Rough Edge (The Edge #1)(14)

“I’m coming inside you,” I spit out. She had to know or I’d keep spinning. “Because you’re mine.”

Filling her, I claimed her inside and out, and the whirlwind stopped.





Chapter Eight





Greyson





I ached when I woke. From the bottom up: My feet from the shoes. My pussy from the sex. My trapezius muscle from the bite.

I bent over the bathroom vanity and ran my fingers over the bite bruise. It wasn’t too bad. The skin was a shade redder. It looked like a mild hickey. My eyes were ringed in black. I hadn’t bothered to take off my makeup. We’d had sex twice again at home, if you could call it sex. More like he took my body and made it his own, giving orgasms and taking them as if they were a marital right. I’d collapsed into unconsciousness.

I wiped the bluish-gray mascara stains from my face.

My body wasn’t a marital right, of course. My body was my own, and I could refuse him at any time. Caden knew that. He must have, because even after we got home, he checked on me.

Twice, the mask of determination snapped off, leaving a man who looked disconcerted.

Twice, he asked me if I wanted to slow down or stop.

Once, I said I was fine. Once, I begged him not to stop.

Both times, his brutality returned like a Halloween mask on an elastic string.

I should have made him stop, but I couldn’t.

Why?

Was I threatened? Did I believe he’d hurt me worse if I did? Would he?

No.

“No,” I said into the mirror. “He wouldn’t.”

How did I know? Was it the orgasms he gave me? He’d acted as if my pleasure gave him power. Every orgasm drove him to greater intensity, and each increase in passion drove me deeper into a sexual fugue.

I trusted him. One, he was a doctor, and a great one. It didn’t get any safer than that. Two, he wanted me to want what he did. The checking in told me that much. He wanted consent. Needed it as much as I did, but I didn’t think… no, I was sure he hadn’t planned the last two rough encounters, so he couldn’t have asked ahead of time. He was getting the idea to hurt me in the moment.

The pain.

Next time, I should stop him when it hurt. When he bit me. When it was uncomfortable.

I should, but I wouldn’t. Morning Greyson, with her mascara running down her face and a bite mark on her neck, knew it wasn’t okay to cause your partner pain or discomfort during sex. Dr. Greyson Frazier knew it was okay as long as it was coupled with consent and clear boundaries.

She knew it had a name.

I tossed the mascara-streaked wipe into the trash and went downstairs before I could say the name to myself.



* * *



Caden was at the stove, making breakfast. My favorite.

“Pancakes!” I fist pumped quietly. “Pow.”

I kissed him and he looked down at me, mask gone. Just my husband. He moved the spatula to the other hand and squeezed my shoulders while he flipped the cakes.

“I have nothing today,” he said. “What about you?”

“Session in the morning and that’s it. I was going to go work out. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s still kind of weird, all this time to myself.”

He laced his fingers in mine, nudging the disks around pensively. “You said a big rock didn’t go with army green. What you wore last night would have been stunning with a ring.”

Pulling his arm off my shoulder I put my left hand next to his. “We match. That works for me.”

He shut off the stove and jerked the pan until the cakes slid. “Do you miss the service?”

He deserved my honesty, but there was more to the question than a simple lament for a job I didn’t have anymore. He was the reason I’d left five weeks before instead of forty years from now.

But I couldn’t lie to him or myself. “Sometimes.”

He shifted the pan back and forth on the burner so the pancakes would skate around. “There’s a thing at Chelsea Piers. Like a festival normal cities have with booths, et cetera.”

“Normal cities?”

“Like where you grew up.” He tipped the pan to slide the pancakes onto a plate. If I’d tried that, their skin would have stuck to the surface and been an entire disaster. Everything he did was so easy for him, as if the laws of physics were his to command.

“I grew up in six different cities.”

“In any of them, did you have festivals and block parties and normal events where people spend money on garbage?”

“A couple.”

“How normal.”

He picked up the plate and looked right at me for the first time that morning. His gaze landed on the bite mark. Reflexively, I covered it. He put the plate down and moved my hand away.

“Broken blood vessels,” he said. “You have some abrading to the skin.”

“It’s fine.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Only when you touch it, so don’t.” I picked up the plate. “I’m starving.”

I kissed him and went to the table. He’d set it with silverware and glasses, and as I draped the cloth napkin on my lap, I took a second to acknowledge that he didn’t usually set up an elaborate breakfast. He cooked for me as often as I cooked for him, but this was a step beyond.