by V. K. Ludwig
A swallow sneaked down my tight esophagus. “No.”
He pulled his fingers from my strands, letting them come down in a fist against the wall, the vibration of it running up and down my spine. “They say I’m a danger.”
“Probably,” I breathed, “but not to me.”
“You and our child will always be safe with me, Eden. Always.” He grabbed my hand and placed it onto his cheek, sinking into the caress, letting his face indulge in the touch. “Don’t ask me to leave because I won’t do it.”
His mouth clashed against mine in a kiss ravenous enough to bruise, making my lips part to rasp in a breath. Our tongues met, stroking against each other, making my head spin.
He clasped my lower lip between his teeth, torturing the flesh. I let out a moan, resonating so deep within me it covered up whatever voice dared tell me this was wrong.
It felt fucking right.
I pushed past the restraint of my mindset and held his face in my hands, trailing my kisses over the stubble of his beard and down his throat. He threw his head back and moaned into the room, his fingers kneading into my ass.
Freedom meant shit if I trapped myself in the illusion that my old life would return once he left. Adapt and adjust meant shit if I refused to accept that nothing would ever be the same again.
When my pubic bone ground against his abs, it didn’t even feel like a decision made. It came naturally. Gave me a sense of control in this new world. Proof that I was still here, not only alive but living, making my own damn wrong choices.
I grabbed between us, and he wrapped around my back in support. Impatient fingers fumbled on his belt until it clicked. I opened his pants and shoved them down. My hand met hard flesh, making Torin jerk.
He had touched me many times.
Not once had I touched him.
He groaned against my neck, letting the tip of his tongue wet my skin. “What are you doing?”
Tumbling the fucking tower.
With the dress ruffled around us, panties shoved aside, I rolled my hips around, guiding him toward my entrance. A pulsing head indulged tight walls, slick from weeks of giving without allowing themselves to take.
Torin moaned helplessly at the way his hips began thrusting, hands digging into my thighs once more, fucking me against the wall. Kisses trailed from head to neck, to shoulder, his teeth raking over my skin, his words dampening my hair. “Resilient female. You’re the fiercest, kindest soul I’ve met in all the galaxies.”
He kneaded my ass, his marked body coiling around me like an armor that fit so perfectly. Torin might have been the one throwing me into this chaos, but he was also the one who protected me from it. Safeguarded my baby steps as I tried to find my footing on the remnants of my past.
“Show me how to give you pleasure,” he whispered. “After everything I took from you, at least let me give you that.”
A shake of my head. “No.”
I watched confusion engrave itself on his face. The way his eyes widened, so full of concern, his lips parting, voice absent.
“Let me down.” A shove against his chest and he eased me onto the floor until toes tingled against the carpet.
I tugged on his pants and simultaneously kneeled down, waiting until he did the same before I said, “Lie down on your back.”
Torin did as commanded, no matter how his teeth clenched at receiving orders.
“Yesss,” he hissed the moment I climbed on top of him, his hands reaching for my waist as if on reflex.
Without a second wasted, I mounted his cock, letting my wet pussy slide down his thick shaft.
I closed my eyes, allowing myself to sense all the deliciousness I had pretended for weeks didn’t exist. The hardness against my clit. The corona rubbing along my walls. The hunger spearing into my core.
“After everything you took from me,” I said, rocking against him, smoothing myself over the plane below his abs tying into the base of his cock, “I’ll take this one all on my own.”
I pushed his shirt up and trailed my fingers over his nearly hairless chest, touching every inch of my mate. My mind focused on how he filled me. The sensation of hard flesh grinding along needy walls.
He folded his hands behind his head, bringing more definition to every single muscle on his glorious body. “Take whatever you need from me, anam ghail. I’m yours. Will be for the rest of my life and have never been anybody else’s.”
I groaned at his words and the way they stoked a new kind of heat. Because I knew every word of it was true, making me lick my lips.
He lifted his pelvis, contracted his muscles, the way he reached deeper inside, turning my breathing rough, labored. How did I manage to ignore all this for so long?
I had condemned my body to ignorance, pretending his cock wasn’t the best thing that ever fucked me.
“Let me hear it,” Torin snarled as if he’d read my mind. “Tell me you like it.”
His eyes narrowed with impatience, lips peeling back more with each second I didn’t answer.
He grabbed my hips and pushed me down onto his steel-hard cock, forcing a squeal from my lips.
“Theeere.” He drew it out, a sharp grin on his face.
I kept my rhythm even, rubbing my clit over his pubic bone and swallowing his cock with deep strokes.
Sweat dampened the length of my spine, my nipples hard against my fingers as I kneaded them gently. They ached at the softest touch, reminding me once more that I was, beyond a doubt, carrying Torin’s child.
“You are the most beautiful creature,” he whispered, shaking his head, stroking over my stomach as if he had to touch to believe. “I’ll protect you and our child with my dying breath, Eden. You have nothing to fear of me. Nothing.”
“I know,” I moaned, a wave of new heat making my clit twitch.
With each thrust I gave, he nodded in encouragement, his chest rising high and falling deep before me. Desperate moans echoed from my chest, guttural, starved.
Torin held me firm, tormenting me with pleasure and how he left no room to escape it.
To escape him.
To escape us.
He watched me, eyes narrowed, focused, his tongue running along the sharp edges of his teeth. But it wasn’t until he felt me clench around him that he ground them so hard the veins on his temples popped. His nostrils flared the moment my moan turned into a drawn-out whimper.
One thrust against a building block and the tower came crashing down. Feet curling into the fibers of the carpet, back arching unchecked, I came with such intensity I couldn’t make a single sound.
Where I expected a scream, everything imploded, forming an invisible weight turning brittle against my ribcage. It crumbled there, at my core, sinking down and away as I collapsed against Torin’s chest.
“So that is what it feels like. You pulse in much the same way I do.” His arms wrapped around me, and my brain spun for a second before the carpet pressed against my shoulder blades. “I want to feel it again. This time when I release my seed.”
He rocked in and out of me like he had for weeks, slow, careful, underwhelming, making me clench my fists in pure desperation.
I swung my hands onto his waist and pulled him against me, quickening his pace, deepening his strokes. “For heaven’s sake, just fuck me already.”
His voice huffed around me. “What was that?”
“Fuck me,” I repeated, my voice desperate. “I’m done with slow and careful, and in control.”
A flash of concern crossed his face. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“You won’t hurt me.”
“Damn you, unyielding female.”
Rough hands yanked me to my shaky feet.
Torin walked me back until the sharp edge of his desk cut into my thighs. He slipped out of boots and pants, then ripped his shirt over his head and tossed it into the room behind him.
“Do we need to discuss your sense of self-preservation once more?” he asked, making the fabric of my dress rub o
ver my face before it was gone too.
A thick swallow parted my lips.
He turned me around and pushed my chest onto the desk, wet cock brushing against my hip. Fingernails scratched upward along my spine and over my scalp. Torin once more yanked my hair, straining my head back until it sat flush with my shoulders.
“You want it to hurt?” His voice turned dark, a shadowy whisper against my ear. “Mating is one thing, Eden. Fucking, something else entirely.”
Chapter 19
Torin
Scalp straining. Hairs threatening to pop.
That’s how I held my female, my penis harder than ever before, a translucent drop of seed crowning the tip. My control hovered at its weakest point, and yet Eden had dared to give it another tug.
“Let it hurt a little,” she rasped, her throat tight with how I strained her neck.
“A little?” I grabbed the base of what my mate called my cock, dipping the head into her glistening pink center. “The things I am capable of, anam ghail. Depraved acts that go far beyond a little pain. I am what I am, and that is defective somewhere deep down where others carry a conscience. You really want to go there? See what lies beyond control?”
A shudder skimmed over her back, if triggered by my words or the coldness of my desk, I couldn’t say. It pushed the sweetest sounds from her lungs, her hips rising high.
I untangled my fingers from her hair and shoved the panties down her legs. Her skin ran hot against my palm but seared like embers the moment I pulled her onto my shaft with a yank from her hips.
Eden let out a yelp, then sucked in a breath that hissed around her clenched teeth. “Again…”
“The things I want to do to your body,” I whispered, rocking in and out of her. “I would pound you so hard you’d scream my name. It would echo in that stubborn head of yours until your death. Drive out whatever names of other males you remember. Because I am the only one.”
My sack tightened at my own words. I thrust into her flesh with such force, Eden moaned her exhale and fogged the metal surface of my desk.
I loomed over her, clasping her chin and bringing her gaze over her shoulder. “Is this what you want? Because it is difficult for me to deny anything you ask of me.”
She stared at me from those haunting eyes, lips trembling, and still, she held my gaze, repeating. “You won’t hurt me.”
“So fucking strong,” I growled. “It’s like the more danger you’re in, the fiercer you grow. You reach deep into me, Eden, but I’m not sure if it goes all the way to that dark core of mine.”
“Find out.”
A growl issued from my throat.
I wanted to fuck her, claim her, make her mine with everything I was, including the broken pieces. Shattered by darkness, never again fused since the moment they pulled me from my exowomb.
I kicked my heels against the inside of her ankles. “Spread!”
Wet, soaked, needy flesh swallowed my thick cock. My breath turned strained, and I skipped every other exhale. But when I exhaled, I did so with lengthy, drawn-out groans, pushing to the point where she yelped, and then beyond.
I retreated, only to drive back into my mate, wrenching a scream from her throat. With every thrust, I pulled her against me, blood rushing through my ears. I fucked her, deep, relentless, like that savage I was deep down, working myself to a frightening pleasure not known before.
Beneath me, Eden’s auburn hair danced over her shoulder blades, only to fall off the edge of her smooth, ivory skin. Everything on her body vibrated, and my desk right along with it. Her fingers sprawled over the surface, her nails scratching and digging as if she’d find support in the cold, harsh metal.
“Torin…”
“Dalle, anam ghail,” I growled between thrusts. “Scream out my name and forget whoever came before, for I will be your last.”
She turned her head and rested her cheek against the desk, her eyes closed, but her mouth gasping at each thrust. When her face changed into a grimace, I eased my strokes. Her mating cleft clasped tightly around me, asking me to release my seed deep in her womb.
I stopped all movement and held her hips tight, watching how she peeled her lips into a snarl. “What the fuck. Keep going!”
She trembled and bucked, arching her back in desperate search for friction. I gave her none, that control to keep myself from rutting behind her coming with surprising ease.
I rubbed my fingertips over her back, trailing them gently up before I dug my nails into her skin on their way down. “Release me from my promise.”
At her annoyed groan, I gave a violent thrust, making her shiver on my cock. “Release me from my promise. Whether or not you want to admit it, you know I belong by your side. It’s fated. Coded into our DNA.”
Eden trembled with lust. As did I, keeping the motions slow as I began rocking once more. Gentle this time, my crown pulsing in promise and warning alike.
“Stay.”
I leaned over, bringing my face closer to hers. “Say that again.”
Her eyes opened, locking with mine, sending a pain deep into my chest as excruciating as it was healing. “I want you to stay.”
I pulled out of the warm embrace of her sex, cold air licking around my shaft, coated in the moisture of our mating. All it took was a set of strong arms to have her legs wrapped around my waist.
Letting her slide down on my erection, I held her tight and walked over to the wall, pressing her back against it.
I held her thighs, thrusting her body against the unforgiving palathium behind the wallpaper. “You will look at me when you peak.”
Her head bobbed with every pound of my cock, all strength sucked from her spine as she said, “You can stay. But I won’t ever love you.”
I grabbed one of her bouncing breasts, kneading the warm flesh, pulling a taut nipple between my fingers. “That suits me just fine because I wouldn’t know how to return it. And yet you’ll be my everything.”
She wrapped her hands around my neck and braced against my every thrust. I fucked her hard at every other stroke and mated her gently at the others. Alternating between pleasure and satisfying pain, control, and irreparable damage.
Her starved sex clenched around me, and the pitch of her moans rose, mixing with the slap of my sack against her wet skin. When her eyes locked with mine, I allowed my seed to release. A jerking, throbbing sensation, bringing me closer to her than ever before.
We had mated many times. The child growing between us was proof. But now she truly belonged to me. My mate. My child. By the Three Suns. My family.
We screamed out our shared orgasm, which broke against heated skin along with uncoordinated kisses. She took my face between her palms, swiping her tongue over my lips, kissing me as if I was the air she needed to replenish her lungs.
Our lips didn’t part until her toes reached the ground. I steadied her for long moments, her legs feeble underneath her. And yet she seemed content, with her cheeks blushed and her hair wild around her head.
I grabbed my shirt and wiped off the trail of seed her mating cleft had left along my leg as she slipped down. “Did I pain you?”
The color on her cheeks deepened, and she smiled as she rolled her head around to relieve her muscles. “Not in a bad way.”
A squeal lodged from her ribcage when I pulled her against me, only to stroke my palm over her stomach. “You got stuck with one of the last two Vetusians of our first crop, and for that, I’m sorry. But I promise on my life that I’ll be good to you. Perhaps not always in control, but never far from it.”
And then she placed her hand onto mine where we both knew our child grew. “For the record, I don’t think you’re defective.”
Her words came unexpected, warming me in that place at my core I hadn’t known existed before Eden. “That makes you the only one in the universe.”
The only one who counted.
“Can we talk about it now?” she asked, softening the blow of her question with a kiss. “Your crop?”
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If there was something I hated more than being alone with my thoughts, it was facing the memories of my childhood.
I let out a deep sigh and picked her up. “I remember little of my childhood, Eden.”
“You asked me not to send you away. I want you to stay, Torin, but I also need to understand who you are.”
“Meh,” was all I said when I left my office and walked over to the lagoon.
Eden tensed in my arms the moment she noticed how I approached the edge, but I calmed her the moment her lips parted. “There’s nothing to be afraid of while I’m with you. I’ve got enough strength for both of us and will hold you.”
She might have wanted to issue a complaint, but the water sloshed around us before she had the chance. Her hands clasped tightly around my neck but eased more each time I swayed her body over the surface.
“Don’t let me drown.”
“I pulled you out of it once,” I said with a grin. “Why would I let you drown now? You’ll be fine.”
She pouted and let her fingers tap the surface. “Because you’re the strong Vetusian Commander?”
I let out a laugh. “That, and because I can stand here.”
“Fair enough. And now stop distracting.”
My legs waded through the water, the movement making it break against Eden’s side before it swashed over her breasts. A few moon cycles ago, I had nothing because everyone in my world told me it was for the better. Now I held my own world in my arms.
“Waking in darkness terrifies me,” I said, my voice dark with memories. “It robs my breath. Chokes me from the inside.”
“They all had the same issue?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about them.”
I let out a deep sigh, knowing full well my mate deserved to know. “Bragir jumped off the roof of my warrior stratum when we were around eight Earth years old. First, everyone thought it must have been an accident until Tjora did the same a few suns later.”
Her breath stalled for a moment, but the inevitable question followed her next inhale. “Did you ever try to commit suicide?”
“Nifal talked me out of it once when we crossed an overpass. The other time I pulled the trigger, but the gun wasn’t charged. It eased away the older I got.”
