by Zara Cox
Ecstasy drowns me. “Y-yes.”
Teeth sink into my shoulder, strong enough to leave a mark, before his tongue slides across my skin. “Louder, baby. Don’t think that man in the suit at the stop sign heard you.”
“Yes!”
A nip at my earlobe. “Want more?”
“Please…oh please!”
His head drops between my shoulder blades, his audible scenting of my skin pulling another layer of bliss from me. “Damn, I love hearing you beg. Again.”
“Please. More… More. Please.”
I’m an incoherent mess, hurtling toward certain annihilation at the hands of an expert manipulator. And yet, all I feel is incomparable pleasure. Fatalistic craving for the orgasm headed my way. I ruthlessly hunt it down, pushing back against his thrusts.
A hoarse chuckle rumbles against my neck. “Look at you, fucking brave little thing, attempting to take more of me. You think you can handle it, baby?”
Probably not. Hell, I have no clue what I’m doing. All I know is the voracious ache inside me needs more. Of everything. Of him. So I buck my hips again.
His fingers dig into my waist.
Yes…oh God, yes.
I buck one more time.
“Fuck. Jesus, Cleo, I don’t want to hurt you.”
I’ve endured every imaginable horror in my short lifetime. Finding out what he did to my parents tore my beating heart from my chest. What he’s doing to me now helps me focus on anything but that. He’s my tormentor and my bogus deliverer.
“Do it. Hurt me.”
He tenses like he’s been shot. Then his hips explode.
A low roar starts from deep inside his chest. The higher it builds the faster he fucks me. My front slides against the glass as he rams deep. Deeper into me.
My screams fuse into each other, my throat as raw as my pussy by the time the most intense orgasm I’ve ever experienced rips through my body. Axel follows behind, his thickness pulsing long and hard and endless inside me. Furnace hot, it burns everything in its path, and I melt into oblivion.
Chapter Twenty-Two
THE INQUISITION
Cleo
When I come to, he’s setting me on my feet.
One arm supports my waist as he smooths my hair back from my face and drops kisses along my jaw.
“It’s almost noon. The chef is on standby. Do you want an early lunch or a late breakfast?”
It’s next to impossible to think about food when my skin is on fire, his cock is still buried inside me and our mingled juices are coating my inner thighs.
I press my heated cheek against the glass and take a deep breath. “I…” I stop and swallow, my tongue a useless organ in my mouth. “I’m…I’ll eat whatever.”
“I’ll have him prepare both.”
He pulls out of me, and something lurches inside of me. It can’t be loss. That would mean in some obscure way, he’s mine. I don’t want him. I can’t.
As I struggle to stop my spinning mind, he props me up with his thighs and tugs the sheet over my shoulders before he sweeps me into his arms. I’m still shaking when we reach the bed, and he sets me down in the middle. After he kisses the tip of my nose, he straightens and zips himself up.
The impressive bulge behind his fly indicates he can go another round. But despite the raw mask of arousal on his face and the light sheen of sweat on his skin, the look in his eyes is ruthlessly intent.
After placing a call to the chef, he strides to the seating area opposite from the window, yanks up a heavy armchair like it weighs nothing and returns with it.
Placing it at the side of the bed, he throws himself into it and props his elbows on his knees.
“First things first.” He casts a scathing look at the bed, the painting, the room. “This room. Considering we were…what did you call us? ‘Horny teenage idiots’? Why dish out ten thousand dollars I fucking know he can’t afford to replicate this? Surely you’re not nostalgic?” His voice pulses with primitive, unyielding power. Falling into exhausted sleep this morning gave me a temporary reprieve.
It’s time to face the devil now. But the reminder of why he is the devil straightens my spine. “Nostalgic? Far from it. I thought a place like this would bring you around faster, that’s all.”
His eyes narrow, probing deep, cutting into me. “You’re fucking lying.”
“I’m not—”
“Cut the crap. You were a shit liar before. You’re still a shit liar. Tell me the truth.”
Emotions burn from gut to throat. I want to wail. I want to find the sharpest sword and drive it through his heart. I want to throw myself off the steepest cliff, take myself out of this horrendous equation that somehow, without my blessing or consent, became the unsanctified triumvirate of Evil Father, Beast Son, and Doomed Lover.
My arms lash out, batting the too-hot sheet away. Recalling that I’m naked underneath, I grab it before it falls away from my breasts. “Fine! I needed the reminder of what a fool I was for believing the apple would, maybe this once, fall far from the tree.”
His nostrils flare wide. A muscle tics at his temple and even though his face pales a little, the mask of deadly rage doesn’t dissipate. “Explain, and explain it well.”
“I know what you did for Finnan. I always knew even though you lied every time I asked you. Those runs with your brothers? Bashing people’s heads in? Destroying people’s livelihood? I knew. It turned my stomach. I never thought…”
What the fuck are you doing?
I pull myself back from the brink. I note my shaking hands and brimmed eyes with a removed bemusement.
“You never thought what, Cleo?” One fist is balled tight within the other, the ferocious hold turning his skin pasty white.
He’s barely holding himself together, this Beast Son formed from the rib of his father. I should be terrified, but terror is noticeably absent.
Maybe taking the beast inside of me, taking his cursed essence into my womb has rendered me immune? Numbed my instinct for self-preservation?
I shut my eyes and shake my head. This isn’t about me. It never was. Everything I’ve done has been to ensure my mother’s safety. “What does it matter? There was a time when I was foolish enough to believe I was in love with you. But that was before the scales fell from my eyes. Before I realized you’re a Rutherford through and through. That every single one of you is incapable of change. You see what you want and you take it. The slightest wrong demands retribution the Rutherford way. It’s that simple for you. No matter what the consequences for everyone else.”
The breath that punches from his throat is searing and raw. The look that glazes his eyes threatens to stop my heart. Muscles thicken in his neck as if he’s holding every single emotion he possesses locked down tight.
It’s fascinating, this glimpse into the man I let fuck me not ten minutes ago. Fascinating and so hypnotic, his beautiful face frozen in that captivating, almost vulnerable mask. I could watch him forever.
“So you never loved me?” His voice is sandpaper rough, oddly subdued, as if each word chills him. I wonder if it’s the worst bruised ego in history or whether he’s reached the zenith of rage.
My tormented heartbeat screams that this isn’t sustainable. Barely twelve hours after he claims me, my center is crumbling, my perspective shifting in the false quicksand beneath my feet. Because why else would I imagine I just caught a glimpse of the boy I knew in those gray eyes, heard the vulnerability of that same boy in his voice? “I loved a figment of my imagination who was never going to live up to reality. This room is both a reminder of that blinkered stupidity and a caution not to wear those particular shades ever again.”
“And just so I’m clear on this, you made this earth-shattering discovery that you didn’t love this particular Rutherford while you were in Boston those three weeks with my father?” he asks.
This one is easy. Heart-crushingly easy. “Yes.”
His fists bunch tighter until I’m terrified his knuckles are goin
g to pop. His frenzied gaze sizzles mine in the fraught silence. Searching. Searching. Then it drops, as if he can’t bear to look at me. He stares down at his fists in fascination for a minute, his lips a thin, ruthless line. “Did you fuck him then too?” A hushed, white-hot demand.
I barely hear it over the hammering of my heart. “No.”
His head jerks up, and he’s back to probing my gaze again. Whether he finds what he’s looking for or not, his fists unclench, and his torso straightens. “So you decided I wasn’t a good bet on account of being my father’s son. But my father was a better one?”
The shrug I attempt is probably one of the hardest things I’ve pulled off. “Something like that.”
“I see.”
No, you don’t, I want to say. With Finnan, I walked into the devil’s cesspool knowing exactly what to expect. With Axel, I never saw it coming.
“Are we done here? Is there something else you want to know or can I go take a shower?”
My questions draw his gaze down, over my throat, my chest, the expensive but inadequate sheet covering my body. Even without looking down, I know my skin bears his marks from last night and this morning. In his own way, he’s branding me.
His expression slowly morphs until he looks almost human again. Almost. The beast always lurks just beneath the surface.
“No, baby. You can shower later. For now, you stay right where you are. Until I’m ready to fuck you again, I want my sweat on your skin and my cum inside you.”
I smash down the dizzying thrill and shake my head. “You can’t—”
“I think we’ve established conclusively what I can and cannot do.”
“And that includes keeping me permanently naked? Why?”
His teeth flash in a display of cruel mirth. “Maybe your clean, un-fucked body is my kryptonite. Maybe sullying you at every opportunity is how I’m going to deal with this fucked-up situation. I haven’t decided yet, but let’s go with that for now, hmm?”
“I still need clothes, Axel. And I need my—”
A knock on the door halts my speech.
Axel rises, his powerful frame dominating the room as he strides to the door and pulls it open. A short, muted conversation later, he’s pushing a multi-shelved trolley into the room. Without glancing my way or resuming our conversation, he starts lifting domed lids off dishes.
If I was told ten minutes ago that I would have an appetite following our conversation, I would’ve laughed. Instead, my stomach lurches in wild anticipation when aromas hit my nostrils. Tired of my body betraying me, I force myself to stay put in the middle of the bed.
“Let’s see, we have hash browns, eggs Benedict, scrambled eggs, toast, Belgian waffles with whipped cream, coffee, and juice. Or smoked salmon with watercress salad, seared lobster omelet, chicken Caesar salad.” He stops and glances my way, eyebrows raised.
I should be shocked that his mood has morphed too. But just like I was fooled for a long time into believing in a different Axel, so I know that the man in front of me possesses many facets.
Right now, he’s an alpha beast intent on feeding his prey before he devours it. “I’ll have whatever you’re having,” I say.
Gray eyes scrutinize my face and body for a long moment before he shakes his head. “I doubt that, sweetheart. You’re nowhere near equipped to deal with the magnitude of my appetite.” He pours two cups of coffee, sets the sweetened one on a tray before he starts piling selections of food on a plate. Juice, water and condiments go on the tray before he lifts it and heads my way. He places the tray in my lap, then catches my chin in his hands, tilting my head. “Eat everything on that plate, and we’ll discuss items of clothing.”
I bristle. “I’m not a child to be offered treats for good behavior.”
“No. You’re mine. And I’ll make you jump through as many hoops as I want. Even if some of them are for your own good.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you still have a mutinous little streak, when you’re in a mood. Tell me you weren’t dreaming up an excuse not to eat just now?”
A nasty bolt of surprise kicks me. “And how would you know that?”
A bleak look flits over his face, lightning fast and savage, then it’s gone. “Not everything you imagine is altered has altered, Cleo. Now. Eat.”
I stare at his retreating back as he returns to the trolley. I pick up my cutlery, tossing the cryptic remark in my mind then discarding it. Everything I imagined altered. Everything. Wiped out of existence by a twenty-one-minute video that is seared in my mind and plays on an endless loop, awake or asleep.
If it didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be here.
Chapter Twenty-Three
CONFESSOR, MY CONFESSOR
I jump at the sound of a champagne cork popping. I look up, certain with every breath in my body that we don’t have a single thing to celebrate. But the Dom Pérignon is being poured into a flute containing orange juice. Shock punches through me. I’m unwilling to attribute the mimosa he’s fixing to the memory that suddenly lances through my mind.
A stolen moment at my sweet sixteen birthday party where he pulls me into a silent corner and produces a bottle of champagne and two glasses. A sip of bubbly and comical choking when it goes down the wrong way. The loss of cool prompts his teasing laughter and my annoyed embarrassment. I declare that I hate champagne. Axel stops laughing, tells me to wait, and sneaks into the kitchen to grab a carton of juice. My first mimosa tastes like ambrosia. I beg for more and I drink until my vision blurs.
It became our drink of celebration.
A drink he’s holding out to me now, his eyes steady and unnervingly direct. I don’t want to take it. But I get the feeling this, more than the breakfast sitting in my lap, holds the power to determine my future.
With a not-quite-steady hand, I take it.
He goes back to fix a plate for himself, which he returns with to sit in the armchair. I barely manage to hold off rolling my eyes at the goodness of the cream-topped waffles. And the melt-in-your-mouth omelets. Everything on my plate tastes gloriously good. Halfway through eating, I risk a glance his way to find his gaze on me, a twisted little smile on his lips. Pursing my own, I go back to eating.
He wolfs his own meal down in silence then goes back for a second helping. “More?”
I look from his raised eyebrow to my plate, shocked that it’s wiped clean. Frowning inwardly at my runaway appetite, I shake my head. He returns with the last waffle heaped with cream but, instead of the armchair, he sits on the bed, tantalizingly close.
He takes his time to arrange the perfect mouthful of waffle, cream, and strawberry and holds it against my lips. I shake my head. Piercing eyes narrow. “It’s fucking okay to enjoy it, baby. There are many things I hold against you. Food isn’t one of them.”
Another remark to puzzle over as I open up and take the food.
When we’re done, he disposes of the trolley and returns to bed. Stretching out next to me, he tucks his hands under his head. The action rucks up his T-shirt, and I swallow at the mouth-watering inches of sleekly muscled, tattooed skin on display. He catches me watching, a slow, heavy gleam entering his eyes.
“Now, let’s discuss the next item on the agenda.” His tone is casual, but a hard knot threads through his words.
“I need clothes, including underwear.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. His finger slides across the screen, and he hits dial, then speaker.
“Good afternoon, Axel,” B’s smooth voice greets him.
“Cleo needs clothes. Size four up top, six on the bottom.”
I should be surprised he knows my size. I’m not.
A small pause. Then, “Okay, I’ll take care of it.”
He looks at me. “Anything else?”
I frown at him then at the phone. “Umm, I also need…birth control pills. I left the ones I had back in, but you’ll need a prescription—”
“B will take care o
f it. Won’t you?”
A small huff. “Sure. B will take care of everything. Tell me what brand.”
I tell her.
“You’ll have them in a couple of hours. A little longer for the clothes. Anything else?”
I look at Axel. “Underwear—”
“No underwear,” he overrules. “That’ll be all, B. Thanks.” He hangs up and tosses the phone on the bed.
I glare at him. “Why?”
“I don’t want anything to get in the way of that kryptonite thing I mentioned earlier. It’ll be wasteful to buy underwear I’ll rip off you the moment it touches your pussy. Think about the environment,” he drawls.
The punch of laughter is as unexpected as it is outraged. “I can’t go out with no underwear!”
Both hands return to the headboard, exposing even more of his ripped stomach, his eyes raking my face with lazy possessiveness. “Since we’ve yet to discuss that, let’s not be too presumptuous. I might decide to tie you to this bed for however long this thing takes.”
I look around the room that I’ve inadvertently turned into my own prison. “I…you can’t keep me here for…indefinitely.”
“There’s that challenge again,” he murmurs. He looks deceptively calm, lying there with his hands behind his head, but the hooded eyes fixed on me haven’t lost an ounce of their intensity.
“I’m not challenging you—” I stop when his phone pings. We both look down at the screen. Even upside-down, I can read the words.
Wardrobe ETA 5pm. B.
When the screen goes dark again, I look up. “What’s her story?”
One indolent eyebrow lifts. “Is that your way of asking me if I’m fucking the help, Cleo?”
A nasty little ball congeals in my stomach. I have no intention of investigating it so I shake my head. “It wasn’t.” I take a beat to congratulate myself for an even voice, biting my tongue to stop the other two words aching to burst free. They give me the finger as they launch out of my mouth. “Are you?”
