He ground his hips into her ass making her acutely aware of how hard he’d become. How was it possible that feeling his erections against her bottom made her clit throb?
A breathy moan escaped her lips as he continued the motion against her ass.
“Are you the kind of girl who would get a thrill in the middle of a crowded concert—bodies pressing forward—people you don’t know reaching out for a quick touch?”
His hand slid between her legs from behind—briefly but firmly. He hooked his hand behind her knee and lifted her leg to her chest. Rolling forward, he pinned her into the mattress with his weight.
Her eyes closed as she put herself in his scenario.
“The lights and the music suddenly stop. The crowd surges forward. I think it’s an outage. The crowd goes silent at first as they try to figure out what’s going on, and then they get loud as people think the band has stopped playing intentionally.”
His hand finds her sex from behind. The touch is groping and rough.
“God, why did I let you wear that short skirt. The men around us take advantage of the darkness. I can feel their hands reaching between our bodies and I hold you closer, trying to protect you.”
Declan ran his hand along her ass and up the back of her leg that was trapped between her torso and the bed. Suddenly, she felt his cock running along her slit, inside the folds. Her breath caught as the head found her clitoris.
“Declan, no, not here. When the lights come on, we’re going to get caught,” Nyxie said breathlessly.
She felt his hips withdrawing, pulling the hardness of his cock along her sex, past her vaginal opening to her anus. Her breath hitched as she felt him pressing into her there. Her heart began racing out of fear that he would penetrate her.
“A submissive does not tell her Dom what to do. I could dry fuck you in the asshole so hard I’d land you in the ER if I wanted.” He kissed the crown of her head as if to remind her he loved her, and he was just playing to the fantasy he was describing.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said quickly. “I’m just nervous. There are so many people, I can’t move.”
The head of his cock slowly slid forward until he found her sex. He poised there for only a moment before he impaled her.
Nyxie gasped at the sudden intrusion only because it caught her off guard. Her body was ready to take his. She barely had to think of him before her body began preparing to accept him. Her passage softened, accommodating his girth as he began thrusting into her with hard, angry thrusts that made her whole body begin to build with desire. His hand moved to her shin pulling her leg more tightly against her chest.
Suddenly, Nyxie began to feel uncharacteristically confined. It didn’t make sense to her. He had bound her several times before, but this felt different.
“Stop,” she said quietly. “Stop!”
At her plea, Declan hesitated in his rhythm. His body instinctively reacted to the word that he had been conditioned since birth to understand. But the Dom side of him knew that word was meaningless. If she wanted him to truly stop, she would safe-word him. He lessened his intensity slightly, in case he was causing her discomfort.
Nyxie pulled against his hands as if trying to free herself. Even before he entered her, she had been playing up her reluctance. Was she like so many subs, who had a rape fantasy she wanted them to play? He was not willing to go there unless they discussed it first, especially considering her history.
“I can’t breathe,” she said. “Please, Declan.” her voice was high-pitched with stress.
“Are you safe-wording me?”
Her head nodded vigorously. “My arm. I told you, I don’t like it.”
Declan instantly became aware of the way he had unintentionally trapped her upper arm against her body as he held her shin in place. She had told him it was the only thing that made her feel claustrophobic. He immediately moved his arm under hers, but didn’t release her in any other way.
“Better? Do you still want me to stop?”
“God, what the fuck is wrong with me?” she said, but he knew she wasn’t expecting an answer. “I’m okay. You can keep going.”
Declan could hear the tightness in her voice and feel the tension in her body. It soon became apparent that the mood was gone and although they continued, Nyxie had ceased responding to his touch and attention.
“I’m sorry,” Nyxie said, a slight warble in her voice.
“Are you crying?” he asked, releasing her hands and withdrawing from her depths. He flipped on the small lamp on the nightstand.
“I didn’t mean for you to stop. I just knew I wasn’t going to get there tonight. You can finish if you want.”
“This is because I put my arm over yours?”
He rolled her onto her back so he could see her face. Her eyes were filled with tears, but he could tell by the set of her mouth that she was trying not to cry.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I don’t mean to be such a fucking, snot-nosed cunt.”
Declan stared at her as she said the hate filled words about herself. Had putting his arm over hers triggered some distant memory the way touching her neck had?
“Nyxie, why would you say such a horrible thing? I would certainly never call you anything like that. I love you, I cherish you.”
“I’m such a big pain in the ass,” she said. “I fuck up everything. I can’t even have sex without ruining it for you.”
“You haven’t ruined anything, baby.” His whole body reacted to the vulnerability he saw in her eyes. He wanted to be inside of her even more than he had a few minutes earlier.
Declan pushed himself up into a sitting position facing her. “Who am I?” he asked.
“Declan Stryker—my husband and my dominant.”
“Am I stupid?”
“No, you’re very smart.”
Nyxie’s eyes dropped to his dick, jutting proudly at her. She wrapped her small hand around it and began stroking its length.
“Would a smart man love a fucking snot-nosed cunt? Would I marry her and love her?”
“No,” she reluctantly admitted.
“Who called you that name?” he asked, covering her hand and stopping the motion. Was she trying to distract him? He pulled her hand away and set it on his thigh.
Her eyes met his briefly before closing—the tears in her eyes finally falling down her cheeks. “Daddy called me that.”
“Why does trapping your arm against your body make you feel claustrophobic?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
The rivulets on her cheeks traversed a crooked path to her jaw and the tears fell off her face in little droplets.
“Don’t be mad at me,” she said.
“I’m not mad at you. I’m trying to understand you.”
Suddenly, all the vulnerability seemed to disappear. “No you don’t. You just want to hear all the horrible things that happened to me as a child,” she said, her voice increasing in volume and becoming shrill. She pulled her hand away from his leg. “Do you get a thrill from hearing about my bruises and broken bones?”
She swiped her forearm across her cheek in an attempt to vanquish the tears running down her face.
“I hope you know that’s not true.”
Declan suspected the way she had suddenly become defensive, that his theories were coming close to the truth. He thought about what she said, bruises and broken bones. He thought back to the night he had read her hospital records. She had broken her humorous twice. The second time, she had broken her clavicle also. Both fractures would result in the immobilization of her arm. Her arm would have been strapped to her body, probably both times, definitely when her collarbone was broken.
Nyxie suddenly scrambled out of bed and began getting dressed.
“Really? You would rather leave than tell me what that monster did to you while you were healing from your broken bones? Nyxie, why did your mother feel the need to start you in school early?” he asked, clim
bing out of bed and grabbing a pair of shorts from his chest of drawers and pulling them on. “I know this is all connected.”
“Well, then you know it all,” she shouted, fastening her strapless bra behind her back.
“No, baby, I don’t.”
Declan came up behind her and grabbed her wrists. As he crossed her arms over her breasts, he intentionally pinioned her arms to her sides.
“No!” she screamed. “Stop. You’ve had your fun. I want to go home.”
Her struggles were no match for his strength as he pulled her down to the floor and into his lap.
“Let me go! Please.”
“Not until you tell me. Calm down, Nyxie. You know I’m not going to hurt you. Why does this bother you?”
Nyxie’s breath came in fast shallow gulps and he knew she’d hyperventilate if she didn’t slow it down.
She bent at the waist and tried to twist free of his hold. “Please,” she begged, but her struggles were no match for his strength.
“You said you didn’t like it—it made you feel claustrophobic. This reaction is more than that. I need to understand,” he said, trying to immobilize her without hurting her.
“I told you already. You didn’t listen,” she cried, her voice sounding crazed. “It was safe under the bed. He couldn’t get me under the bed.”
Declan’s brow lowered until lines formed between his eyes. He could see no connection between her arm being held against her body and the perception that she was safe under the bed.
It hadn’t been so long ago that he had cleaned out her tiny apartment. He had lain on the floor and had reached out his arm to see how much space she had to hide in. The bed didn’t have a heavy frame like his. It only took one hand for him to move it.
“You weren’t safe under the bed. All he had to do was pull it away from the wall.”
“No. I was small and fast and I could see his feet. I could move away before he could move the bed. He never got me under the bed.”
“Until he broke your arm.”
She nodded, her head darting around as if she was looking for a place to hide. Her tears were flowing fast, wetting her cheeks and lashes. “Momma told me to stay in the closet until she got home from work, but I had to pee. I always had to pee. I tried to wait until he made a beer run or went to check the mailbox. He slept all morning long. I could watch TV as long as it didn’t wake him up. When he started moaning, I would turn off the TV and run to the bathroom, and then I shut myself in the closet. But he woke up because the TV was too loud. I didn’t hear him until he was behind me. I couldn’t get in the closet so I tried to get under the bed.” She began to fight him again. “Please, let me go home.”
“You are home. Your home is with me.”
Declan was afraid to release her in the state she was in. He suspected she was flashing back to those moments of terror. Would she dart under his bed if he let her go? Would she disappear into the night if he let her leave? Holding her securely with one arm, he reached out, pulled the comforter off the bed and wrapped her in it.
It was a good thing her father was already dead, because if he were still alive, Declan would want to kill him.
As he continued to hold her, he began to feel her slowly cry herself out, and eventually the tension in her body began to ebb away, but she refused to allow sleep to overtake her. He wanted to help her but other than holding her, he didn’t know how. Declan had never felt so useless in his life.
“You have to work in the morning,” she said in a tone that sounded subdued, but in the quiet of the room, it sounded out of place. He knew instinctively, Nyxie had pulled the walls back up around her and she would fight to keep him out.
She pulled away from him to rise, and since she was calm, this time he allowed it. As she crossed to the bed, she adjusted the comforter around her shoulders and lay down on the top of the sheets, holding the thick spread tightly.
Declan was acutely aware of her lack of emotion as she rose, climbed into bed and shut off the lamp, leaving him to return to the bed in the dark.
“I want you to talk to a psychologist,” he said as he came up behind her and put his arm around her waist.
“No.”
The word set his teeth on edge. “Nyxie, you have PTSD.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know,” she said sarcastically.
“I don’t know how to help you.”
“You can help me by not bringing it up again. I don’t want to talk to you about it. I don’t want to talk to a stranger about it. I just want to forget it and get on with my life.”
He sighed. “A psychologist can help you move past it; maybe even help you not relive it.”
There was a long pause before Nyxie spoke again. “Don’t you have to get up early?”
“Yeah, but how can I sleep if I don’t know if you’re all right?”
Nyxie made no attempt to respond and neither one drifted off for more than an hour.
Chapter 25
Nyxie stared at the coffeepot, waiting for her cup to finish brewing. She was having a bit of trouble getting going this morning after she spent the night with Declan. A blush came to her cheeks as she realized she was grinning. And why wouldn’t she smile after they made love before he went to work this morning. After reaching over her to shut off his alarm, he held her and had taken her slow and gently, treating her as if she was fragile.
The pace had felt wonderful. But even more than that, she loved the way he kept kissing her on the mouth while they had sex. She craved his love. Craved him. Her smile slowly disappeared. She didn’t believe she could ever be what he wanted. He wanted Onyx. Onyx was all the parts of herself that she hated. She wanted to be Nyxie. Nyxie was independent and a hard worker who smiled all day so people wouldn’t see Onyx. Nyxie was her new beginning.
She pulled the cup of coffee from the fancy machine and opened the fridge to add milk to the strong brew. As she reached in, she spotted an old-fashioned glass bottle of chocolate milk. If Sonia hadn’t been taking care of Nyxie’s shopping, that would have never been there. She had seen the expensive milk in the store and would’ve never purchased it. Looking around to make sure no one would see her, Nyxie poured a bit of the milkshake-flavored liquid in her cup to see if it would make her coffee taste like the designer coffee Declan sometimes bought for her.
She chuckled, feeling as if she’d just gotten away with something. Adjusting to her new life had not been easy nor complete. She still felt as if she was a guest in someone else’s house—and that Declan was not her husband nor her Dom. Sometimes it felt as if he were a complete stranger, and yet she felt she had always known him.
Upstairs, Nyxie could hear the nanny waking the girls. She didn’t understand why the woman wouldn’t let them sleep late since it was summer. Declan’s alarm clock had awakened her early this morning and she would live, and she supposed, so would they. But she was dragging. She took a big swallow of the coffee and began searching through the kitchen cabinets, fridge, and pantry to find everything she needed to make Lotus a special breakfast for her birthday.
As the bacon cooked in the microwave, Nyxie mixed up the pancake batter from a biscuit mix. Once the bacon was cooked, she chopped it into pieces and put it in the batter. She squeezed half a bottle of syrup into a small saucepan, and spooned a large glob of peanut butter into the syrup to melt over the low flame.
While she cut up the bananas for the syrup mixture, the doorbell rang. Her heart dropped, thinking CPS must be making another surprise visit.
Nyxie looked around to make sure everything was in order as she crossed to the front door and was relieved to find Declan’s housekeeper on the porch.
“Dr. Stryker asked me to come over to give the place a quick cleaning. He wanted me to get a grocery list from you before I go to the store.”
“Oh, he didn’t say anything. I was thinking about picking up a few things this morning,” Nyxie said, stepping back to allowed the woman to enter. Sonia carried in Declan’s expen
sive vacuum and a tote bag filled with cleaning supplies over her shoulder. After closing the door, Nyxie headed back to the kitchen.
“I was just fixing breakfast, would you like some?”
“No thanks. I already ate,” Sonia said, removing a dust cloth from her supplies. “Just pretend I’m not here and I’ll get to work.”
Nyxie added the banana slices to the syrup before testing the griddle pan to see if it was hot enough for the batter.
“Dr. Stryker wanted me to tell you to make sure everyone had swimsuits—two for Cody for his therapy.”
“Oh, okay.”
Lotus came tearing down the stairs making as much noise as a percussion band. “Morning, Nyxie.” She stopped as soon as she saw Sonia. “Don’t look now, but there’s a lady dusting the living room,” she said in a mock whisper.
“I know,” she whispered back. “That is Ms. Sonia. She’s Declan’s housekeeper.”
“Oh! Does that mean I don’t have to clean my room?”
“You wish! You will not make extra work for Sonia. Anything you leave on the floor, Sonia is going to confiscate for a month.”
Sonia and Lotus exchanged a brief glance as if Lotus was trying to size up an enemy.
“Where are Reina and Ms. Kiki?” Nyxie asked, looking up the stairs for the others.
“Reina peed the bed. Ms. Kiki made her go take a bath.”
A small sigh escaped Nyxie’s lips. It had taken Reina a couple of months to stop wetting the bed when they had first come to stay with her. Nyxie had made her sleep on a folded towel and had had to wash it by hand and dry it on the line because she did not have access to a washer and dryer except on their weekly trips to the laundromat. Thank goodness, she had a washer and dryer now.
She smiled widely at her niece and wondered if she was awake enough to remember today was her birthday. “Ah, a little birdie told me it’s your birthday, Lotus. What do you want for breakfast?” Nyxie asked, although they both knew the tradition.
The Love He Craves (The Love She Craves: Selling Her Soul to Declan Book 2) Page 23
