Rough Edge (The Edge #1)(31)

“I stuff all my feelings away, because it feeds on them. You’d be sick to your stomach if you knew how easy it is for me to do that. It gets easier every day, and when I can’t anymore, I fuck you hard because it hates that. It hides so it doesn’t have to watch. Then there’s this spinning sensation, like my mind is being flipped and spun… then it’s gone until next time.”

She put her hand on my face. I kissed her palm.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You didn’t know you were marrying into this mess.”

“Neither did you.”

“I wouldn’t want to go through it with anyone else, but at the same time, I’m sorry it’s you. You deserve better.”

“And you deserve the best, which is me.” She smiled and waggled her brows.

I laughed but cut it off. She meant it to be funny, but I wasn’t ready to laugh about this.

“Do you have to wait to hurt me? Wait until you’re all bottled up and stone-faced?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried it.”

She slid off the stool. “Do you feel it now? The Thing? So close after you chased it away?”

“It’s there but hiding. I can manage it.”

“Hurt me now,” she said thickly.

When I’d hurt her before, I was under the influence of whatever this sickness was. I could only see one path out, and it was through her pain. Any other time, it wouldn’t be right.

“Greyson.” I ran my fingers along her throat, feeling the bend of her tendons under soft skin. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” She put her lips to my cheek. “Hurt me.”

Her whisper turned my compassion into sex. I turned my mouth to her throat and bit it.

“Harder.”

I bit harder, sucking apples off her skin. She gasped. Her face tightened. She pushed my face into her throat, and I sucked and bit her, grabbing her by the waist, pulling skin between my teeth.

She groaned, and I tasted blood. I pulled away. A red spot had formed inside deep, tooth-shaped indents. Her brown eyes were wide and her pupils were dilated.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She put her hand to her new wound. “Yeah, I’m… did it go away?”

It had been faint before. I gave it my attention, feeling in the corners and behind the hiss of the water heater. “It’s there. Same as before.”

“Maybe you have to be fucking me?”

“It starts screaming and hiding before that. And I’d like to fuck you right now.” I put my hand up her shirt and found her nipple.

The red marks on her neck were getting brighter and angrier as blood flowed to the site. Seeing the mark made my blood flow as well. I’d done that, and painfully. She was mine. I pinched her nipple, watching her suck in a breath. I twisted it, and her eyelids fluttered.

Drawing my hands down her sides, I pushed her pants down. “Let me make you come.”

Before she could answer, I got two fingers on her clit and her reply turned into a groan. I guided one hand to the stool behind her and the other to the counter. She locked her left elbow and curved her back, thrusting her hips toward me.

“Would you stop if I said no?” I rotated my fingers on her nub, watching her try to maintain control over her questions. “While we’re doing it and you were hurting me? If I said stop, could you?”

We were down to calling roughness and domination “it.” I doubted Greyson missed the way we glossed it over when we weren’t in the moment.

“Probably.” I got two fingers into her, then drew them back over her clit so wet I barely had to touch it.

“I need something… I’m so close… more definite.”

Increasing the pressure, I brought her to the next level but reduced it to keep her on the edge. “I could.”

“Then we should keep doing it.”

“You like it.”

“I do. I do. God, let me come.”

Wiggling back under her shirt, I pinched her nipple again. This time, I made sure it hurt. Not for the Thing, which was too far away to perceive it, but because I couldn’t believe what she’d said until I tested it with a loving heart.

But it was true. She threw her head back and rotated her hips against me. Her clit was bloated and tight with blood. The harder I pinched her nipple, the more the pain kept her from going over the edge into orgasm. She hovered in my hand, under my control with no more than a few fingers.

“I’m going to let you come.”

“Yes. Please.”

I slowly increased the pressure on her clit, circling it with her rhythm until she arched her back, leaning on her left arm, stiffening over my hand. She let out an unh, then jerked away so forcefully her hair fell over her face. Her chest heaved.

“Thank you,” she said breathlessly, pushing the hair off her face.

“My pleasure.” I sucked the end of a slick finger.

She put her hands on my shoulders and pressed her body between my legs. “I have the rest of the morning off.”

“I don’t.” I kissed her and stood. “So we’ll reconvene tonight.”

“I’m going to call some people then.”

“Okay.” I untangled myself from her and pushed the stools in.