Everything,” Eli finishes for me. “I’ll give you everything.” He drives deeper, hips snapping hard enough to jolt the headboard, the silk burning my wrists with every thrust, and I clench around him because there’s no room left for anything but this. Us.
“Yes—fuck—Eli—” I arch up, taking him to the root—the wet slap of our skin is obscene.
He growls low, teeth grazing my jaw. “I will never let you run from me.” His thrusts turn brutal. “You don’t get to tease the monster from its cage then escape me like I won’t drag you right back to where you belong.”
My thighs shake.
“Harder,” I beg, voice almost gone from the tears and the humiliation and the way nothing else in my life has ever felt this good or this real.
He gives it to me. Brutal, relentless. Holding me down with one hand on my throat and fucking me harder, faster, chasing the edge like he wants to break the bed and maybe break me with it. I rock up against him, and the ruined sounds coming out of my throat are nothing I’ve ever made before.
“Eli, please,” I gasp, not sure what I’m begging for.
He tightens his grip. “You want to come, little savage?”
“Yes—fuck, yes—”
He doesn’t slow, doesn’t let me have it. “Hold it,” he says, voice raw. “You can wait for me, or not at all.”
I hold. I keep my hips moving, hands fisted in the ropes, every nerve singing.
I wait for him like he told me. The seconds stretch, warp, melt into the sound of skin on skin and the sharp, helpless whimpers throttled out of my lungs.
I’m desperate and humiliated and furious that he has this much power over me, that just being told to wait can reduce me to this—an animal, panting, begging, no pride or anger left anywhere except in the place where I want him more than breath.
He leans forward, his weight pressing down, pinning my body under his. His voice, when it comes, is pure darkness.
“Now, Sage. Come for me.”
His permission is a fucking detonator.
I explode, every muscle wrenching tight, legs kicking uselessly.
I scream, clawing at the sheets, spit on my lips, my whole body seized up and then breaking loose in the most violent orgasm I’ve ever had in my life.
It’s so intense I think I black out for a second—my vision goes white at the edges, my head swimming, the world boiled down to the ragged sound of my breathing and the wet slam of Eli’s hips and the searing, electric pleasure ricocheting through my body.
He lets out a roar as he comes with a curse, hips stuttering, nails digging into my flesh. The aftershocks hit so hard, I sob into the pillow, unable to tell if I’m crying or just unable to form words.
We collapse. Him on top of me. My body aches, but I’m more alive than I’ve ever been. Eli’s chest is hot and slick, his hair damp where it brushes against my skin. We stay there, both of us stunned and panting. He pulls out and rolls to the side of me.
“You want an admission?” he asks, voice still shredded at the edges.
“Yes.” I nod, mouth dry.
He slides his hand over my skin, thumb pressing against the side of my neck, right over my pulse.
“I haven’t slept properly in weeks because every time I close my eyes I see that fucking rope on you.
” His gaze drops to the scar and then lifts again.
“I hear your voice in rooms you’re not in.
I taste your blood in my mouth from when I breathed life back into you, and I can’t get through a goddamn day without wondering if the next call is going to be about your body. ”
“Then stop making me feel like a body you’re waiting to identify,” I whisper, a tear escaping my eye that he quickly swipes away. “Do you know why I snuck out?”
“Yes, little savage. I know exactly why you did it—you’re tired.”
“Yes.” A sob bursts out of me, tears flowing freely now.
“Because all five of you are closing in so hard I can’t fucking breathe.
” My voice shakes on that last word and I hate it.
Hate that he’ll hear the panic inside it.
“You park outside my job. You watch the cameras. You watch me. You decide where I go, when I go, who I see, whether I get to have one stupid afternoon that belongs to me—”
His mouth presses into a thin line. “Because someone tried to kill you.”
“And because of that, none of you can stop.” I sniff and lick my lips, too raw and exposed to care how any of this lands anymore.
“I know why you do it. I know you love me. That’s what makes it so hard.
I can’t even scream about it without feeling guilty, because you’re all so fucking scared all the time and I’m supposed to be grateful. ”
“You are alive because we’re scared.”
“And I’m disappearing because of it.”
My bones are water and my throat is a wound, and I’m so tired I could fall asleep bound to the bed.
Eli unties the knots, kissing my wrists before he does, and when I collapse, he covers me with the comforter, climbing in behind to spoon me. His skin is warm, sticky, marked the same as mine. And for a while, he just holds me, tracing the line of my collarbone, the choker, the scar below.
“I’m sorry.”
I nod, my eyes still leaking, emotions caught in my throat.
He’s quiet for a long time. His hand moves through my hair, slow and rhythmic, untangling the knots he made. I let the silence sit, both of us needing it. With Eli, silence is rarely empty—it’s full of all the things he’s working up the courage to say.
“We put a tracker on you.”