Fractured Freedom(73)
Her breath came faster, and I saw the goose bumps scattered across her soft skin. When those wide eyes dilated at my last word, I knew we were on the same page, even if she didn’t yet.
Still, she cleared her throat, trying to appear unaffected. “Yes, how is that possible? I can’t … I can’t imagine it.”
“Well, you’d better start, Lilah, because I’ve wanted to drag every one of those sounds out of you. I intend to earn them. One by one.”
“You think we can go that far? We’ve had fun, but you think I’m made for this? For you?” She shook her head. It was the fear talking, the fact that we’d been childhood friends and she didn’t want to change the course of our relationship. “Izzy is the wild one, not me.”
I quirked my head. “Would you classify a rabbit as wild? Or the hawk that hunts it? Do you think that a rabbit zigzagging through the forest, away from a predator, is any less than the animal that chases it?”
She stuttered. “A bu-bunny?”
“A lamb. A mouse. Prey is as wild as its predator, Lilah. You’re as wild as me, and you want this as much as I do.”
She shook her head, hazel eyes wide as saucers. She pushed my hands off her and got up from the table. She grabbed her clothes, and her hand was on the handle of the door to go change when I slammed my palm above her head, holding the door closed.
She yelped and spun around, clothes clutched to her chest. All I saw was the flesh above her hand moving up and down, the swell of her breasts rapidly pulling in those breaths.
“Safe word, Lilah. Use it.”
Her stare was suddenly determined, and the little fist at her chest squeezed tight as she tilted her head and uttered the only word I needed to hear. “No.”
Fuck.
The wolf in me let loose and snatched the clothing from her hands and body viciously. Then my grasp was back around her neck, shoving her hard into the door even as she tried to open it.
“You want to run from me naked, woman? I’d punish you painfully for that,” I growled in her ear before biting it hard.
My hand on her neck tilted her jaw so I could ravage her shoulders, the swell of those breasts, every unmarked part of her body.
I wanted me everywhere on her. “The next man that has his hands on you loses those hands, Lamb. Got it?”
She shook her head, eyes squeezed shut like she was trying to keep me out. Yet she held on to my head like she’d crumble if she let go. “This won’t last. We can’t. We just can’t.”
“We’ll last forever. You’ll be mine forever. No massages. No other men. Nothing. This body is mine.” I picked her up, wrapped her legs around my waist, pulled her close so I could keep her. Keep her forever. That’s all I wanted. I pinned her against the door, our bodies molded to one another by force.
My hands dug into her hips as I sucked hard on that sensitive part of her neck, breathed in her scent, and tried my very best to hold on to the person I couldn’t lose again, even if she couldn’t figure out how to stay.
Because I felt it.
I felt her slipping.
Our unhappily ever after crept in, and I didn’t know how to fix it. She was right. I was a man of destruction, but she knew me as one of healing, and I didn’t know how to heal us when we weren’t even broken yet.
Her heart actively worked to shut me out even as her body let me in. She searched for the what-ifs and the darkness and the pain in her mind to wedge between us, and I couldn’t control it except when I had her like this.
And this only lasted so long.
I spun her and laid her back on the massage table. Her dark waves cascaded over her shoulder and over the table’s edge as she turned her head to look at me. I let myself take her in for just a moment as she lay there breathing heavily. Took in the way that skin stained pink for me when I touched her, the way she bent her knees and her hands went between her legs as she bit her lip, like she couldn’t stop herself from touching the sensitive parts of her body while she waited for me to do it. Her muscles moved fluidly to a secret rhythm that mesmerized me. The spectrum of color in those hazel eyes hypnotized me, and I found myself grabbing the candle from behind me and moving to stand right above her, holding it out over her stomach.
I opened my mouth to remind her.
She beat me to it. “I know the safe word, Dante.”
“If I lose you, Lilah, you know I’m going to make sure you remember me,” I said before I poured the hot wax from a foot above her stomach, knowing it wouldn’t burn too much from that height. Still, I wanted her to remember, wanted her to experiment with her pain and let me redden her unmarked skin so I could replace the pain with pleasure.
A tear escaped and trickled down her face as she nodded, and I tried my best not to fall to my knees and beg her forgiveness.
Instead, the gasp that came from her as I slid my finger up her pussy at the same moment the wax hit her stomach made my cock so hard I knew I’d need to be inside her soon. “That sound is mine. Will always be mine, Lilah.”
She nodded as we watched the wax harden, and her hips rolled against my fingers.
I tilted the candle again, dripping a path of wax up to her breasts, over them, around her nipples. “The next sound is going to be you screaming.”
“I don’t scream in public places, Dante,” she whispered.
“You’re about to, Little Lamb. Spread your legs like a good girl.” She whimpered like she couldn’t do it, like she was above it, but her body submitted to me immediately. “Such a pretty little lamb. And look at that pretty pink pussy. The color I see in all my dreams. Fuck, you deserve everything I’m about to give you. Always have, always will. You’re my good girl, my very best girl … Mine.”