by Skye Warren
And he did, taking me in his arms and pushing me back on the bed. We fell together, landing in a sensual tangle of limbs and light. The windows had old lacy coverings that hung open. Neither of us made a move to push them closed. Neither of us turned on the light. I wanted to see him just like this, in silvery shadows. Without the fluorescent office lighting, without the blindfold. His body was made of reflection like this, the line of his hip and the curve of his bicep. Sleek muscles over bone, coarse skin sprinkled with hair. A beautiful male body that curved around me and pressed against me.
He touched and moved and conquered me until I gasped, breathless and naked. Modesty and shame meant nothing with him. There was a rare form of security with a man who had broken laws just to be with me, a surety that he wanted my body, craved it beyond normal reasoning.
And he proved it again in the way that he caressed me, not with hands and mouth. That would be too ordinary for him. With a pinch and drawn breath. Squeezing to the point of pain and a tear that fell from the corner of my eye. With a desperate shuddering sigh that made me run a finger along his brow. So much pain inside that he had to cause it to find relief. And that was fine. I was strong enough to take it. My body writhed, and my stifled cries filled the room, but I never told him to stop. Never wanted him to.
He licked my nipples, slow and tender. Then bit me, so hard it felt like I would bleed. I didn’t bleed though, not on the outside. Only inside, where it felt like I’d never come together again. Where bleeding wasn’t death, it was release. Where all my hopes and fears could spill into the air around us, leaving me pure and unbroken.
His mouth moved over my whole body, writing on me, marking me, and I gasped and writhed at the pleasure and pain sensations. He didn’t pause at my breasts. Didn’t stop at my sex.
He skated over the slippery lips of my cunt and kept going. The curve of my hip was just as interesting to him, the soft inner flesh of my thigh. The hollow of my ankles caught his attention and held it. Every square inch of my skin held fascination for him, and he stayed to suckle and soothe until I was rocking my hips into the air and begging, begging.
“Please, more. Come inside me. Please.”
His laugh was pure masculine conceit. “Where? Here?”
A sudden thrust and two fingers were inside me, stretching me. I gasped at the intrusion and clenched down hard, wanting more. More sweet pain and more aching fullness.
“But who do you want here, hmm?”
Carlos, he meant, or Hennessey? I panted. “You. Only you.”
“How do you know? What if I hurt you?” He twisted his fingers, finding a spot inside me and ruthlessly pressing it.
I groaned at the feeling. So close. But not enough to come. “The only way you could hurt me is to leave.”
He froze for a second. I thought he might really leave then, and it was on the tip of my tongue to call him back.
A surge of emotion blazed in his eyes, lighting up the dark. His eyes fell shut, but they didn’t shut me out. They drew me deeper, into knowing him, into feeling every wish he’d ever had. For money, for power. All means for the same damn thing. So that no one could control him. So that no one could ever get close enough to make him care. So that no one could ever shoot the only person he cared about while he stood by, small and helpless.
But he did care about me, and in a twisted way, I held this control over him. He wouldn’t leave. I saw the answer in his eyes: he couldn’t. He pressed his fingers deeper and placed rough biting open-mouthed kisses on my belly, my thighs. He devoured me, and I cried my gratitude into the night.
It felt like being with him for the first time. Not the monster who bound and whipped me. Not the tender lover who let me take the lead. Both of those were facets of him, light shining onto a certain part of him. This was the rock at the center, the one without fear or artifice.
I had exposed him, found out his secrets, threatened his life with the knowledge I held, and instead of retaliation, he’d come here to…what? To fuck me. To make love to me. They both sounded wrong for the unadulterated need infusing his every touch. I didn’t have a vocabulary for what he did to me, but then no one had been able to define the man himself. An enigma, an abomination, a wish on a star. He consumed me, and I drifted inside him, blissed out on the ride.
I didn’t know how he would dominate me, but I knew that he would. It was in his genetic make-up. His past may have sharpened the edges, made walls where there had been none, but he would always be a man who took control.
I had been tested too young, abused and discarded before I even understood the dynamics of sex. But I always would have been a loyal creature, one who would guard my territory with no holds barred, a woman who prized strength and survival above all else.
He moved beside me, still licking and biting down my body. Down to my cunt, but instead of kneeling between my legs, he straddled me facing down. The sixty-nine position, but with him on top, and though he didn’t put all his weight on me, I could still feel his warm, hard presence above me. My arms were pinned at my side by his legs around my shoulders. My head was caught inches from where his cock hung heavy and thick. He spread my legs below, pressing me against the sheets.
His lips felt like bliss against my cunt. He tongued me from my clit down to the bottom, and I rolled my hips up into his mouth. It was a form of bondage, being unable to move, unable to see. But I was bound only by his body, surrounded only by him, and I breathed in deep to cherish it. He lapped at my sex, without insisting I do anything for him, but I knew. I knew what I was supposed to do, what I longed to do, and I lowered my head to take his cock into my mouth. The tip was slick and salty with his pre-come, and I licked it off, swallowing it down. Then there was nothing but the smooth head of his cock, the thin slit and the ridged underside. I explored him with my tongue, memorizing every curve and hollow, imprinting every jagged moan onto my mind. What he liked and how he liked it. I wasn’t sure if we would ever be together after this, so I furrowed out each bit of knowledge, savored each sensitive place as if this were our last chance.
He began to move his hips, thrusting his cock inside my mouth. I held my head steady, letting him fuck my head that way while I tried to caress him with my tongue. He fucked me down below as well, with his tongue, while his fingers walked down the taut skin and circled my asshole. I clenched there, nervous and willing.
He pressed one finger against the puckered opening and slid only barely inside. It still felt like too much, too full, enveloped now by his body, swallowing his cock, fucked by his tongue, and invaded at that one forbidden point. Too much, and I bucked against him, making everything worse until it became suddenly better, bursting into a thousand sun-bright rays and drifting back to the shadows that had made me.
He turned, moving over me with stealth and a quickness born of necessity. His body was beautiful in the moonlight, made of some foreign substance, silver and bright. His cock reentered me with his knees on either side of my head, with him facing me.
He looked down at me as he fed me his cock, muttering, “Take it. Fast now. That’s right, good. Yes.”
I opened my mouth and accepted every hot pulsing inch. He was close. I could see it in the jerkiness of his movements and the flare of his nostrils. He was an animal facing death, fight or flight, and for his choice he pressed his hips against my face, rubbing the crinkly hair at the base against my nose. I swallowed around him. It hurt, but I barely noticed in my haze. The world went dim with the loss of breath. Black spots in front of my eyes. Then his cock flexed once, twice, and something liquid and warm slid down my throat. As he pulled back to let me breathe, the last drops of his come trailed over my tongue, sharp and sweet.
The taste of him lingered long after the liquid was gone. His expression was dark and severe, unreadable in the shadows. He didn’t tell me I pleased him, but I knew anyway. I knew from the way he didn’t correct me, and he would have. I knew from the tender way he pulled me into his arms.
Whips and chains
seemed suddenly superfluous, so much wrapping around a gift already given. His command and my obedience, both implicit in our actions, too firmly rooted to need words. He didn’t need to bolt me down when I would stay by his side. And if I wouldn’t, if I flitted away, if I betrayed him after all…well, then I had never really been his.
Chapter Seventeen
He was flipping through a stack of CDs when I came back into the room. He lifted one. “Do you mind?”
“Why would I?”
He’d already beaten and kidnapped me. His sardonic expression said he understood the subtext of my shrug. Well, fuck him and his smugness. I wanted him to come back to bed. We had slept for a few blissful hours and then had woken to make love again. A clinging, bruising love that might have scared someone else. Instead, I found the answers to questions I’d had my whole life. Since I’d let my foster brother “get lucky” with me at age fifteen, and then a senior at school the next year, I’d known something was missing. This.
I had lied to myself, pretending I could be normal, pretending I even wanted to be normal. But why would I want to be someone different than I was? Did normal people secretly yearn to be deviant? I didn’t know, but I could no longer pretend. No longer hide when a man who felt the same way stood in my bedroom.
With the press of a button, the sweet strains of “The Music of the Night” drifted from the stereo speakers. Something hollow inside me began to fill, an emotion, an understanding.
When I’d first met Hennessey in that conference room, I’d thought he was like Police Inspector Javert, on a lifelong quest to uphold the law at any cost. That would mean that Carlos was Valjean, the criminal, the hunted. Two separate men.
And then later, after I’d met Mia, I’d thought he was like Dr. Jekyll, the well-intentioned doctor with questionable means. And his other face, Mr. Hyde. A monster. Two sides of the same man.
But now, the man who had found me in the shadows, who had dragged me to bed and wrapped his body around mine…now I knew he was the Phantom of the Opera. Always hiding, always wanting.
One man. All along he’d been one man, and I could see all of him now, whole and unbearably human.
I shivered, and he must have felt it, because he pulled a blanket up to my chin. It wasn’t cold out, though. It was a warm Houston summer and the A/C in this old house could barely keep up. His body burned like a furnace, but I wouldn’t have moved for anything. I didn’t want the cold reality to intrude on the peace we’d found. So fragile, that peace. Like the human body. Like hope. He didn’t like the cold because he longed for a connection as much as I did. We were too different to find that at some corporate holiday party or an awkward first date. But we found it here, with each other.
“What happened to your partner?” I asked into the dark.
There was a pause. “He got too close. Started asking questions, so many questions. I told him to back off. I told him.”
“Did you kill him?”
His body turned rigid. “Fuck. Is that what you thought?”
Yes. “Maybe.”
“I didn’t kill him.” His laugh was bitter. “I warned him, though. Told him what would happen. He didn’t listen. He went to visit one of my…one of Carlos’s associates. Not a nice man. They had a chat. Then when my partner turned to leave, he was shot in the back.”
I swallowed hard in the silence.
“All for doing the right thing.” He sounded incredulous. “All for doing his job. I killed the man who murdered him. He was sorry, in the end, but it’s not enough.”
No, it wasn’t enough. Strange that he could see that, a man who had been born to a life of violence. But then, he’d become an FBI agent.
“Did you always plan it this way?” I asked softly. Had he always planned to betray the FBI? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
He knew what I meant. “I was born to the king of a drug cartel. In those days, they really were like royalty, especially in Colombia where they lived. My mother was the daughter of some mafioso in New York, who sold her to solidify their business partnership. She was fourteen at the time.”
My heart hurt to think of a young girl—a child, really—being forced to marry a grown man. Forced to move to a different continent, where she may not have even spoken the language. But most of all, my heart hurt because of the quiet way Ian spoke of his mother.
“My father was the worst kind of asshole. He beat her, of course. The memories I have of her, we’re hiding. In the closet or under some piece of furniture. It wasn’t when he was drunk or angry. It was all the time. And she would sing to me. Quietly, under her breath. She never stopped, even though I realize now she must have been tired, her throat would have been sore. But her only thought was for me.”
I swallowed thickly. I knew how the story ended—with his mother’s brutally quick murder. But I hadn’t been able to comprehend then how much her death would have cut him. Slayed him.
The need to confess tickled my lips. He had a right to know. “Mia told me,” I admitted. “How she died. How you came to run the cartel.”
He stiffened, his body rigid behind me. For a second I was sure he would leave. Then he sighed. “Mia. Well, my father always said that women were a weakness. And for me, he’s been right. Twice.”
I shivered a little with the knowledge that he was talking about me.
“You loved her,” I said. Not a question. A statement of fact. Only if he loved her would he have confided in her that way. The way he was doing with me now.
“I still love her. I always will, but she’s better off where she is now.”
Yes, that was undeniably true. A loving, protective husband and a white house with a flowerbed. It was an idyllic life…and one that Ian had given to her, as a gift. He would have mourned that loss. He would have missed her.
“You gave her up,” I said softly.
“Yes.”
I had to turn then. In his arms, facing him. The shadows illuminated the curve of his cheek, the silver hair at his temples. He was made of shadows and reflected light, unreal even while I felt him solid and warm in front of me.
“And me?” I asked. “Will you give me up too? Keep me for a while, use me? Then turn me over when I fall in love with some wholesome FBI agent?”
“No,” he snarled the word. “That won’t happen. I wouldn’t let it.”
I stared at him, shocked by his vehemence but still disbelieving.
His voice softened. “The way I feel about you is different.”
My heart thudded a warning. “You don’t love me?”
“Not like that. I wanted to break her. I did everything I could to break her, but it never worked. I’d always stop at the last minute, pull back before delivering the final blow. Or maybe she was stronger than any of us realized. Either way, it didn’t happen. I couldn’t break her, so I had to give her away.”
“You wanted to break her, but not me.” My lips twisted in acknowledgement. “I’m already broken.”
He kissed my forehead. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.”
A shift happened inside me, a newfound certainty. He saw me. He knew me. And he still wanted me, just as I was. It had seemed like an impossible dream at one point in my life, though I couldn’t stop searching, even then. Who could love a monster? I was the monster, and he loved me.
His hand slipped down my neck and cupped my breast. He plumped the weight in his roughened palm. He pinched my nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Lightly at first, then harder. Pain shot through my body, and I yelped.
“You didn’t think I was going to go easy on you, did you?”
I shook my head where it rested against his arm. That was one of the things he loved about me, my resilience. And one of the things I loved about him—his ferocity. The way he took what he wanted, and he wanted me.
Turning me, he straddled my waist, pinning me to the bed. He played with my breasts with both hands, molding and pinching while I writhed beneath him.
�
�I want to fuck you so hard I’d bruise you. I want to make you bleed.”
“Are you always such a romantic?” I retorted.
“No.” He squeezed my flesh until I cried out. Then he caressed it. “Would you rather I fuck a hundred other women the way I’m supposed to? Or would you rather I fuck one the way I want to?”
I gritted my teeth against the pain. “The choice isn’t mine.”
“You’re right. It’s mine. And I chose you.”
He twisted me harshly, and I sobbed out a wordless protest. It lessened the blow of his words, though I still felt them ringing through me. And I chose you. I had been wrong before. It was romantic, what he said, what he did. Even while he hurt me, I had his full focus, his complete attention. His care, like worship. His love, an obsession. He slapped my breast and watched the force of his blow shape me. My full breasts always returned to their rounded shape, only reddened after the abuse. He slapped them again and again, until low moans escaped me. Tears streamed down the sides of my face. Mindless, my hands reached up to push him away. I didn’t mean to make him stop, but the body will naturally protect itself.
It didn’t matter. He pinned my wrists above my head and continued his torture. He was hard again, his cock thick and throbbing on my belly. I stared down at him, enthralled by the reddened skin and glistening tip.
He slapped my face. Softer than he’d done to my breasts but still a shock. I met his gaze.
“Sadist,” he said with a slight smile.
“Liar,” I accused breathlessly.
“Sociopath?”
“Better.”
Still keeping my wrists bound, he bent his head and kissed my breasts. He licked them, soothing the hot, abraded skin. He dropped kisses along the upper slope of my breast, up the gentle dip at my throat and to my ear. He nibbled there and bit down gently.
“I don’t need your consent,” he murmured.
My swallow felt thick. “You have it.”
“I know.”
Reaching down, he pried my legs apart. Instinctively, my legs pressed together. With my wrists held together above me, and my body tense, I was too vulnerable, too scared. That didn’t matter either. He opened me up as if I were nothing, a newspaper he split apart and shook to straighten. His cock slipped inside, the broad head parting my damp cunt. He didn’t stop at the tip, didn’t give me time to adjust. He pushed inside until his cock filled me completely, until he bottomed out. He released my thighs then, but not to let me go.
